Over the past week, social media has been on fire with conversations about gender-based violence against women.
And perhaps the reason it has spread so quickly is that, for so many women, the subject is not abstract.
We understand it.
Women want to be cared for, believed, and supported. We demand to live in a world where we can move through our surroundings with safety, and where we have sovereignty and safety within our own bodies.
The allegations surrounding Jane Doe and the Cornell 7 have touched something deep for all women. Because when we hear the story of a woman who says her safety and bodily autonomy were violated, each of us recognize something.
We have been Jane Doe in some form or another.
Or we know and love someone who has.
Women are profoundly connective. From an early age, we create relationships, to share, to confide, to look toward one another and say: I see you. I believe you. You are not alone.
And so, in that connective spirit, we say:
We are each Jane Doe.
Not to unknowingly re-traumatize. Not because our experiences are identical. They are not.
But because every woman is deserving of the same fundamental things:
Respect.
Safety.
Care.
Support.
And freedom.
Mukti — Freedom
The Sanskrit word mukti (मुक्ति) means freedom, release, liberation.
Within the yogic tradition, mukti carries an immense philosophical meaning: liberation from bondage. It is the movement from that which binds us toward that which is inherently free.
But that freedom must also have meaning in the life we are living right now.
A woman should be free to inhabit her own body.
Free to say yes.
Free to say no.
Free to walk away.
Free from violence.
Free from coercion and control.
Free to speak and be heard.
Free to live without having to calculate whether another person's desire, anger, power, or entitlement will endanger her.
That, too, is freedom.
And there is another dimension of mukti that matters deeply to me: freedom does not mean that we abandon one another.
We stand beside one another.
We believe that another woman's dignity matters because dignity itself matters.
When one woman's humanity is diminished, we do not look away.
Each time, we say:
You matter.
Your body matters.
Your voice matters.
Your safety matters.
Your freedom matters.
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I created the Mukti Ring as a symbol of freedom.
Wear it as a reminder of your own inner freedom and sovereignty.
Wear it in honor of the women who have had to fight to reclaim theirs.
Wear it for the Jane Does whose names we know and the countless Jane Does whose names we never will.
This month, in honor of women everywhere, Surya Jewels will donate 30% of proceeds from the Mukti Ring to a women's shelter in New York City.
We stand together, united against violence, disrespect, coercion, and the control of women.
And we stand for something equally important:
A world in which women are safe.
A world in which women are heard.
A world in which women belong fully to themselves.
Mukti.
Freedom.
So it is,
Manorama
Wear Freedom
Mukti - मुक्ति - Freedom. Liberation. Release.
Let the Mukti Ring be a reminder:
I belong to myself.