After being assaulted by a colleague, Usha took upon herself the task of empowering women by making them aware of the lives of strong women and by providing self-defense training to thousands of women.

Usha Vishwakarma is the Chief Managing Trustee of the Lucknow based Red Brigade. The Red Brigade works for the empowering of women and providing self-defense training to women of all ages. It has trained about 1,70,000 women all over India. They try to boost the mental strength and confidence of women and make them aware of the strong contribution of women in history.

Usha was born in Basti district of Uttar Pradesh. She had a traumatic childhood. She says in a way she matured when she was just 4-5 years of age only. The conditions in her home were not peaceful. They lived in a joint family, in which her mother was one of the younger daughter-in-laws. Usha’s grandmother dominated the household. Once, her father had an altercation with her grandmother and went away from home leaving Usha and her mother high and dry.

Usha’s mother came to live with her parents but was not treated honourably there. Even a four year old girl like Usha was stared at by everyone and everyone taunted her mother always. She laments that society has not given women the strength to take bold decisions about themselves. Usha learnt from the pain she received in her childhood. After three years her father came back and they moved to Lucknow. Meanwhile, her family grew and three more children were born to her mother. There were challenges. She did her studies till intermediate by books and notes borrowed from friends as she did not have any books. She did not even have school uniforms to wear.

Then she entered the social field and started teaching poor children. In 2006, in a traumatic incident, one of her colleagues assaulted her and tried to rape her. She was in acute trauma for two years. When she came out of the trauma, she realised that if women are not safe then even financial independence or education are of no use. She started organising protests, rallies and street-plays in support of women who had been victims of assaults, rapes or eve-teasing. As they used to wear Red and Black costumes in their street-plays, someone christened their group as the Red Brigade. The Red in their costumes signifies ‘protest’ and the Black signifies ‘Anguish’.

The Red Brigade gained recognition all over India. It was covered by several media houses, newspapers, and TV channels from all over the world. But, Usha says, still things did not get better. Usha laments that staring at women, eve-teasing are common ills in our society. Women need to be strong willed to fight against this. Women must get the power and strength to make their own decisions about marriage, child-bearing, buying a house and other such big decisions of life. She says there are women in all fields be it politics, sports, defense etc but all the big decisions for her life are taken by others.

Usha organised a campaign-100 Days-100 Schools in 2017. They talked about self-defense during the campaign. Usha says that we have only been taught that women have been oppressed and exploited or kept under restrictions always. But she asks, is it true? Her team researched extensively and selected 100 stories of brave and strong women from 1857 till today. During the campaign, they invited women who are braving through life today to give a talk before the school girls.

Usha says if the women themselves will not take pride in their strengths and capabilities, then what will the men think? She regrets that mostly men are glorified in history and the contribution of women is ignored. She thinks women are strong in every aspect of life, they do not need to prove anything.

Usha says her biggest achievement is that she has come out of the inferiority complex which had been given to her by male-dominated society.

She has learnt self-defense from five countries-America, England, Australia, France and India. She has developed a fusion of these five arts and she calls it ‘Nishashtra Kala’. She provides free training of Nishahtra-Kala to women. However, she says, women can run academies of the same and even earn some money out of it, as it will give them financial strength.

Whenever she is free, Usha likes to go to the mountains. She especially loves the water-falls. She also likes cooking. She loves to know about different people and their culture.

She calls upon everyone to spread stories of brave women far and wide.