On 12 February 2021, Anshu Khanal was the centerpiece of a symbolic rally held in Kathmandu to protest violence against women.

Laid down supine on a stretcher, a yellow cloth draped over her body, Khanal was carried from Basantapur to Singha Durbar in the rally attended by hundreds of people. Khanal’s ‘dead body’ represented the girls and women who had been raped and murdered but never got justice. The rally, dubbed ‘Women’s March’, had been instigated by the rape and murder of a 17-year-old schoolgirl in Baitadi district a week ago. 

“At that moment, I was thinking about the suffering and pain the victims of rape and violence must go through,” says 22-year-old Khanal.

Images of Khanal being paraded on the streets of Kathmandu as a dead body struck a chord with many and garnered much media coverage.

While the rally brought Khanal to press and public attention, it was not the first time she had taken part in a demonstration. She has in fact long been a fixture of rallies for women’s rights and justice.  

Born in a small village of Aarupokhari in Gorkha district, Khanal says she was a sickly but rebellious child. 

“My parents had three daughters. Growing up, I witnessed villagers telling my parents to have a son, and that bothered me a lot. I didn’t understand why,” she says. “I think the feeling that I was somehow less important than a boy turned me into a rebel.” 

Khanal wanted to prove to her villagers that she was as capable and competent as any boy.    

When she moved to Dhading Besi in Dhading district to complete her high school, Khanal truly learned what it is to be a woman. She was exposed to a whole different circle of friends and people from different communities and found out the true extent of violence and injustice women and girls encounter.

“Until then I had only known of the preference of sons over daughters as gender inequality, but I was wrong. There were so many things that needed to be addressed,” says Khanal.   

She then started expressing her feelings and frustrations through social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. 

In 2018, Khanal came to Kathmandu for higher studies and enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program in Psychology and Social Works at Padma Kanya Campus, Bagbazar. While in the capital city, she saw many student protests happening all around for different causes but never thought that she would ever participate in one. 

“I used to get scared when I saw p0lice arrest the people I knew. There was also the fear of my parents. What would they say if they found out their daughter was protesting in Kathmandu?” Khanal says.

But she could also not watch from the sidelines amid fast-multiplying incidents of violence and injustice against girls and women. Khanal wanted to find a more creative and artistic way to express dissent.

Around this time, she met her now-husband Rashik Raj and they formed a small group of writers and performance artists, called Aabha for Creativity. Initially the group was only involved in activities related to arts and literature. But with so many injustices happening in the society, Khanal says they were forced to take up social causes.

“We also wanted to protest in a more creative way, to bring an element of art to it,” she says.

Gender-based inequality and violence was one issue that Khanal wanted to address, so Aabha for Creativity started taking their art to the streets. 

In her first-ever protest, Khanal recited a poem in front of a crowd.

“It was then I realized that every individual voice counts and my voice is important too,” she says of that experience.

Khanal was deeply affected by the 2018 rape and murder of Nirmala Pant in Kanchanpur and enacted a symbolic play against the heinous crime at Basantapur.

Khanal has continued to express herself against violence and injustice against women since, be it in the form of poetry or street drama.

“I’ve never been good at bottling up my feelings,” she says. And she doesn’t plan on starting now.

The Women’s March rally was one of the most important and difficult things she has done. It brought her attention, but not all positive. She had to deal with a series of online abuses after the rally.

Khanal says the barrage of online abuses didn’t faze her as she believes in her causes and she has friends and family members who support her.  

“I have seen the conservative views of my own friends and relatives change because of my protests,” she says. “That is deeply satisfying. But so long as there is violence against women I won’t stop fighting against it.”