The Third Eye is a feminist think tank operating at the intersections of gender, sexuality, violence, technology, and education. Created by the organisation Nirantar, Third Eye leverages Nirantar’s three decades of experience producing knowledge for rural and marginalised communities and extends this expertise into the digital realm, creating a feminist learning platform for educators, grassroots workers, policymakers, researchers, and communities across rural, semi-urban, and urban India. Its name is inspired by the pioneering educator Jyotiba Phule, who likened education to the "third eye" through which one perceives the human condition.
Established in 1993, Third Eye's parent organisation, Nirantar, serves as a resource centre for gender and education, initially focusing on empowering women through educational processes. Officially registered in 2000, Nirantar's work initially centred on literacy programmes for adult women in rural areas but later expanded to include Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, and transgender women in both rural and urban settings. Under Nirantar's umbrella, Khabar Lahariya, the country’s only woman-run brand of ethical and independent rural news, was founded in 2002. Comprising women from marginalised backgrounds, including Dalit, tribal, Muslim, and backward castes, Khabar Lahariya pioneers rural journalism, emphasising the connection between livelihood, local language, and education.
In 2019, Nirantar conducted an extensive analysis of contemporary debates, efforts, issues, and experiments in digital media and education, aiming to develop a feminist learning platform. This analysis highlighted the lack of gender, sexuality, and feminist perspectives in the educational technology (or EdTech) space in India, prompting the creation of The Third Eye to address this gap. The initiative aims to fill the identified deficit in open-source, bilingual resources for integrating feminist perspectives into education. Reflecting on the value of this critical learning, one staff member explained,
“That was our main goal when we first started (The Third Eye): to instil in people that feminism is about more than just gender or women. It is a study of power. And once you understand how power moves and where power lies, you will have more agency in your interactions with the world, whether they are digital or real.”
The Third Eye initiative also explores the relationship between images and knowledge, recognising their impact on shaping perceptions. In India's digital space, dominated by Brahmin upper caste male voices, marginalised perspectives are often overlooked. The Third Eye seeks to amplify these voices by bringing them into the digital sphere. Launching its inaugural edition on the theme of work in November 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, The Third Eye aims to transition knowledge creation from established writers to individuals from the field with the support of a Learning Lab. The Learning Lab serves as an arts-based educational platform where various contributors collaborate to critically analyse their perspectives. This engagement helps them further explore and challenge the systems of knowledge influencing them. The Learning Lab is mentored by documentary filmmakers, visual artists, podcasters, feminist researchers, and activists.
Currently, The Third Eye works as both an online platform, designing multiple kinds of reading-writing-listening-viewing experiences, and an offline space for learning, conducting training and co-creating materials to change the status quo around knowledge production.
Informed by feminist principles, Third Eye’s engagement approach integrates critical self-reflection, experiential learning, and inclusive storytelling. This framework empowers marginalised voices, challenges power dynamics, and reshapes narratives. They amplify grassroots vocabulary and co-authorship, with community involvement reshaping power dynamics in research. Gradual power shifts from mentors to mentees foster transformation over time.
Their Learning Lab, consisting of diverse individuals from different backgrounds, delves into experiential knowledge through interactions, readings, and discussions. They explore various forms of media, including documentary films and audio productions, to convey their stories and perspectives. The Lab's interdisciplinary nature facilitates guest classes by filmmakers and theatre practitioners, enriching the learning experience.
The primary participants in The Third Eye's work are team members, including mentors and rural community members acting as mentees. Leveraging the trust established through Nirantar, The Third Eye facilitates entry into rural communities, although initial power dynamics may be influenced by predominantly urban mentors. The overarching vision is to instigate a gradual power shift, with mentees transitioning into mentors upon completion of the programme, thus perpetuating a cyclical process. Over time, relationships evolve beyond mere camaraderie, with mentors being perceived as skill providers rather than solely based on personal attributes. This transformation occurs through continuous engagement and evolves individuals into empowered storytellers, enabling them to develop and share their narratives.
Embedded within the Learning Lab's structure are digital educators linked to field organisations, embodying a core feminist research principle that researchers must immerse themselves in the process. Self-inquiry is vital for understanding the community's knowledge articulation, prompting The Third Eye to pose the central question: "How do you embody the world?" This question drives introspection into personal involvement in patriarchal, neoliberal, and violent systems while engaging with others in transformative pursuits. As one staff member explained,
“In feminist research, one must always implicate the researcher. There is no such thing as objective research in feminism. Your perspective and criticality shape your research. As a result, the central inquiry of the Learning Lab for everyone we worked with in the field was that unless you investigate yourself, you will not be able to understand what is going on around you, right? So the knowledge we claim is community-based. We all claim that communities have knowledge, but how will this knowledge be articulated? It is always expressed by people like you and me, right? We go, document, and come back. How does the community express its own knowledge?”
This approach aims to disrupt power imbalances by transforming researchers and documentarians into subjects, thus fostering a more equitable exchange of narratives.
The impact of Third Eye’s work is multifaceted. By empowering individuals to investigate their own perspectives and express them through various media, the organisation aims to help communities reclaim their narratives. The impact is both personal, through self-awareness and self-expression, and communal, by providing a platform for marginalised voices to be heard. One of their success stories is the remarkable transition of a mentee who went from not being able to write a single line to composing a 10-11 part episodic narrative marked by a continuous exchange of ideas and introspective reflections, which went on to become very popular.
Carrying out such community-focused and embedded work is anything but easy. Value and compensation pose significant challenges for the organisation, primarily due to financial constraints, which hinder their ability to offer adequate compensation for participants. This often leads to difficulties in sustaining engagement as many individuals fail to perceive the immediate value of their contributions. Another obstacle is the high dropout rate among participants, stemming from the demanding and intensive nature of the work. Ensuring content quality remains a continuous challenge, particularly in the digital realm saturated with diverse media sources. This necessitates the implementation of content standards to ensure they can effectively engage readers and viewers amid stiff competition. Moreover, the organisation's approach relies heavily on individualised and intensive mentorship, which is both time-consuming and resource-intensive, making scaling their model challenging. Navigating legal complexities, such as FCRA rules, adds another layer of challenge. This is amplified due to their commitment to working with individuals who possess varying literacy levels, ranging from low literacy to formal education, and who struggle with knowledge access and production.
The Third Eye’s method of engaging with communities disrupts traditional research approaches, as can be seen in their Caseworker’s Dictionary of Violence. This project aims to create a language and terminology to deepen understanding of gender-based violence in India sourced directly from grassroots perspectives. The lexicographers behind this dictionary hail from Lalitpur, Lucknow, and Banda in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, bringing with them extensive experience acquired over years, including embedded knowledge of countless cases that might have otherwise been forgotten. The 12 caseworkers who are the co-authors of the Dictionary are actively involved in addressing various forms of violence such as murder, rape, abduction, child sexual abuse, dowry deaths, and domestic violence. Originating from the very communities they serve, these caseworkers have themselves endured violence, acquiring their expertise through lived experience supplemented by limited legal training.
A pivotal aspect of The Third Eye’s community engagement strategy is the notion that researchers must immerse themselves in the learning process by reflecting on their own roles within patriarchal, neoliberal, and violent systems. They advocate for researchers and documentarians to openly express their feelings throughout the research process, thereby challenging traditional power dynamics and blurring the lines between researcher and subject.