women

By DR. Elsa Lycias Joel

A  hypocritical outcry of deteriorating traditional values is often heard when a woman walks out of her marriage whereas the larger number of financially dependent women struggling in bad marriages without rushing to get divorced are ignored. Divorce isn’t the flavour of any season. It happens not because women are uncultured, characterless or non-religious but because they are educated, aware and have a strong sense of self-esteem. Institution of marriage will always be respected but minus prejudice  and intolerance. Societal and familial pressure or trepidation of being frowned upon cannot force a man and a woman to live together. Agreed, many divorces are filled with bitterness, hostility and rancour because it is assumed mud fighting and slander can hurt only women. 

When women encounter problems in our society, tackling them calls for not loud voices, processions or placards but an objective analysis of reasons which underlie them. Not by law makers and enforcers alone but by every other woman and citizen. We have been seeing and hearing expressions like ‘women reservation bill’, ‘Nirbhaya fund’, ‘special woman safety programme’ and so on being bandied about as part of political debates and talk shows. Politicians, as we all have seen, heard and known, are supposedly well- trained suitably qualified people who position themselves right at the centre of action with the explicit purpose of not putting anything into action and get away with anything in politics.

Countries that make real, visible progress in women safety and empowerment are those whose leaders and citizens have been able to confront the problems head on to find solutions. The government of Iceland has been funding UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund  for Women) for the past three years to promote gender equality and Iceland stands number one on the list of safest countries for women.  By almost every metric compared to the rest of the world, Denmark is very safe and it comes second. Denmark also has a history of finishing as the #1 happiest nation in the world according to statistics. Gender equality is important to the Nordic countries: Political parties in Sweden, Norway and Iceland all have gender quotas, which promote female candidates for top roles. As such, every country has their own ideals of equality between men and women. One can’t call it equality until there is a gender pay gap or glass ceiling.

Men and women are different – biologically and psychologically. Women play certain roles better than men and vice versa to complement one another, be it home or work place. Different does not mean unequal and no one gender needs to act dominant. 

In India, the governments that came and went made much hullabaloo about women’s reservation, without being able to achieve anything practical in this direction. 

Rape storms batter our country, followed by the blow-by-blow breaking of news by the media. Guilt or innocence is presumed. Worse still, rapists continue raping, unmindful of reprisals which they know how to handle and sometimes adorn seats in legislative assemblies and Parliament too. Seems like it’s not just ‘United we loot’ but ‘United we molest and rape’.

Girl children are warned differently such as, “control your anger, you are a girl”. Such social conditioning of girls in our society never needed any extra effort because religion is an important part of our country’s culture. And all religions profess and practice male dominance directly or indirectly. All over our spiritual India, fasting is mostly meant only for women. We also know what widowhood means in a country like ours, don’t we?  For aeons religious traditions have subjugated women.

Sexism is intrinsic to Hinduism and Buddhism. The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been worse.  Manusmriti is way too primitive. The Bible’s decree of male supremacy is known to the world. Most blessed mothers in The Bible are recorded to have given birth to sons only. The story of the adulteress who Jesus forgave and saved from being stoned is an example of how a combination of sex, a woman, public disgrace and double standard worked since biblical times. There was no mention of the man involved in the act. Without any mentioning the uphill battle remains steep for Muslim women. It is indisputable that women are excluded from Judaism’s most hallowed rituals and practices. Sabarimala saga is a case in point. If discrimination to enter a temple is based on sexual orientation and caste, constitutional Articles related to freedom of religion and essential religious practices must be understood better to signal a new era of transformative constitutionalism. Freedom, rights and values embodied in our constitution should not be let to freeze in time, lest we see no possibility of positive change and progress as per changing societal needs. Places of male gods cite menstruation as the main reason for denying women their religious freedom. How come the normative descriptive imagery and pronouns for god are male, enabling people to sculpt them that way!

I also ponder over ‘kallanalum kanavan pullanalum purushan’ which means even if the man is as insensitive as a stone or as useless as a blade of grass he is still ‘THE HUSBAND’, a visible god to the wife. Who else but a male chauvinist must have uttered this proverb!  Tamil literature has enough stories praising devout wives. Nothing wrong about it. But sometimes imaginations soar so high making stories sound ridiculous. One example is Vasuki Ammaiyar, a “Pathiviradhai” cooking delicious meal out a bag of sand given to her by Thiruvalluvar. Making such a story on a man of great intellect isn’t justifiable. And the pail that hung in mid air as this “Pathiviradhai” rushed to address her husband’s call half way through drawing water from a well is another story to motivate devotion in women. Unless mythologies are retold and understood in the right spirit, if not rewritten, these will be used to normalize or rationalize different forms of oppression or abuse, ofcourse by the wrong people. 

Bharat Mata i.e. India is a country where women are worshipped yet abused. It’s a national shame that despite more and more laws and funds, governments of secular, democratic and pluralistic India find it difficult to ensure that all sections of citizens feel equal, protected and secure. Kathua,  Hathras, Unnao and many more can’t be forgotten, forgiven. Meanwhile, Rajvir Singh Pahalwan and Surendra Nath Singh ought to be educated on what amounts to rape. How does Surendra Nath Singh know that sanskar hasn’t been instilled in victims? The Hathras district court was forced to stop the trial proceedings after Hari Sharma and his son Tarun Hari Sharma,  one of the advocates of the accused, created a hullabaloo and issued threats. But how was the father- son duo handled after their misbehavior is yet to be known. Being blessed with common sense, I guess, interrupting court proceedings by words and deeds should be considered as gross criminal contempt of Court.

As far as the sensational Pollachi sexual assault and extortion case is concerned there has been very little progress and Pollachi Jayaraman resigning from his 50 years of political career solely rests on the criminal justice system. The motive behind revealing the name of the victim by the then Coimbatore district Superintendent of Police (SP) R. Pandiarajan is not established until date. Whether the SP was pressing for a transfer shouldn’t be anybody’s wild guess! 

Musings enough, while Bharat Mata continues to sob? Now, will we do something about this – women, what say?

Interesting fact though – did you know that it was Bangla Mata, not Bharat Mata in Bankim Chandra’s original, as revealed by Netaji’s grand nephew. Here : https://sabrangindia.in/article/it-was-bangla-mata-not-bharat-mata-bankim-chandras-original-netaji-grand-nephew.

What’s in the name – nothing much, really. So keep calling India – bharat mata, and do nothing about women’s actual state in India. Unless, we really do decide enough is enough.