Woman and man are not mutually exclusive entities but complementary to each other that makes the life complete
Shubhrastha
As postcolonial citizens of this ancient cultural nation, we discuss women issues within two straitjacketed concepts – rape and reservation on the one hand and feminism and patriarchy on the other. It is rather sad for a culture like ours that first we have had to delineate the idea of gender within the confines of crime against women and general inequalities within which women operate. It is sadder that within these restrictive and restricted confines of two misplaced debates, discussions on gender issues have become a one-way articulation against a system of social structure, patriarchy, that has been, prima facie, branded as evil. A panacea to patriarchal manifestations of gender inequality and injustice has been hijacked by a purely Western socio-political movement called feminism, so much so that today the movement has been replaced by some gender sensitive warriors in the form of an ideological position.
Through this article, I want to deconstruct the effeteness of this said ideological fulcrum and propose a way forward with respect to addressing gender concerns in our society—the Bharatiya Samaj.
Any culturally and historically aware citizen of this nation would recall that gender inequality in India is not a Vedic phenomenon. Medieval distortions of Dharmic texts, Islamism through invasions and later British colonialism – for all their other contributions – inflicted gender woes in this land. I assert so because as I write I reconstruct the images of Yam-Yami in the Vedas which later manifested themselves as ardhanarishwar in Puranas. I recount the historiographic mention of Gargi, Maitreyi, Lopamudra who established themselves as champions of art, philosophy and knowledge without any question of bias. I relive the experience of reading Silappattikaram where the protagonist of the epic, Kannagi, consumed by rage against injustice flings her left breast on the city of Madurai – teaching the fated King the meaning of raj dharma. And as I am surrounded by the glorious echoes of the past where there was no distinction between a man or a woman in terms of abilities and destination, I am forced to compare the present gender discourse against the grain of time past.
In a culture and samaj (society) that has been intrinsically gender neutral, why is it difficult to look for solutions to vexed issues of gender divide within the Indian forgotten prampara (traditions)? This idea to look within is not confined to the parochial notion of pitting Bharatiya
culture against the Western notion of feminism but is entrenched in the belief that the Indian way of addressing gender concerns is far more liberated than the Western one. I will try and explain how.
In the Hindu parampara, a woman is the centre of creation. In the Christian and Islamic tradition, a father figure created the Universe. In the Christian tradition, it is explicit that Eve, created out of the master copy, Adam”s ribs, tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. The subtle delineation of a man and woman”s moral being and a finer hierarchy is clear in the traditions where Feminism seems to have germinated first. The idea for Hindus (not necessary to define Hindu as a religion here), especially strong Hindu women, is to identify themselves with these traditions and mythologies. And if we can”t see cultural parallels in the Shakt traditions which even celebrate the yoni, as in Ambubachi festival in Kamakhya, Assam, for instance, it is necessary that we situate the gender discourse within the contexts we inhabit.
The Western Feminist discourse that focuses a lot of attention on the liberation of the female body is irrelevant in the land of Kamasutra and Khajuraho. It is irrelevant in a culture that celebrates menstruation (Tiloni Biya in Assam and Ritu Kala Samskaram in South India), Thabal Chongba (a traditional Manipuri dance ritual) etc. It is irrelevant because the discussions on violence and prejudice against women do not need a foreign lens to recuperate the cultural demise of gender sensitivity. Rather, it needs a relook at our cultural national and traditional roots to eliminate the self-inflicted wounds in our collective cultural conscience.
The Western Feminist discourse that feverishly debates about economic rights of women in various ways is the only saving grace for feminist discourse in India. While the cultural aspects of discrimination against genders is just a matter of not knowing our roots enough, the economic marginalisation of women within land rights, national GDP, discriminatory corporate practices and labour rules are symptomatic of a deeply derailed discourse on discriminatory systems of governance that we have adopted over aeons of foreign domination. It would be churlish to assume that in the short run, the dream of a Vedic Indian system of equity and equality be established.
The Parliament needs to debate and identify “women”s” chores within the economy. There has to be an addition of women”s home making work in national GDP. There has to be a respectable identification of women farm labour in India. Land rights have to be just to women. Corporate and government policies have to be gender sensitive and just to the special biological needs of women. The sensitivity will come from our cultural roots but the policies will have to be immediate and in the current contexts.
It is unfortunate for a primarily rural society like India that the debates on gender are so lopsided around urbane and urban concerns. It is sad that while feverishly pitching for freedom, we have forgotten to free ourselves from discriminatory practices within the so called mass ideology of “feminism”. Dominated by the peppy sloganeering in the elite cocoons of this vast country, by desire laden literature that objectifies the body of an Indian woman with supposedly emancipatory imagism within the act of sex or sexual gestures, a majority of Indian Feminists of the day are stuck in the largely urban rhetoric of freedom of the body. This hijacking of the potentially revolutionary idea of reinstating the gender normative behaviour in the Indian society by the elite Feminazis has pushed the borders of gender discourse beyond the rural and the majority concerns.
It is the time that a serious rethink of the gender debate and the contours within which gender discussions happen is undertaken by the men and women of this nation. Taking a cue from the ancient wisdom in this regard may help.
(The writer is Assistant Editor of India Foundation Journal. Views are personal)
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