My earnest desire to write has born out of
the alien connection I wish to establish between what Amir Khan said in most
parts of his television venture “Satyameva Jayate.” This piece in one way can
be acknowledged as a tribute for his tremendous effort to bring to light some
of the gruesome situations which India faces even today while is convincing
tries to portray that it is taking giant strides into the future. For all those
who will not flip through this newsletter and consider it another futile
effort, I would like to encourage or rather challenge each one to view an
episode of the program. For those who did join in the millions who spared the
mid-morning hours of Sunday to be completely uprooted and replanted by this
show- Kudos!
Major part of the reality program concentrated
on female foeticides, child sexual abuse, dowry and domestic violence. You must
have already understood that female has been an essential core issue of
discussion in this show and so has she been for many a centuries.
Especially with us ‘Keralites’ not much
change has gone by regarding our outlook towards a female even though many of
us have had the privilege to be educated. Enlightenment is not everybody’s cup
of tea and therefore no one cares to grow over the previous generation and
still rattles in a similar fashion to who our elders have behaved towards the
feminine.
Moving out of the regional confines and
viewing the situation all around the country, it does not give me immense
pleasure to assure you that even today women alone continue to understand the
height, the length, the depth and the breadth of her own degradation. She has
been picked and murdered within the womb, she has been raped and forced into
prostitution, she has been shunned by the society whenever she has tried to
connect back and not even spared in her old age.
When a girl is allowed to be born, she
joins a finishing school where for most part of her initial 20-23 years are
spent to understand the codes of conduct when married. She is given the pink
doll to play with, given utensils to practice with and instruction manual which
is repeated practically every day stating how she needs to cook and clean and
mend. If she has a brother, generally the trend goes that she will not be
allowed to argue with him. Married women are ever obliged to obey their
husbands, who had almost unlimited control over their wives’ activities and
finances. In case of divorce, women had few legal rights and usually lost
custody of their children, a very standing example is the case of Malayalam
actress Urvashi.
As an ever evolving society we must
understand that the division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in
human history. Woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave; the two
sexes have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily
handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Even when her rights
are legally recognized in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their
full expression in the mores. In the economic sphere men and women can almost
be said to make up two castes; other things being equal, the former hold better
jobs, get higher wages, and have more opportunity for success than their
competitors. In industry and politics men have a great many more positions and
they monopolize the most important posts. In addition to all this, they enjoy a
traditional prestige that the education of children tends in every way to
support, for the present enshrines the past--- and in the past all history has
been made by men. At the present time, when women are beginning to take part in
the affairs of the world, it is still a world that belongs to men—they have no
doubt of it at all and women have scarcely any.
In proving woman’s inferiority, the
anti-feminists began to draw not only upon religion, philosophy, and theology,
as before, but also upon science—biology, experimental psychology, etc at most
they were willing to grant “equality in difference” to the other sex.
I am not one of those pseudo-feminists who
take flags in their hands and run away from their familial duties to proclaim
an untrue face of feminist reality or ideology. I merely am an individual who
has understood through various incidences that women have always been the mere
echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the
customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a
dream of the future.
Let us, in our families begin to nurture
girls and women in the true sense and understand their value. Let the boys
along with the girls set the table for dinner or help to cook; let them both
mop the floor. Let them both be given an equal opportunity to establish their
point of view and not scolded unreasonably for it. Let there be no pink and
blue, let there be a choice.
