Man and the 'Other'

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.