Gender Equality...A Distant Dream

Gender equality in our country is a distant dream. The recent Mangalore attacks only underline this fact. It is indeed a tragedy that a country which aspires to become a superpower cannot provide basic security for its women. Even more abominable is the attitude of the attackers; who continue to remain unrepentant and call themselves “custodians of Indian culture”. There is full merit in assuming such elements to be for the Talibanisation of many parts of India.


To say that forces such as the Sri Rame Sene or even Abhinav Bharat have the backing of the RSS is to state the obvious. These so called nationalistic organizations, backed by the damnable VHP-BJP-RSS troika are wrecking havoc on our country. From Godhra to the pogrom that followed to the attacks on women in Mangalore a few days ago, these organizations have continued their bloodthirsty quest of robbing India of its values, whilst claiming to the protectors of the very values that make our nation the greatest in the world. However, these traitors could not have been successful in their nefarious designs had they not been backed by ordinary Indians, honest hardworking people taken in by the xenophobic rhetoric all religious fundamentalists specialize in. Therefore, the normal citizens are equally responsible for such vile heinous acts.


In our zeal for preserving our tradition, we have forgotten the noble values our culture stands for. We have forgotten that when the rest of the world was indulging in a never-ending cycle of violence, our ancestors offered protection to refugees from all over the world. We forget that while the rest of the world was treating its women with contempt. Our ancestors offered our women some degree of respect. Somewhere down the line, these noble values have morphed into the intolerant binge we see today, in essence no different from Saudi wahabism. How is it that we call organizations like the Taliban terrorists whilst refrain from using the same language to the Hindu version? The other great civilizations of the world have changed their outlook, but we remain stuck in the 19th century. We forget that traditions and customs were man made, not the other way around. They are meant to evolve with time. Therein lays our greatest sin.


I now speak from personal experience. I believe that the ideology of a nation can be gauged by the ideas of the youth. The common feeling among many of my peers is that the men involved in crimes against women are uneducated, with no sense of morality. What is disturbing, however, is the still widely prevalent feeling that all these women would have done something to provoke the men and this talk of “natural reactions”. If a woman is assaulted, she must have invited the wrath of the aggressors. There are a number of fellow male students who believe that a woman's place is inside the four walls of their houses. Teasing a woman in an inappropriate nature is a sign of masculine power. Women are weak and were created only to be subservient to the males, the so called superior gender. When the ignorance of such an attitude is pointed, people such as myself are accused of being out of touch with reality. The reason behind such attitudes is the glorification of machismo and patriarchy in our society. They are there in all our forms of art, most notably, films and television. These are the forms of art which connect the most with the young. In our movies and on television, patriarchy is glorified in the name of following our noble traditions and our ancient culture. Instead of fighting these outdated beliefs, our movies and television give a sense of legitimacy to them.


It is time we realized what Indian culture means and the values it promotes. This is true for the organizations responsible for incidents like Mangalore and also for the common man. It is not enough to keep shouting about the greatness of our culture from the rooftops, we must practice these noble values. It is important to discourage the moral policing widely prevalent in India. We are a democracy, not a theocracy or its offshoot wherein a group of people will decide what must and must not be done; what is proper and what is not. The value of a nation is measured by the way it treats its women. Till then, we have no right to make grand plans of becoming a superpower. To do so would be a disgrace to the term.