By: M.R. Lalu
Multiplicity is what the fabric that a society is woven into. Variety gives it the essential beauty and makes it adorable. India has its strength in encompassing such diversities into its fold irrespective of their source and sociability. This has been the idea that we, as a nation, believed and followed. Societies, mostly patriarchal in nature across the globe, positioned themselves above the essential femininity and setting a hierarchy confining and conveniently forcing it to confess to what the patriarchy dictates. To some extent India is not different. Putting a veil around what the patriarchy believed as a safe and standard custom for the women, in a society of rigid phraseologies, we become advocates of women’s rights. Lustrous vocabularies such as women rights, religious freedom, liberty and equality would decorate our debates. Lamentations on women rights will be aired to houseful audiences by channels, with no deliberations arguing on what, if someone wants to unveil themselves from the suffocating and incarcerating attires imposed on them by the same patriarchy. So, the convenience of the mighty gender is running the show. Everything can be justified and suppressed to the level of its satisfaction. Young girls choosing hijab over education in the recent tussle in Karnataka reveals this superimposed hand of an invincible patriarchy. No wonder, it can’t work otherwise. The discourse is about constitutional rights being forcefully trodden to dust by a constitutional establishment, the government. The constitution, being indiscriminate on religious rights, equally blessed everybody with freedom to express and prosper. Therefore, someone’s right to choose between what is professed in religion comes under religious freedom and apparently unquestionable. Attempts to question such practices should definitely be addressed inside the boundaries of the constitutional values. Going beyond it definitely invites unpleasant repercussions.
Do religions, to what a large number of cohorts are submissive to, give them the freedom to take a breath of personal liberty, without being oppressed and persecuted by the mighty dominance of the masculine? An answer to this question will be the most unpleasant in today’s tensed atmosphere. Without adequate reforms put in place, no practices, however good and astutely followed they are, will survive the storm of time. Of course, for a period of time, such suppressive and forcefully submissive choices enforced on people will run. But the efficacy and reliability and divinity of such practices will remain questioned and surfaced blowing the lid of discontent. In a democracy, the constitutional values need to be upheld as supreme while respect for individual choices is upkept. When individual choices are being caricatured as the maxim and if they bring collective negative repercussions while the orthodoxy taking center stage in retaliation, there needs to come reforms for the collective good. Religions, not open to reforms and inefficient to change as per the demand of time, remain obsolete and disturbing irrationally inviting distress in the amiability of every society.
The feminine, being susceptible to such dominance remains a pitiable reality. Women across the globe are frequently forcefully pressed to silence and to what we call a family, a minute segment of the society itself, is an example for such dominance and suppression. Starting from an innocent scratch of a male toddler in the school, to the one blow she received at the face from a belligerent husband, a woman seems to be too self-ordained to be tortured. Facing an acid attack in the street to a torture inside the confinement of a home, she is made to suffer. Considered as an object of pleasure for men, religions gleefully grant authority to them accentuating their power and ensure the subservience of women to the maximum.
Masih Alinejad, the renowned Iranian journalist is a living example to what she calls a fight against the acrimony of the religious patriarchal establishment. She, being freed herself from the veil, had to flee from her homeland and take asylum elsewhere. Her “My Stealthy Freedom” is a social media movement that attracted thousands of veiled lives. Every woman for that matter, is a silent rebellion boiling inside the four walls of the patriarchy. With more than a million followers in Facebook, world across, she raises questions on the unscrupulous and irrationally justified religious male dominance. The days to come might witness a volcanic eruption of the feminine anger against the male infringement. Legitimizing the subordination of women in the name of religion is tantamount to disrespect the constitutional values of a democracy, which is also a challenge that is thrown in advance to check the reactions. The essential point is, when personal choice and freedom are being debated at length, voices against the extent to which religions curtail the very idea of freedom for women is not heard. The silence is thickly blanketing the animosity on women, deliberately diverting the subject of discourse in the name of religious freedom. The verdict on Lucy Kalappura, a Kerala nun on being sexually harassed multiple times by a clergy found no justice for the feminine in her. As an endorsement of vote bank politics, the ruling establishment in the state is blamed to have manipulated the issue to such a level that the angel of God had to desperately sit back and shed tears.
Traditions in India mostly propagated the idea of reverence for women. With a large number of scholars being women, Vedic debates were a usual affair in the ancient education system. From house makers to scholars to rulers, the Indian society for generations flourished with women contributing for the society. The Manusmriti the Dharma sastra as ordained by the first law giver Manu, gives accounts of how feminine gender needs to be helped and respected. As the text advocates that a girl, in her childhood should be protected by her father. In her younger days, according to the text, she is supposed to be taken care of by her husband and she, no doubt, should be protected by her children in old age. This idea of protection offered by the men according to the text, does not necessarily qualify the term male dominance. Ambiguity to what it is interpreted as should not be sidelined. Indeed, it is debatable as to what extent, in which, such versus are manipulated and enforced on the women by a male supremacy. Another verse of the same text gives a profound meaning of respect and admiration for the feminine. The verse “Yatra Naryastu Pujyante Ramante Tatra Devata” is the best of accolades that a religious text can offer to the women in a society. Which tells ‘where women are honored, there the deities are pleased.’
In essence and practice, it is necessary for everybody in the discourse to sit and amicably debate on the unfathomability of the hypocrisy involved while fixing narratives. Taking the issue of women rights from multiple angles, it is the women of the country, who should fearlessly stand up and set narratives. To come out or remain in the veil is their right, but to play into the hands of the hypocrisy of the patriarchy, should be taken with sensibility and courage. Lives of women like Masih Alinejad set an example for such a discourse.
(The writer is a Freelance Journalist/ Social Worker)
