Caught between platitudes and mindsets

On Wednesday, I found myself moderating a panel discussion for the Indian Merchants' Chamber's Ladies Wing for its International Women's Day Conclave. The panel discussion was titled "Impact of films, education, business, law, media and theatre as powerful tools for women's empowerment". Featuring many influential men and women from the aforementioned fields and with an audience comprising some of the city's best-placed women and men, I saw a venue full of women of education, consequence, influence and privilege from the stage.

Indeed, among the four women and two men on stage, there was not one who did not believe in gender equality, women's empowerment and reform of the existing laws. We might have quibbled over the methodology, and, indeed, we might even have had different levels of commitment to gender equality, but these were only a matter of detail. Our stated consensus was that women were equal to men.

So why was it that seated there on the stage, that afternoon, I began to feel that everything we said sounded like a slogan written on the back of a truck: empty and banal, an obvious platitude? Because, if we all agreed that women were the better and stronger sex and they were agents of change, why were they still being killed before they were born, beaten, raped, assaulted, harassed, sold or discriminated against in vast numbers? Surely, when there was such consensus among powerful and influential groups like ours, the cause of women need not be fraught?

I suppose there are no coincidences in life and that the universe is always colluding to create moments of epiphany. Mine came later that night, when I watched India's Daughter, a documentary on the rape of a woman on December 16, 2012, and heard one of her accused rapists, Mukesh Singh, say this: "A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. A decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night."

I heard Asha Singh, the victim's mother, say, "(They) treat women like plates of food that can be consumed and discarded."

I heard ML Sharma, defence lawyer for the rapists, say, " In our culture, there is no place for a woman."

That's when I saw why there was such a yawning chasm between what we mouth as platitudes about women's equality and the reality of how women are treated. It is a mindset, one that we all subscribe to - a mindset so evil and insidious that we have not even realised that we are all guilty of propagating it. This is because under our cliches and platitudes, there exists a vast subterranean universe where women are thought to be inferior to men. It begins at the very top and in the best households. Even perhaps in yours, reading this column. And then, every time you discriminate against or demean your daughters, wives and sisters in your own way in the upper echelons of society, someone in a slum will embrace that mindset and translate it into his own life.

You might deny your daughter a rightful share in inheritance or an equal education or a full glass of milk as your son, someone in a slum will discriminate in his own way against women - most likely in the way that the rape victim's assaulters did. It will be only a matter of approach and degree.

After seeing India's Daughter, I realised that there's no use pointing a finger at the rapists alone. The mindset against women starts somewhere - often at the very top. And, if you are really honest, you might see that it starts with you.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasmumbai@gmail.com