The sham of equality

The sight of Delhi’s daughters heroically standing up to water cannons, lathicharge and tear-gas shells in the bitter cold to demand a change in the way women are regarded in India is impacting us in ways that are profound and subtle.

Set aside, for instance, President Pranab Mukherjee’s son and Congress MP from West Bengal, Abhijit Mukherjee’s, risible remark which exposes the deeply regressive attitudes of our politicians towards women; ignore the mealy-mouthed responses from UPA leaders (especially Manmohan Singh) which so eloquently epitomise the phrase “too little, too late”.

The spontaneous and ardent protests by women from all sections and classes of Delhi are also sparking off deeper changes and exposing the faultlines that have always existed in our society.

Suddenly the elephant in the room has been spotted — identified, revealed — and he has nowhere to hide: rape is just one of the ways that women have been subverted, undermined, sabotaged, bullied and overpowered.

Acid throwing, domestic violence, female foeticide, sexual harassment at the workplace, marital rape, sati, honour killing, bride burning, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, murder of pregnant women, sexual slavery, incest and female inheritance customs are a few of the others.

These overt and covert ways in which women have been thwarted exist in all societies and cultures but let us only talk about India, which is the fourth most dangerous place for women to live in (worse than Somalia and only slightly better than Afghanistan and Congo!).

Recent developments have not only impacted and exposed the thought processes out there amongst our leaders, commentators, activists and lawmakers, these have also made people like me — assumed to be privileged, empowered, unfettered and equal to our brothers — for the first take a long, hard look at our female identities and the politics of what it means to be a woman for the first time.

Women like me who have till now eschewed the activism of gender politics, attempted to transcend it altogether and expected to be treated as equal to all and subservient to no one. Women like me, like you, reading the pink papers, earning our own money, managing our finances, in possession of credit cards, vehicles, businesses and homes and all the accruements of First World empowerment. Women like us who travel wherever we like, check into hotels without a second thought, meet our friends at bars with impunity. How easily we have been tricked into believing we have been allowed into the dinner club.

For long we have chosen to ignore the subtle discriminations and harassments that have followed us through our lives. Chosen to look the other way when traditional biases towards daughters and sons have surfaced. We have attempted to be even-handed towards the entire human race, men and women, regarding both with equal compassion and respect.

But today we stand corrected. The fact is that we have never lived in an equal society, even those of us who have assumed our equality in the belief that what we have seized is no one’s to question.

Violence against us has existed in all forms, insidiously, overtly, unrelentingly. Today, I know that I will never mouth the platitudes of equality or allow myself to be conned again.

When that girl got raped on a bus, it was me too. And her plight has forced more than the young women of Delhi to demand change.

It’s been a long time coming, but things will never be the same again.

 

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer
malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com