So Much For Stereotypes

Despite the Kargil hype in the media, a career in the armed forces might not be a tempting idea for today's twenty-something upwardly mobile Indian male.

There are, however, bright young women in the country who simply do not agree with them. It might be an offbeat trend, but there is no doubt that the three happy sisters from Lakhimpur-Kheri in UP may actually show the way to the nation's educated women how to break entrenched stereotypes and enter hardened macho territory with nothing but sheer talent and guts. This is precisely what Rakhi, Roli and Ruchi Chauhan have done, despite nasty digs from neighbourhood boys who laughed at their wish to join the Indian army. Not for the first time, boys have been proved wrong: come September, the three sisters are expected to be directly commissioned as officers in the Indian army.

 

This is not a family coincidence. The truth is that young Indian women have willed themselves to be achievers in the new era, and nothing can really stop them now not even man-made barriers in the 'bastions' of male professionalism. They may not be ardent Women's Libbers, but this is a visible sign that attitudes towards women are changing, though not as rapidly as one would have wished. Many women no longer consider themselves as paraya dhan, to be sent off to an anonymous husband for a lifetime of domesticity. They are carving their own exclusive niche in a society which has long denied them the right to express their freedoms and dreams. Girls must stop being liabilities to their parents. When they grow up they should support their parents the way boys are expected to, said Rakhi Chauhan, 24, the eldest among the three. Indeed, this could be an obscure moment in the ongoing conflict between tradition and modernity. There are still miles to go for millions of Indian women, especially in rural India, for whom windows of liberation are decisively shut. But in a society where gender equality is still an abstract concept, the news from Lakhimpur-Kheri is good news.