Opinion
TSV Hari, Chennai
3256 words, 30 minutes reading
Southern Features News Services Exclusive
Yet another
International Women’s Day [IWD] has gone by.
The unjust unequal
status of women worldwide is yet to end. This is despite the passage of 100
years since the first occasion of IWD! [1]
The first ‘official’ IWD
was an event circa 1917. It went on to trigger the Bolshevik Revolution,
creation of the USSR etc. Leon
Trotsky [2] – a man the commies have learnt to hate the world
over – said thus about the occasion: “Though the meetings and actions of
February 23 [1917 in the Julian calendar which is March 8 in the Gregorian
calendar – the first] International Woman's Day were foreseen, we did not
imagine that this ‘Women’s Day’ would inaugurate the revolution.”
Despite leaders like
Lenin and Alexandra
Kollontai hailing IWD, the Soviet Union declared March 8 as a public holiday
only 47 years later in 1965. The ‘free world’ represented by United Nations,
however, needed
another decade to acknowledge its solemnity.
IWD was short-changed
even in the very nation it began because, its supreme leader Lenin wished to
sideline the bold woman – Alexandra. [3]
So far, only 28 nations
have officially declared the day as an international holiday. India and the
United States of America do not figure in this list.
The situation continues
to this day.
It is most visible in
modern day America.
The 45th
President of the United States of America – Donald
Trump has been accused of having bragged about groping some 17 women. He has
been charged with worse. Trump is said
to have tortured his ex-wife Ivana within the privacy of their bedroom. The
worst part is that he reportedly admitted publicly that he had lusted after
their teenage daughter Ivanka!
Trump has a hate-hate
relationship with actress Meryl
Streep.
In a
series of tweets, Trump termed Mary Louise “Meryl” Streep as
“one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood,” and “a Hillary flunky who
lost big.”
Hollywood considers philanthropist
Streep as ‘the best actress of her generation.’
Would women feel safe
under such “official misogyny”?
Such a reprehensible
situation isn’t the tale of US of A alone.
Women politicians are
harassed, bullied and sexually assaulted, said The
Guardian in its October 2016 report. Operative excerpts:
Physical,
sexual and psychological violence against female MPs is undermining democracy
and efforts to end gender inequality, a study of parliamentarians around the world
found.
More
than 40% of female MPs interviewed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) said
they had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction while serving their
terms, including threats to kidnap or kill their children.
More
than a fifth said they had been subjected to one or more acts of sexual
violence and almost a third said they’d witnessed an attack on a colleague in
parliament.
Some
80% of MPs said they had been subjected to psychological violence – hostile
behaviour that causes fear or psychological harm.
The
survey sample used by the IPU was small – interviews with 55 female MPs from 39
countries in five regions of the world – but the union’s secretary general, Martin
Chungong, said the results made clear “the problem is much more widespread
and under-reported than we realise”.
The situation in India
is no better.
During
an election rally in Himachal Pradesh in 2012, the then future Prime Minister
of India Narendra Damodardas Modi made a snide reference about Sunanda Pushkar
wife of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor [4] and termed her a ‘Rs 50-crore girlfriend’.
Surprisingly, Modi was proven right about the suspicious
nature of the lives of Tharoor and Sunanda. But, the suspected murder of the
lady is yet to overcome “stumbling blocks” created by official apathy and/or
criminal intentions.
A few years
ago, founder of the Samajwadi Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav – former Union
Defence Minister to boot, condoned rapes of women with an absolutely heartless
statement: First girls develop
friendship with boys. When differences occur, they level rape charges. Boys
commit mistakes. Should they be hanged for rape?
As a nation, India hails
motherhood. PM Modi has kick-started the ‘save-the-daughter-campaign’.
The sheer apathy never
ends.
Indian politicians are
always quick to talk about women empowerment.
A lot is said against
the Indian males who treat women as doormats. The virtues of such females being
praised to the skies is its worst aspect, goes the general belief. This was
very highly visible in Indian movies of yore.
Celebrity director, the
late CV Sridhar made
one such movie. It was remade in 5 different languages
The original film was in
Tamil –Nenjil Ore
Aalayam– [A Shrine in The Heart] released in 1962.
In 1963, Sridhar himself
directed its Hindi remake Dil
Ek Mandir. Thereafter, the film morphed into Telugu in 1966, Malayalam in
1976 and Kannada in 1977 in titles more or less with the same meaning. The last
version had ‘super-star’ Rajnikant playing one of the male protagonists.
The
tale is a strange love-triangle revolving around a man who gets admitted to a
hospital with what seems like terminal lung cancer. He discovers that his
lovely and faithful wife – tending to him very dutifully and tearfully – was
once the girlfriend of the very doctor treating him.
Without
sounding accusatory in the least, the husband suggests that since he could die
on the operating table –his widowed wife ought to wed her original boyfriend.
The contrived melodramatic
climax, however, is nothing worth writing home about. Yet, the script led to
the turning of box office turnstiles, not once, but 5 times in different
languages!
Poignant songs were
penned eulogising the ‘chaste’ docile woman.
The Tamil version had
this song – rendered into English by the author:
The immortal Kannadasan’s lines for the Tamil movie:
Are you the
one who suggested [this travesty]?
Tell
me
My
soul mate!
Will
you
Hand
me over to another man?
Did
you actually mean ME?
How
could you even think of it?
And
why at all are you doing this?
Didn’t
our marriage result
In
My auspicious honour
Comprising
The
wedding garland
The
respectable vermillion mark
That
transformed
A
bride becoming
A
revered family woman of fidelity
Into
ideal reality
Weren’t
you the one to link our minds?
Didn’t
you promise lifelong companionship?
Yet
Can
a garland that adorned a temple deity
Once
withered and fallen by the wayside
Be used
For another worship mode again?
For another worship mode again?
Life’s
creeper blossoms only once
Enlivened
by an enduring eternal relationship
Youtube
link:
The next year, in the
Hindi version, Hasrat Jaipuri
[Jaipur’s Wish] wrote thus:
In
your love
I
have forgotten the rest of the world
Are
you suggesting that I should forget this love?
Having
moved me from my maidenhood’s nest
Into
your lovable cage of womanhood
Your
deed warmed the cockles of my heart
Now
I
love this cage
And
you are suggesting a new freedom
I
never wanted
How
can you suggest such cruelty?
How
can I accept it?
I
have become yours forever
My
parted hair at the pate
Adorned
with the holy dust of your feet
According
me societal respect
Rendering
me a creature of love
My
handsome icon
I
am wedded to propitiate you
Willing
to lay down my life
At
your affection’s altar
Your
affectionate Ganges
Has
purified my body and soul
The
mirror
That
reflected maidenhood’s unfettered dreams
Broke
the very day
I
knotted my sari’s honourable end
With
the eternal blissful future with you
It
can never be undone
Upon
your entry in
The
sanctum sanctorum of my heart
Our
little shrine is closed to others’ entry
The
depth of your ocean of love
Visible
through your eyes
Are
my only comfort
Youtube
link:
Simply put, the above
poems glorify women’s doormat status.
The concept stems from the
most glorified divine doormat of Indian mythology – Goddess Sita of the Hindu epic Ramayana.
Sita, the incarnation of the Goddess of
Wealth, emerged from a tilling field and was known as the offspring of Goddess earth
– Mother Bhūmi.
Adopted by the ‘royal sage’ King Janaka
of Mithila, Sita chose to marry Hindu God Ram. Palace
intrigue resulted in Ram being exiled for 14 years in a forest. Abducted by an
evil demon Ravana and imprisoned in a Lankan garden termed Ashoka Vana, Sita
was rescued by her husband and willingly underwent a trial of fire – thus establishing
her chastity.
Spending 3 years in Ayodhya as the queen,
she conceived. However, the pregnancy was questioned by a thoughtless subject.
Wanting to win the trust of the society at large, Ram banished her to the
forest till her name clearance.
Her twin sons Lava and Kusha succeeded in
defeating Lord Ram and his entire army in battle. Thereupon, the divine
incarnation invited her to take her rightful place on the throne of Ayodhya,
but she refused.
Sita chose to return to the Earth's womb,
for release from a cruel world.
Placing my poetic
instincts in the modern context but in the nearly prehistoric backdrop, here
are my lines:
Pray
educate me
What
am I My Lord!
Am I your equal human partner in life?
Or am I an organic pleasure machine?
Merely meant to deliver offspring?
Should every baseless assault on my credibility
Result in my declaring my purity through
Tribulations of male triumph?
You
won my father’s groom contest
But
It
was I who accepted you as my husband voluntarily
My
unflinching love towards you
Led
to my sharing your forests’ travails
I
saved my chastity
Under
the gravest of external threats
And
I
allowed its scrutiny through a fire trial
Later
I carried our children in my womb as your gifts
Yet our children had to win a war
With you
To prove
I am blameless!
Enough
is enough
If my life’s chronology of events imply
Injustices were perpetrated upon me
Rather
than casting aspersions
On
your manhood
I
beseech Mother Earth
To
bestow justice upon me
By
taking me back into her womb
As a woman
I may be docile
Seem defenceless
And bandied as the symbol of
Your brave chivalry
But
I am not
Chattel
As
the world now sees me
Returning
to my mother’s womb
I
question all heroes
As
to whether
The
purity of their mother’s motherhood
Can
only be proven thus?
If conception
Consented or otherwise
Is such a sin
Can humanity ask itself?
Why are
The same acts originating
in
Human pleasure points
Termed
As shames of womanhood
alone?
Aspects
of the Indian scenario cited above aren’t aimed at glorifying the grant of
deified doormat status to women.
The
citations are merely meant to illustrate how fault lines remain blurred –
despite some proactive action…even if initiated by female versions of divinity.
The
above description cites some of the lopsided aspects of Hinduism.
Religions
and social systems append ‘divine sanction’ and or social necessity as alibis for
this sort of misogyny the world over. Here are some instances:
Judaism
Women
had fewer opportunities or privileges than men in sacramental activities. Women
could not serve as credible witnesses in cases pertaining to financial disputes.
Women were debarred from priesthood and from being reigning queens. Divorces
could only be granted by husbands. Vows of unmarried girls under the age of 12
years and six months could be nullified by her male parent. Judging charges of
adultery was and is the male preserve. Daughters could claim a share in the
family fortune only in the absence of a male heir!
Greece
In ancient Athenian law,
women lacked many of the legal rights given to their male counterparts as
stated above. Respectable women were not meant to appear in public.
Women in Classical
Athens did have the right to divorce. But, they lost all rights to any children
they had by their husband upon divorce.
Medieval Europe
Roman
laws were similar – created by men in favour of men.
Female non-citizens or slaves had no rights at all and
could be exploited by males as per whims and fancies.
Asia
Byzantine
laws were copied from Roman laws and were equally unjust.
Islam
In
Islamic law, men only have to utter “I divorce you,” [Talaq[ three times in the presence of his wife to officially
initiate divorce. A waiting period of 3 months is forced on the woman if she is
discovered to be pregnant. If pregnancy is confirmed, the divorce shall not be effective
until delivery.
Colonialism
The
colonial takeover by the British during the 17th and 18th century had more
negative than positive affects on women’s rights in the Indian subcontinent.
Although they managed to outlaw widow burning, female infanticide and improve age of consent, scholars agree that overall women's legal rights and freedoms were restricted during this period. The British abolished local custom laws in favour of separate religious codes for Hindus and Muslims which had harsher treatment of women. These religious codes lead to women having poorer rights when it came to landholding, inheritance, divorce, marriage and maintenance
The above paragraphs are
a few illustrative examples. The sufferings of women – actually have a larger
devastating effect on the society.
All these simply
underline one sordid fact: the worldwide unequal status of women is yet to end
despite the passage of 100 years since the first occasion of IWD!
[1]
The first such event
took place on March
8, 1917, in Petrograd,
then the capital of the Russian Empire, ruled by the Tsars and it
triggered the Russian Revolution. To comprehend how meaninglessly ornate the
day has become, one only needs to ask someone as to whether they would support
the occasion if they knew that it was originally a communist event and called
the International
Working Women’s Day. The most likely reply would be in the negative. One
ought to know that the first IWD happened to demand voting rights for working
women. The law granting the right of adult suffrage for the fairer sex became
was legislated 7 days afterwards – courtesy the good offices of Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin.
The Russians, at that
point in time, had followed the Julian calendar. The date hence was February
23.
But the Gregorian
calendar, followed internationally now, said the date was March 8.
Other women had used the
same day demanding the basic right to vote. They include: Luise Zietz, Clara Zetkin and Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst.
All of them were communists.
[2]
Lev Davidovich Bronstein a.k.a. Trotsky was part of the first
politburo of what became the Soviet Union alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. He was one of the brains behind the Bolshevik Revolution. Following severe
differences with Josef Stalin over the autocratic control over the people in
the name of bureaucracy, Trotsky attempted a coup. As a result, he was removed
from power (October 1927), expelled from the Communist Party (November
1927), exiled to Alma–Ata (January 1928), and thrown out of the Soviet Union
(February 1929). He then founded the Fourth International an organisation that incessantly opposed the Stalinist State. A Spanish-born Soviet
agent Ramón
Mercader assassinated him in Mexico, on August 21 1940 at
the behest of Stalin.
[3]
Though she called
herself by her first husband’s family name Kollontai, Alexandra caused tongues
to wag about her elopement with another man Pavel Dybenko. She was not
reachable for some 10 days. Everyone presumed
that she had been kidnapped by counterrevolutionaries.
When she ‘resurfaced’ appeared, her so-called immoral behaviour was condemned
by many of those whom she had presumed as her friends. However, her friend Lenin
had the last word. “I agree with all you said, comrades. Alexandra must be
punished severely. So; I propose that she marries Dybenko.”
Everybody laughed, and the matter was presumed as closed.
It turned out to be a punishment for Alexandra, however.
Her marriage with Pavel did not last long and they were divorced.
Alexandra was a tough negotiator. She played a clever but stellar role
in the Soviet Union being recognised as a nation de jure – by Norway – where she was Ambassador. Apparently, a merchant
delegation from Russia arrived in Oslo to sell a large quantity of timber. The
Norwegians were offering a very low price. The negotiations were about to fail.
Her intervention made history. In the presence of top Norwegian diplomats and
the timber merchants, Alexandra remarked: “Neither these gentlemen nor I have the
mandate to accept such a low price. But, Norway’s friendship towards the Soviet
Union is so important that I will pay the difference from my personal money.” The
Norwegian delegation retired to consult, after which they said: “We are not so
impolite to accept your offer; we accept the Russian price.” The de jure
recognition followed soon afterwards.
[4]
ShashiTharoor had to resign as minister of state only 10 months after taking office
as a junior minister in Dr Manmohan Singh’s cabinet. He was accused of having
abused his position to obtain shares in the Indian Premier League cricket
franchise for Sunanda Pushkar (later his third wife). Tharoor denied the
charges.
A series
of intimate tweets appeared on Tharoor’s Twitter account, for his eyes only,
from a Pakistani woman, the journalist Mehr Tarar. Tharoor immediately tweeted
that his account had been hacked and that he was dealing with the breach.
In fact,
it was ultimately Pushkar, Tharoor’s wife, who went into the Twitter account
and made the tweets public. She told the Mumbai-based Economic Times, “Our
accounts have not been hacked … I cannot tolerate this. This is a Pakistani
woman who is an ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] agent, and she is stalking my
husband. And you know how men are. He is flattered by the attention. I took
upon myself the crimes of this man during IPL [that is, she was blamed for
wanting shares in the Indian Premier League] I will not allow this to be done
to me. I just can’t tolerate this.”
Pushkar
told the Indian Express newspaper that Tharoor had been having a “rip-roaring
affair” with Tarar, and that she would “seek divorce.”
Tarar, for
her part, denied that she was in any kind of relationship with Tharoor. A
friend of hers told the media that Tarar strongly denied any affair with
Tharoor or the claim that she was spy.
The next
day, January 16, 2014, Tharoor and Pushkar issued a joint statement: “We wish
to stress that we are happily married and intend to remain that way. Sunanda
has been ill and hospitalized this week and is seeking to rest.”
A day later,
Tharoor found his wife dead in their suite in a luxury hotel, where they had
been staying while their house was being painted. Tharoor’s personal secretary
said that Pushkar had been found dressed, lying on the bed, and that there were
no signs of violence. However, the next day one of the pathologists who
conducted an autopsy said that marks of violence had been found on the body.
Tharoor insisted that his wife had died of natural causes.
BBC India
quoted the local police as saying that her death was “not natural and was due
to poisoning.” Additionally, according to media reports, 15 injury marks were
found on Pushkar’s body. Tharoor was questioned by police for several hours the
following week; he was “cooperative,” the Delhi police commissioner stated.
Sources:
Link:
Wikipedia
The Guardian
BBC
New York Times
