I don't know if i am a feminist

I grew up playing with My bright-eyed Susan,

I grew up with My kitchen set,

Grew up buying clothes for My Barbie,

Wearing colourful frocks myself,

I grew up trying on my mother’s make-up

And with the scolding for the same,

I grew up admiring the gorgeous and always helpless heroines,

Grew up with secretly idolizing them,

Tried adopting the painful heels,

Subscribed to ask Pooja, Linda, Cathy.

But then one day,

The lightning of “liberation” stuck.

All this objectifies us, they alleged,

Makeup for male gaze,

Skirts for their fantasy.

My floaters replaced all other footwear,

Earlier the world was between feminine and masculine,

Now it was between feminine and feminist.

My friend’s bangles became a disputed issue,

A ‘girly’ voice became a target,

If earlier if it was all white,

Now it was all black,

Still no shades of grey.

And It was also internalized now…

And my mind was now a seat of conflict.

My mind, my conscience restricted me now,

Restricted me to follow the “restrictions”.

In breaking the “glass ceiling”,

I constructed a new one.

In ‘exploring’ myself,

I lost myself.

But now I wish to really break ‘free’.

And the ‘freedom’ may consist of

Going ‘back’ or moving ‘forward’,

May be full of contradictions,

Of hypocrisies and of confusions.

But then will this be ‘feminism’ I wonder?

But should I really care, if it is not, I wonder again.

Whether “WOMAN” has “MAN” in it

Or “MAN” comes from “WOMAN”,

It is ultimately we who shall decide

And this power of decision is Feminism,

Or atleast it is, according to me.

Rationality v/s Human emotions

The debate on the abolition of the ‘barbaric’ death penalty accompanies the “masala chai” these days. The sudden popularity is because UN has now declared it to be one of its never-ending missions to abolish this ‘draconian’ law . So now everyone everywhere seems to be discussing this ‘cruel’ law which exists only in few countries including India.

The proponents of “Human Rights” argue about how it is cruel to take someone’s right to life away. There are others who feel that punishment is given to reform someone. Capital punishment kills the ‘hope’ of reform. Some others argue, “an eye for an eye makes everyone blind”. They all, uninously, agree for a life imprisonment.

When I talk about how AFSPA has violated basic civil liberties like right to life, people argue how it is an ‘unnecessary evil’. “Without AFSPA, Kashmir and the north-east states will seccede so its important for the army to step in”, they argue. AFSPA is also important, according to them, because these states share an international border.

Naxals blowing up trains, blasts in crowded markets, communal riots…their source of ‘anger’ is explored. The ‘intellectuals’ analyze what must have ‘compelled’ the ‘grieved’ classes to have gone the violent way. They prove how the violence was reactionary and in a way, do end up ‘justifying’ violence.

The intellectuals view an issue with different lenses…there exists different schools of interpretation. The intellectuals are supposed to be having a broader outlook, unlike the narrow-minded commoners. But sometimes, in their outlook, the human angle is underplayed. It’s the battle between rationality and human emotions, for them.

On the debate concerning capital punishment, the grounds are human rights. They argue that criminals should not be killed because it infringes upon the basic civil liberties. But then are the human rights meant only for criminals? They had also taken away someone’s right to life. What about that? They say, punishment is meant for reform. I think there is a need for a reality-check. This may still hold some truth, to an extent, for small criminals but I wonder if mass-murderers, serial rapists and especially terrorists can ever be reformed!

People justify the draconian law of AFSPA(Armed Forces Special Powers Act) which has led to extra-judicial killings, illegal detentions, fake encounters, rapes and torture of the civilian population in AFSPA-affected regions in India. They argue how it is important for keeping the people ‘together’. Without AFSPA, they will go out of the Indian union. I wonder if they would share the same belief if they would have personally experienced or had a relative subjected to such a rule. It is scandalizing to even imagine the situation but which is a reality in J&K and North-Eastern states.

The human emotion of grief, loss is unimportant. In their debates, the ‘Intellectuals’ do not talk about the human perspective. They do not talk about their sufferings. I, sometimes, feel that maybe they can no longer understand it. Paradoxically, Marx had defined Ideology as “something which misinterprets reality”.

Sometimes I feel that the common people are stuck in between, with the oppressors above and the intellectuals below. 

I now realize what Rousseau had said, “The ‘uncivilized’ man is much more humane than a ‘civilized’ man”.

why women don't protest

I remember how we had dared to cheat during our board examination because there were boys in our class. Ofcourse, this is not a very good example to give but it reflects social reality. Expected to be honest is not gender discrimination but cheating requires guts and ‘team spirit’. Women are gutsy…ofcourse or else we would have been frozen in time and would have been still exchanged for a commodity. And yes they can and have united themselves as in during the feminist waves but the question then is of “how much”. Why is it that I find more women rebelling against the idea of feminism than men? Why is it that the ideas of the patriarchy are disseminated by women? Why is there no ‘womanhood’, ‘sisterhood’?

Simon De Beauvoir, author of the phenomenal “The Second Sex”, wrote “unlike other discriminated groups, women are not organized into a community. There is no women community. Women never use “we” for themselves”.

Sadly, I do agree with her. I am not talking about “girl power”, “the girl thing” here. Being a woman, I know that a woman gels better and deeper with a woman, than a man. Female bonding is deep…its beautiful. They say, even if a woman does not say anything, other women are able to understand what she is going through. Yes, I agree. They do understand but they don’t speak up. So why they don’t women stand for another woman? A better question is…why don’t they realize their own power?

I claim to find the answer in their nurture. We are nurtured to live in a shell. We are ‘moulded’ in that way. We are given dolls to play with but actually, we learn from them. We grow up imitating them. We have to be pretty, adorable and voiceless. A doll always has a very serene expression… a smile on her face. We never come across a sad-looking doll ever. So a woman also has to learn to be serene, calm no matter what happens to her. She has to accept the discrimination, injustice, brutality as her destiny. This is what is taught to her. She accepts it with pride as they say, only women have the power to suffer, to ‘sacrifice’. Women are wild, they say. They have to be ‘tamed’ , ‘controlled’. So our freedom is controlled. It is not just the freedom of mobility but also the freedom to raise our voice, to question, to make decisions and to dream.

We also grow up with the notion of ‘survival of the prettiest’. We have been taught to compete. So the beauty, the appeal of a woman is judged more by a woman, than a man. So if a guy finds a girl pretty or appealing, his friend will list out ten points that this girl have missed out on. We are made the ‘guardians’ of the culture. We have been taught to keep a check on each other. So you have women disapproving of another woman who has ‘dared’ to ‘venture out’. Because, this is how we are nurtured. We are expected to realize our womanhood only to uphold the discrimination so we unite and tell them to act like ‘women’. That’s our job.

I know I might receive some comments from my female counterparts calling me ‘traitor’, ‘betrayer’. I will be accused of conspiring against my own ‘community’ which does not really exist. But I don’t think I have done anything of what I might be accused of. I have dared to state the unfortunate reality. I have written this article to make them realize how society has forced us to conspire against each other…to be ‘betrayers’ to each other and has disapproved us to realize the power of our female bonding. We need to stand up...for ourselves and for each other. We need to realize what womanhood is really about. Women are ‘wild’ and so we have to be ‘tamed’, they say but in this wilderness, lies our liberation. We need to come out…we need to break the glass ceiling and for that, it has to be “we”.

Are there “Undeserving” females in your college?

Some years back when the girls had apparently scored better in maths than guys, the headlines read “even girls can do maths”…there was a very interesting FB status during the world cup inquiring if women could really understand cricket... there was this FB poll asking if the IQ of the girls was decreasing continuously… ofcourse, when you confront these people, they express surprise on not understanding the ‘joke’ and accuse us to be frustrated females. I am very used to this and had always ignored writing on this matter. But this had to come… and it came when someone talked about the ‘unfair’ women quota in some universities.

This article, however, is not a personal attack. This is an attempt to attack another common mentality or I should say illusion that people have. This article concerns itself primarily with the women quota which exists in JNU.

JNU needs no introduction…it is supposed to be the hub of the so-called intellectuals of this country. JNU also has one of the lowest fees and that’s another reason for the monstrous competition. Besides the standard SC, ST, OBC reservation…there are many other quotas as well. Among which is the women quota. The Women quota in JNU simply means a deduction of 5 marks which is just about 1%. The quota does not have an internal reservation. It is for women…irrespective of their locale. So apparently a lot of girls make it to JNU, every year. But is it only because of the quota? And is the quota unnecessary?

So apparently a lot of girls make it to JNU. The quota is held responsible. But is it that all the girls who are in JNU had 5 marks less than the required marks? Girls from the top institutions make it to JNU so are they actually that ‘undeserving’? That’s my point about the girls of the urban locale where supposedly the gender discrimination is minimal. Now let me talk about the girls of the small towns and rural locale. Opportunities are limited for them. Investment in the higher education for girls is still not very popular. Education in these regions is also not very competitive. So reservation for women is as important as reservation for the other long-discriminated sections of the society. It is not because girls are “less intelligent”… it’s because girls are “more discriminated against”.

I also remember this debate with a friend about the minimal female population in top engineering colleges. He argued how girls had less “logic”. Ofcourse, that’s another myth but I must admit I consider this better than “because girls think more with their heart, than brain”. Some days back someone tried arguing “scientifically” how women use the right side of their brain which is more creative so they are better in expression than “logic”. Men, on the other hand, are supposed to be using the left side of their brain which is more “logical”. My reaction to this so-called “scientific” crap has always begun with me expressing a great amount of surprise as inspite of being from a science background, they are unaware of the different schools of interpretation of facts which exist in science. So even in this very “objective” discipline, interpretation of the ‘objective’ facts is subjective.

Though there is a lot of confusion (different groups of scientists) about which side of the brain do women use, here I’ll try to argue by considering that women use the right-side of the brain. I am a female but I happen to be a left-hander and according to science, left-handers use the left side of their brain. Now left-handedness is supposed to be more common among males. But the famous left-handers are generally people associated with the “creative” domains. Any arguments? Also, I think it’s also a matter of how one defines “logic”. According to Hegel, logic is the essence of human thought. There can be no creativity without logic! Further, I would also talk about the sociology-biology debate which features in the study of evolution. It is believed that sociology or society can have an impact on our biology. The transition leading to human evolution took place when the apes due to societal tendencies preferred to settle on the land. So even if one ends up proving that some things are probably due to the nature and not nurture, one must remind himself/herself of the sociology-biology debate.

Let me come back to the issue of the engineering colleges. I think I’ll repeat my points about the societal set-up. If we analyze the regional background of people who generally make it to the top engineering colleges, we’ll find that majority of the people come from the lesser-developed regions. So for them, competition and making it to the top colleges is the only way-out. And in this endeavor, men are in the fore-front. Investment in a girl’s education is still not very widespread, it is negligible in these regions. Girls are recommended to go for the ‘soft’ subjects like history, political science etc. I also feel that the fact that girls can afford to neglect higher studies because of their later recruitment as homemakers may add to the laid-back attitude in these regions. Infact, there may be a lot of other reasons. But the source, as we have realized, is just one… the societal set-up.

So yes..the second gender may not be ‘deserving’ the quota but do they deserve this discrimination?

The aam insaan - frozen in time and space

I live in the city of qilas and makbaras. For Dilliwalas and especially, purani dilli walas, Lal Qila is the most important monument. It stands as the symbol of a romanticized imperial past. It was, afterall, the residence of their beloved emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and also of their culture. Whenever I look at the Lal Qila...the beautifully-carved halls...the jharokas...the massive Darwaza and the pit outside the Qila which in its heyday, had water with crocodiles, I try to go back in time, trying to imagine how life must have been in those days. While scenes from Jodha Akbar and Mughal-e-Azam would help me in my quest, a smile would flash across my face and I’ll lament, “wo bhi kya din hote honge”. I would imagine if Bahadur Shah would have never been defeated… how things would have been so different… No, wait…DIFFERENT …really??

Even in the time of mughals, if I was what I am now... would the Lal Qila be mine? The grandeur attached with it and with the Badshah…the mehfils… the chaka-chown, in short, the romanticized past…Would I have had a stake in it? No... Because I am just an aam insaan. Whether it is Bahadur Shah or Manmohan Singh… whether it is Lal Qila or the Rashtrapati Bhawan, I am but the aam insaan. I was suppressed in the 18^th century and still am. Whether it is for their Mahals or their swiss bank accounts, it is I who suffers the burden of heavy taxation. I am the mohra in their political games. In their fights, it is I who pays. I am the one who dies when there is a ‘disagreement’ between two rulers. I am the one who dies, gets raped or become orphaned during the communal riots. I am the one who pays the heaviest during an economic crisis.

There have been movements and revolutions which are attributed to the ‘will of the people’. French Revolution…America’s war of Independence and Russian Revolution, they boast about the support of the masses. But little did the masses actually achieve. Even Russian Revolution, ultimately, led to the dictatorship of the rich and the powerful. Infact, when Lenin claimed to established the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, the rural proletariat referred to him as the new Tsar! Today, the general political form of existence is democracy or rule by the people(demos) but we know the reality. Our ‘representatives’ have now even established dynastic rule. Their posts are even becoming hereditary.

So why should it matter to me If it is Shah Jahan or Vajpayee on the throne? They are the rulers and I am the one who is always the ruled.

UID- For whose benefit?

When UID was introduced to the general public, it was regarded as the sole primary document which would determine their fate. Everyone(1.2 billion people) would be issued a unique identification card and would be expected to carry it wherever they would go. Even the refugees and migrants would be issued the card. It was mandatory in the beginning so failing to produce it may have you branded as a terrorist. The Government defended this mammoth-size project by arguing that it will help check illegal immigration and terrorist activities. UID will also have other benefits. UID has been linked to social-welfare programs. There is now a proposal to use UID for realizing the goal of online voting. So UID will ‘empower’ India and Indians, they argue.

This was the Government version of UID. Let’s now see the reality.

UID is proposed to create a central repository of information of each of the 1.2 billion people. The data involves personal information as well as the bank details. It’s a risky affair. If not the ever-hungry Government, the Corporates or anyone can misuse the information.

The Government’s response to this was technology. The data will be stored in an online database. But let’s consider the technological challenges. 1.2 Billion people will mean 6 petabytes(6,000 terabytes or 6,000,000 gigabytes). It will be the world’s largest database. But can we imagine managing this volume? The technological challenges involve system performance, reliability, speed and resolution of accuracy and errors. But a more serious issue is regarding the security. The information can be hacked.

UID will also capture biometric information from the population. The fingerprints and IRIS will be scanned. Apart from the lack of technological infrastructure, a more important concern is the reliability of this information. Patterns of Iris change with age and disease. Also, What about the millions of people with corneal blindness? Fingerprints also face a similar issue. Fingerprints can be tapped and copied. There are also millions who may be without hands. Also, the labourers have their fingerprints marred.

One of the benefits listed out by Government is that it will be linked with the social welfare programs like PDS. Critics argue that the Government does not have resources to extend them to UID applicants. Jean Dreze, a development economist and the man behind the NREGA, argued, “I am opposed to the UID project on grounds of several civil liberties. Let us not be naïve. This is a national security project, not a social policy initiative.”

There is also fear that instead of checking illegal migration, it can actually ‘legalize’ it. The Indo-Bangladesh Border is porous. UID may actually increase the illegal immigration. Bangladeshis will be able to get themselves listed as Indians easily and enjoy the ‘privileges’ and ‘benefits’(if any).

Some months back, there was a demonstration by students of Indian Institute of Science against UID. One of the placards read “Happy New Fear”. UID demands our bank details. So though UID is an attached department to Planning Commission but in reality, UID can enable the Government an access to our bank account. They will be able to view all our transactions. So UID carries major privacy issues.

But the best thing about the UID is the inherent contradiction in its voluntary nature. Even though, it is voluntary. It is ubiquitous. UID holders are entitled for exclusive schemes and opportunities.

The idea of UID has been rejected by many countries. From privacy concerns to technological challenges, the concept has met severe opposition. So the effectiveness and nature of UID(whether compulsory or voluntary) varies among different countries. But inspite of this, India has decided to waste crores on this largely rejected policy.

cross-posted from: http://www.adityakumarnayak.com/2011/uid-for-whose-benefit/

also published @ http://devikamittal.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/uid-for-whose-benefit/

Beauty Respected, Beauty Degraded

Looks are an attraction. There is no denial of this ‘fact’. We may not go for them but we do notice them. So appreciation of beauty is one universal ‘fact’. Another is how we degrade it.

Skepticism always trails behind beauty. Our society expects women to be attractive, no matter what. So in whatever role or occupation she may be, she has to be ‘feminine’ in her way of conduct and dress. Even female POLITICIANS are expected of the same. This is one side of the story. The other side is how there is the famous crap about how pretty ladies manage to get the top posts. Let me put this more bluntly…so people say “you can promote it better…afterall, you are a WOMAN.” A well-known blogger and critic had said(to an all-girls audience), “a girl’s blog always has more followers than a guy’s”. Who should be blamed is not the debate here. I wish to question this mentality.

Then there is this famous actress who is blamed to have destroyed many actors’ careers. I wonder how! She is known only for her beauty. How has her dumping them affected their career? But then beauty is also an easy target point. We can put all the blame on it.

Most men desire for a stunning-looking wife but do not how to ‘handle’ them. One male friend and she will be beaten day and night. She will be accused of an extra-marital affair and no one will question it because she is beautiful! A beautiful girl is always supposed to be a wicked temptress. She is blamed for ‘luring’ the otherwise ‘innocent’ man. Beauty makes her a natural victim.

A very common and widely-accepted concept is that of dumb and beautiful. So a hunk or a pretty lady is not supposed to be brainy. “Just study a bit. You can go for modeling later”, suggested a male teacher to a school classmate. Being dumb and beautiful is a person choice…it is not a ‘fact’.

This article is not in favour of those who are very obsessed about their looks and are very full of themselves because of it. No, this is meant to have a general appeal. It is an attempt to question our contradicting mentality. We appreciate beauty but then why do we degrade it?