Everything's Official About This

***

I read this post on Shail’s blog and watched the video of the incident here. For those who don’t understand Malayalam, this was a talk delivered by a man who calls himself a ‘one-man army’ for social reform – Dr Rajith Kumar. The talk was delivered at a women’s college in Trivandrum, apparently to discuss ‘gender equality’. But it was anything but that. Stating that since it takes only ten minutes for a man to transfer his sperm to a woman’s uterus but it takes ten months for the woman to deliver the baby, the venerable professor advises women to remain within their limits. Further, he believes that women shouldn’t jump too much because there’s a chance that they could displace their uterus. 

Wow.

While misogynistic bullshit like this flies around in the air quite often, what was spectacular about this incident was that there was one young girl in the crowd who had it in her to walk out, making her disgust clear. None of the others in the nearly women-only crowd followed her. The girl didn’t stop when Dr. Rajith made disparaging comments about her action from the podium. I love her unhesitating stride, the expression of clear outrage on her face. I see in her the hope that someday it will be considered offensive and even criminal to express anti-women sentiments, just as it is considered offensive or criminal to express sentiments that are against a religious, racial, or caste group.  

I remember when I entered Stella Maris, I was pretty naive. It was college and the wonderful women I met there who truly woke me from my comfort zones and broke my inhibitions. I was quite judgmental, even moralistic, when I was in school. I read Woman’s Era sincerely and thought feminism was just a lot of screechy women who burnt their bras. I was quite rebellious even then but I had no understanding of why things were making me angry. I was entrenched in a thought system that I couldn’t break out of because I didn’t have the intellectual backing for it. But college changed all that. 

I remember the power of that awakening quite well. It wasn’t just the truly inspiring literature that we studied but the interactions I had with my friends as well. We were in a women’s college that was pretty conventional in its approach – I remember the first question in my admission interview was ‘What’s your favourite book’ and just as I was rambling about Shame (okay, I thought quoting a Salman Rushdie novel would get me a seat), they asked me the second question – ‘Will you wear sleeveless clothes to college?’. We had to sign a declaration form that we wouldn’t wear ‘immodest’ clothes or indulge in ‘immodest’ behaviour (this included being part of TV shows/films/fashion shows).

It’s ironic that I found my freedom within these cloisters. While our classes were primarily about writers and thinkers who were non-conformists and we read avidly about their colourful lives, on the corridors, we were required to be ‘modest’. So we’d read all about patriarchy in Virginia Woolf’s gently mocking, quietly angry style and laugh at that absurd declaration form we all signed. Some of us would wear sleeveless clothes and cover up with a dupatta when going past problematic professors. These were small, tiny rebellions…perhaps not amounting to much…but there it was…that beautiful idea that our bodies are our own.

This particular incident sparked off my nostalgia because of something similar that happened when we were students. As part of ‘Value Education’, we were required to attend lectures on various religions. We were encouraged to ask questions and debate with the speakers (I will give this to Stella Maris – we were not gagged during these sessions). For the one on Islam, someone in the audience asked the speaker why it was okay for a man to have three wives but not for a woman to have three husbands. The speaker said that this was because it was a ‘proven’ fact that women are at higher risk for getting STDs than are men if they indulged in promiscuous behaviour and that this was a sign from God. I asked the speaker if he knew that lesbians are at lowest risk for HIV transmission (even lower than heterosexuals) and if this was a sign from God too. He avoided my question and said instead that the Koran says it’s okay for a man to ‘keep’ three wives only if he’s able to ‘maintain’ them. Obviously, the questions only grew in number after this point.

He tried convincing us about why wearing the purdah was a good idea by claiming that if two women went past a man, one wearing a purdah and one without it, he’d obviously look at the woman without a purdah. Many of us asked him why the man couldn’t be blindfolded instead. He had no answers for any of this and ultimately bowed out saying he was out of time. 

The questions that the girls in the audience were asking him were triggered more by his misogynistic interpretations than by the tenets of the religion itself.   The girl who walked out of Dr.Rajith’s talk, Arya, spoke on Asianet later, explaining her actions. Very simply and very sensibly, she said that even if the religions Dr. Rajith had quoted in his talk did say what he claims they say, she doesn’t see why we should continue to uphold such prejudices just because they say so. 

I only wish her fellow students had walked out with her. Even if they didn’t, I do hope she awakened in them that anger we have always been taught to tame.