Power is Money and Money is Power?




Paid Work. Photo Courtesy: Commonwealth Foundation



The road to equality in rights, in ability to exercise those rights, and in being able to obtain redress when rights are violated is a story of crossovers of human rights not often recognized. Often, protection of a particular right is seen as enough. For example, many believe that if women are ‘bestowed’ with economic rights it will end the discriminations against girls and violations of women’s human rights. The rationale behind this thinking is that money gives a person power. In other words, पैसा बोलता है!

It is correct that economic empowerment of the vast majority, especially in a poverty-ridden context such as India, is a critical need that must be met. More so when we have all data to see that the income gap has worsened in the last decade. But the limitations of the economic empowerment approach as an isolated-strategy, as far as girls and women are concerned, are also out there to see. The limitations exist in the form of dowry-murders of educated and employed women, double-whammy of paid work and unpaid household work that economically empowered women have to suffer, denial of certain civil rights like ‘equal parenthood’ to married/divorcee women, demands to write ‘father’s/husband’s name’ in any and every document with a bit of legality involved and so on. The fact that women who bring dowry get killed for bringing ‘less than expected dowry’ or ‘no more dowry’ shows that women, when it comes to money, are seen as conduits to bring money or sources of unpaid work that would save and build up money of their husband/father and the rest. This is why women have such poor control over their resources and income. This means that women's ability to earn an income or bring resources home cannot be equated with or assumed to mean control of income and an ability to own, use, and dispose material assets. The question is what is preventing women from using money as power ever so often?

Unpaid Work. Photo Courtesy:
Socio Economic Research Institute

At the immediate level, household relationships affect women's ability to control their income. Prevailing codes of gender relationships may place the husband/father/another male recognized as having rights over a women in control of all or some income/resources of a woman. Women are often not involved in the savings, investment or expenditure related discussions and decision-making. When their name is added to ownership documents, it is usually to benefit from the certain taxation policies. It is also not unusual to find that majority women are still given a fixed sum every month by their husbands to run the kitchen even if the income has been earned by women. And this does not happen only in the rural or urban slum areas.

The next level that affects women’s economic empowerment from bringing empowerment in the other realms of life can be called the neighbourhood or environmental barrier. This barrier varies in its controlling power from culture to culture, region to region, class to class and sometimes, a bit also from caste to caste.  But, on the whole, this barrier aims to ensure that women’s economic empowerment does not pose a threat to patriarchal family relations.  This barrier exists in the form of socio-cultural practices like early/child marriage; denial of women’s choices with regard to who they would like to marry or whether or not they would like to stay in a marriage; procreation being treated as women’s duty and  determining the number of and spacing between children a male preserve; recognizing descent through male lineage; dime-a-dozen festivals like karwa-chauth and teej, which tell women that they are nothing without their husbands or like raksha-bandhan or rakhi that tell girls they can’t protect themselves and will always need the protection of their brothers; and so on. This barrier works by establishing women as ‘dependents’ and thereby reducing their bargaining power vis-à-vis their male family members and in doing so not recognizing women as equal members of the society.

Agriculture Extension. Photo Courtesy:
Institute for Integrated Rural Development

At the outer level, because of the denial or repression of the social and cultural rights, the discrimination against women continues to be evident in the economic fields as well. This includes job market and entrepreneurship opportunities. Denial of equality in the social and cultural realms means that women, without male relatives, have limited access to social security; continue to be treated as unwanted children so either get killed in the womb or attract little investment in their health and education, and as a result, have high rates of illiteracy in comparison to men; and live in the extreme poverty and with social exclusion.

In terms of economic impact of the above, women come out as a lower-grade human resource who cannot either meet demands of the job market or match the requisites of the entrepreneurship opportunities because they lack in relevant skills and education and do not have collaterals of offer. Where women are qualified to meet these demands, they are seen as incapable because of gender stereotypes. Sometimes, the job market cannot reject women on grounds of qualifications or a perceived lack of capacity due to the affirmative legal provisions but employers still go ahead and under-pay or deny equal opportunities to women because they are confident that the justice system will be inaccessible to women. 

The cumulative impact of the above is also felt on their political participation, which is no small deal. Limited or restricted political participation affects women’s ability to protect and promote their rights through public policies, laws and oversight. It prevents them from holding their elected representatives and the governance system accountable to them.

The basic problem is that discrimination against girls and women is engrained the socio-cultural, economic and political fabric of the country. The discriminations are deep-seated beliefs and practices that have been institutionalized. They are what may be termed as structural inequalities. These inequalities are pervasive in all public and private spheres, including the economy, education, labour, health, justice and decision-making and so on. These inequalities do not occur in isolation rather crossover from one sector to another and act simultaneously.

So what do we take from the fact that women have less means than men to satisfy basic needs like education, training, food, access to housing and to the specialized health services, like, safe child-birth, pre and post natal medical facilities, contraception, and women specific diseases; that they are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual violence; and that they have limited options when it comes to finding decent work and having a voice in shaping public in their countries? In my opinion, it shows the defeat of the isolated-strategies and calls for multi-pronged concerted strategies for promoting and protecting all of women’s human rights. 

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Idiosyncratics

I have not reached here alone
Walking the path of reason
I carried a baggage
A load that prevails over the idioms of sanity

I journeyed along passion
Delighting in pain and anger
I have been rooted in emotions
Attached to the warmth of frustration

I could not fill normative spaces
While walking with a desire to belong
I must set out my agenda
A ripple in the calm water

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Why Marriage?

Some years back, we faced this question in a development course. Two of the discussants divided the question into two: Why Women marry? Why men marry? One of them kept the discussion to the basic issues and the other went in-depth into negotiation, survival needs and social and cultural options. Both peeked at the household economic models and theories like the ‘Black Box’, Neoclassical, and Bargaining/ Co-operative, etc. Both came to the same conclusion that women and men marry based on a personal perception of well-being. This perception, according to one of them, is a result of a negotiation between a woman/man’s survival needs and socio-cultural constructions of what ‘personal well-being’ means.

Taking Amartya Sen’s example of a rural Indian woman, who is not likely to extract her own welfare from that of her household and conceive of her own well-being as separate from that of her family’s, the discussant argued that the household, therefore, is the locus of inequality where discrimination and exploitation of women’s labour get naturalized. In other words, a woman from my part of the world is likely to marry based on what she considers to be her well-being but which may not necessarily be her well-being. Does this mean a North American or European woman is more likely to marry based on her sense of ‘personal well-being’, which is more individual centered and that she is more likely to be able to deconstruct the larger structures of inequality and thereby better placed to negotiate her position in the family? This is another debate and we shall come to it some other day. For today, so far, we have one reason which may make women and men inclined to get married. Let's look at some other reasons also.

The brokers of the सात फेरा, मंगलसुत्र, गठबंधन, सिंदूर, the wedding ring, et al or those who market the practice of marriage as ‘the holy state’ of matrimony tend to ascribe some sacredness and centrality of this practice for the institution called family. These brokers, in general, have a big say in the decision to marry, whether to be taken by the individual or the relatives, and/or the family. In some contexts, even when people have little more than a token affiliation with a religion, they tend to stick to the religious boundaries when it comes to marriage. This is not always based on a fear of reprimand or being ostracized. Rather it is based on deep seated belief in the advantages of segregation based on religious affiliation. This belief has a profound influence in the decision about who is fit to mate or is sacred enough to be a partner in personal and family life.

The brokers insist that all the matches for ‘this world’ are made in the ‘other world’ and that it is the duty of the follower to accept the person who the god selected for them. Marriage itself is regarded as a religious obligation by them. Among people who have an inclination to accept that they have a duty to marry, procreation has special value attached to it. Children are the gifts from the god or marriage and children come as a package gift from the god. In other words, religious brokers emphasize shared beliefs in religion, marriage and procreation as a foundation for the continuation of particular faiths, beliefs and way of conducting life. No wonder divorce is a taboo subject in the books of the brokers because ‘What God hath put together, let no man [or woman] put asunder’. But divorce is another [related] issue, not to be brought into today’s discussion [though an interesting one to understand how even when religion says yes to divorce, how religio-legalities disallow it].

The sociologists believe that marriage is a practice to establish a social order. Through marriage women and men are put together in a relationship of social and legal obligations to fulfill social and economic objectives. It is believed that marriage is a good way to put people’s mental and physical health, sex life, solid and liquid assets in an organized state. It is an institution that allows people to meet their sexual desires in a manner that doesn’t harm anybody [or so we like to believe]. It also helps bring together people with greater commitment and therefore provide a safer ground for procreation and responsible environment for bringing up children.

There is no doubt about the economic value of marriage [albeit disputed by some men]. Women have been free labour, partly thanks to the practice of marriage [remember, the complimentarity argument]. The many justifications for marriage advanced through centuries have one angle which has to do with ‘value’-based labour which leads to communal and family wellbeing and another angle of ‘income-based’ labour which brings income to the community and the family. The history of these arguments have subordinated the ‘value’-based labour and elevated the ‘income-based’ labour. The economic argument in an age when the ‘income-based labour has been making more sense to more and more number of women and there is considerable increase in educational and political equality, seems to be fading away. We will come back to this point a little later.

Then there is the whole economy of marriage where the marriage is seen as a contract. This particular reason for marriage does not quite stand on its own. Rather it stands as a dimension in all the above arguments and will remain, in my opinion, a factor in any other current or future reasons for marriage. A marriage contract can be visible or invisible; stated or assumed; or legal or social. For centuries, marriage has involved contracts like the dowry that a bride’s family gives to the groom’s family, the bride price that a groom’s family gives to the bride’s family [they are not to be confused as the same because the theories behind are completely different], exchange of women through marriage for settling disputes between families, giving a daughter or a sister in marriage for settling a debt or to earn goodwill and so on. These practices may sound like buying, selling, discounting and writing off or collateral and the kind that takes place in a market place. Indeed, these practices are exactly that. These contracts also create a lot of employment for people willing to serve as brokers [who are often clan members, church leaders, mullahs, priests, village or community elders, and the like].

In a secular legal context, the terms and conditions of a marriage contract may not have so much of economic angle but does have implications for how responsibilities will be attended and by whom. It is also a way to safeguard the rights of the contracting parties by registration and legitimizing by the state.

In many societies since history began and in the larger visible societies in the last century or so, there have been some departures from the above-mentioned reasons. Marriage here is seen as a relationship between individuals for mutual comfort and assistance and so the personal compatibility issues are as important as procreative and contract aspects of the practice. Now with the lessening of the some other dimensions of the marriage, the centrality of this practice to a family and communal life of an individual has also weakened. Alternatives to marriage are growing as a practice and marriage is increasingly being viewed as essentially an additionality that strengthens the emotional bonding and trust because of some level of social and contractual security that it brings with it.

The alternatives to marriage tend to require a lot of other things but often less commitments of social and contractual/legal nature. This is one of the reasons why some men are a game for the alternatives because they get comforts of a relationship without being responsible for it. Some of them, on the other hand, resent the women’s preference for the alternatives because they stand to lose out on the ‘value’-based labour or the fact that a woman is not willing to commit makes them feel insecure. But alternatives to marriage do not necessarily make the relationships any more egalitarian. Individuals, due to these two factors among several other possible reasons, find themselves participating in inequitable relationships, which leads to both emotional stress and stress in the relationship. The more inequitable the relationship, the more stress they face. So in a nutshell, if not the reasons related to community and family, marital-economics or contracts, the individual needs of emotional security and commitment bring the focus back on marriage in the alternatives to marriage because it is seen as a demonstration of those two qualities. But even without marriage, any real or perceived emotional or material inequity in the relationship has an effect on intimacy and continuation of the relationship. But breakup is not something that we will discuss today!

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Racism in the Workplace

I often struggle to understand the institutional disinclination to take action when needed. I often wonder how the management and decision-making come to be held hostage by peers who would protect one-another in the politics of racism, regionalism, and nepotism and so on. Why institutions cannot recognize the fundamental follies of the human nature and put in place effective approaches/working tools to challenge regionalism, racism and nepotism that tend to get ingrained in the institutional fabric?

And over the years, racism has diversified its character too. It is no longer only about Whites against Blacks, Whites against Browns and so on. We need an updated assessment of where and what element of racism has changed its character and acquired new dimensions. We also need to assess the specific interplays of regionalism, gender, class, ethnicity and racism, and its impact on the institutional character. Experiential accounts of employees in international organizations – multilateral or civil society – will reveal many new developments, the significance of which has not been either heard or understood. A discursive exploration or investigation will reveal how institutional conduct and employee consciousness are being affected by different forms of racism.

I haven’t come across any instance when a race-based employment-related issue has been even remotely acknowledged, nor I have come across any mechanism that would identify systemic discrimination or practiced discrimination and provide systemic remedies. Experiences of racism are termed as a matter of perception and arising from defensive nature of the employee. Indeed, the word racism can be abused to cover up non-performance and many other misdeeds because managers/peers are afraid of being branded as racist by the others, especially if there is a politics of majoritarianism at play in the workplace. In the game of majoritarianism, it becomes nearly impossible for a manager or a peer to take up issues of corruption, nepotism and inappropriate conduct because of the fear of whimsical/majoritarian allegations of racism. Accusations of racism against those who critique or can expose the wrong-doings in an institution that lacks courage to employ the principles of institutional integrity and work ethics is a reality. Equally true is that fact that the workplace complexities arising from racism or ethnic biases are difficult to prove because those who indulge in it have developed smartness not to leave any evidence of direct discrimination or biased behaviour.

Most experiences of exclusion or discrimination remain wrapped up also because the institutions have no mechanisms to protect those who bring them out. Denial of racism and a fear that bringing out any such issue will not just be a wasted effort; it will also result in unmanageable stress and reprisal leading to a damaged career, keeps the matter under wraps for good. Access to justice, in practice, is a principle preached outside, not inside the organization.

Since individual experiences take place in an organizational context, remedy requires behavioural and systemic analysis of the workplace – immediate and broader workflow linked layers leading to the decision-makers/senior managers – and the external socio-cultural environment in which ethnic bias or racism is experienced. I cannot say how widespread these experiences are or in which other forms they take place because this is not a talked-about issue. What I can say with conviction is that as long as these experiences will continue to be treated as individual perceptions, de facto, the workplace culture will continue to condone the undercover expression of racist biases, attitudes and practices.

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From ‘Let your Father Come …' and ‘Let Your Son Come …’ to ‘Let My Brother Come … ’ and ‘Let My Son Come …’

Many have heard mothers say this to their erring children, ‘let your father come … ‘ and many of us have heard of family violence where daughters-in-law tell their ailing-and-not-liked and sometimes troublesome mothers-in-law, ‘let you son come …’. Is it that these women are not able to speak in a straight language or they lack the confidence to say what they are any way doing, parenting and being a party to discrimination against or abuse of the elderly? Why do they need to speak through their spouse? We have also heard of sisters-in-law threaten their brother’s spouse with a statement beginning ‘let my brother come …‘ and mothers-in-law tell their daughters-in-law, ‘let my son come … ’. Why these women cannot sort out their issues on their own instead of waiting for the brother or the son to come and teach a lesson to his spouse? Does it have anything to do with economic value attached to the person or to their ability to own their actions? Why all of them have such a high level of dependence on the male family members? Why do they compete with one another to establish a greater claim to the male family members?

Let me jump off to one of the possible reasons. An understanding of multiple forms of violence against women and girls – in intimate relationships and from strangers in their daily lives – show how they have been institutionalized and affects every aspect of a woman life from infancy to death. These aspects include citizenship, reproduction, health, sexuality, employment, entrepreneurship, culture, poverty, social care, property, crime, status in family … the list is unending. All these, in my opinion, contribute to the situation that I described above, which makes women’s existence dependent on the wishes of the male family members and makes women compete with one-another in order to exist.

Another reason for such a situation is economic. Yesterday, I was in a seminar on the issue of women and land with women many of whom know the relationship among women land and violence first hand. Experiences of these women established (not suggest) that violence against women and girls and poverty among women is an ‘engaged relationship’. The former being a tool to keep women in state of poverty and poverty is one of the key reasons for women’s servility. While high probability of violence in the domestic and public sphere, in general, affects women’s ability to be present in the public sphere, use opportunities and develop their human capital, ritualized and institutionalized forms of violence create a sort of ‘genetic-cum-collective’ lack of confidence among women that keeps them silent about the beatings, rape and emotional abuse, makes them internalize male supremacy, compete with one-another for a greater dependency stake, and prevents them from questioning the status quo in which men’s labour is recognized but women and girls’ labour is not. The overall impact of violence keeps women poor in all senses and economic poverty increases the risk of exposure to violence enormously.

Murder of women by their spouses alone or in complicity with the family, in particular, murder of widows by the marital family members more than often have roots in land and property. Sometime, the reasons for murder are such that a direct relationship between poverty or economic deprivation and violence cannot be established as a prima facie fact. It is true that poverty or economic deprivations are not the only reasons for women’s vulnerability to violence but poverty or economic deprivation are key factors. These are important factors that must be examined when trying to understand and address scale of violence against women.

Let me discuss here some of the  ritualized and institutionalized forms of violence that are used to keep women economically impoverished and dependent on men of the household or community:

Halitza[1]: In Jewish tradition, according to the Torah, if a man dies without leaving children, his brother must marry his widow in a ceremony called yibbum or levirate marriage. A widow in Sephardic Jewish communities cannot remarry till her husband’s brother relinquishes all claims to own her. In Halitza ceremony, that is a public event, the woman kneels before her brother-in-law and removes a special handmade shoe from his foot. She is then required to spit on the ground next to him and recite several verses from Torah. The ceremony is humiliating for both and mocks the brother for not taking on the sister-in-law. Though yibbum is on decline and most widows go through the Halitza ceremony now, it is practically an institutionalized practice to keep the family wealth within the family.

Widow/Bride Inheritance[2]: This is a form of yibbum among the Luo of western Kenya and many other tribes like Luhya (Kisa sub-tribe). The widespread practice of widow inheritance establishes the male ownership of women’s reproduction, her labour and property and wealth that may be created through the woman’s unpaid labour. Through widow inheritance the dead and alive husbands and their family continue to demand reproductive and productive capabilities of women against the bridewealth paid at the time of marriage with the deceased brother. Luo widows are known as ‘wives of the grave’. Because they do not cease to be the wife of the deceased rather through inheritance widows remain obligated to their husbands and their family and in exchange they are promised social and economic support for themselves and their children. Refusal by the widows often includes disinheritance and being thrown out of matrimonial home. This practice in one or the other names continues to exist in Nigeria, Uganda, India and many other countries.

Lattha Odhna or Chaadar Daalna[3]: Many Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi speaking audience of Hindi cinema would be able to recall a film titiled, 'Ek Chadar Maili Si' which came to the cinema halls in 1986. Directed by Sukhwant Dada, the film  is an adaptation of Rajinder Singh Bedi's Sahitya Akademi Award winner Urdu novella, 'Ik Chadar Adhorani'. The story is about a woman , Rano, who is forced to marry her brother-in-law, 10 years younger to her, whom she regarded as a son, through the ceremony of chadar daalna. such levirate marriage or niyoga between a widow and an unmarried younger brother in law continues to be alive in certain parts of India (Punjab and Haryana). Re-marriage of widows was never a norm in India and the possibility of going back to the parents' home has not been an option for the Indian women. They are taught to leave their marital home only on their death-bed. The practice ensures that any land or property owned by the deceased husband stays in the family.

Adoption of a male child from the husband’s family[4]: More in the past than now in India and many other parts of South Asia and Asia , if the widow did not have any male child from her deceased husband, she is made to adopt a nephew of her husband.

Widow Cleansing[5]: This practice also dates back centuries and is, till date, widely practiced in Zambia, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, Angola, Ivory Coast, Congo and Nigeria. A widow is expected to have a sex with a male relative of the deceased husband in order to maintain access to family property and land. In practice, this custom any man from widow’s marital village or the deceased husband’s family, usually a brother or close male relative of the deceased husband, to force her to have sex with him. This is also linked to a belief that that if the widow does allow ‘cleansing’ her husband’s spirit will not be free. This practice established the woman as being haunted by spirits, as unholy and mentally ill and in some communities this is further extended to say that a widow who has not been cleansed can cause the whole community to be haunted. Now there are professional 'cleanser men' to rape widows because in many places, a widow must go through cleansing ritual before she can be inherited.

The above practices are not directly linked to the state of affairs described in the first paragraph in all contexts but they exemplify the modus operandi of patriarchy that instils a deep sense of dependence among women. A deeper examination of some of the apparently non-economic motives shows the inter-breeding of economic and non-economic issues. For example, such a large number of women are being killed, tortured and mutilated for bringing shame and dishonour to the family. But consider why women and girls are burdened with the safekeeping of family honour. Women's vulnerability to violence derives not only from the poverty but also from the potential they hold to be empowered individuals. One of the ways that potential can be crushed is by employing tools that socially disempower and disfranchise them. Making women and girls’ symbols of family honour puts on them the burden of keeping the honour, as it has been defined by patriarchy, intact. The definition of family honour invariably has its roots in historic political and economic exclusion, sexism and other discriminatory practices that keep women outside of social, political and economic empowerment opportunities. The definition of family honour leads to socio-cultural conditioning of women and girls that prepares them for marriage as accepted by the patriarchal system of a particular place, child-rearing, house-keeping and other unpaid care and economic roles. This conditioning creates a façade that women have an important role in the family in maintaining the family honour themselves as well as by scrutinising other women’s conduct, and it keeps the sense of empowerment far from women.

References:

1. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Life_Events/Divorce/Liturgy_Ritual_and_Custom/Halitzah.shtml  

2. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/12/44847635.pdf  

3. http://www.servinghistory.com/topics/levirate_marriage::sub::Areas_Practiced  

4. http://www.jstor.org/pss/3632696. Paid log-in required.

5. http://www.fhi.org/en/hivaids/pub/archive/articles/aidscaptions/volume2no3/cap2313.htm

The article is also available at: http://bellbajao.org/2010/09/30/from-%E2%80%98let-your-father-come-%E2%80%A6-and-%E2%80%98let-your-son-come-%E2%80%A6%E2%80%99-to-%E2%80%98let-my-brother-come-%E2%80%A6-%E2%80%99-and-%E2%80%98let-my-son-come-%E2%80%A6%E2%80%99/ 

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Women and Religious Fundamentalism

A message from Bhagawad Geeta as the Thought of the Day
in front of Baitil Aman Guesthouse, Shela Village, Lamu,
owned by Sidiki Abdulrehman

WOMEN’S support to religious fundamentalism could be explained with the help of notions of women as objects and subjects of community identity, conditioned as much by patriarchal values as men, their interests so intrinsically connected to the community that thinking of individual or collective interests may amount to blasphemy. Also, making an assumption that all women would like to oppose fundamentalism implies rallying behind universal notions of women-hood and sisterhood, and romanticizing women as universal peace-seekers.

Here, I would like to explore women’s identities, interests and values as complex interactive elements in the multitude of intersections and over-lapping themes of fundamentalism. I will attempt to analyze a few key intersections of religion, nationalism, caste, class, gender and community identity in India with a special focus on current trends in Hinduism to understand the layers of women’s support to religious fundamentalism. I will also attempt to link the growth of religious fundamentalism with increasing attempts to control women.

While approaching religio-spirituality, we should make a distinction between the values of the religio-spiritual realm and their practice. The growth of values is associated more with metaphysical aspects of the religion and is seen as the preserve of enlightened and unattached spiritual persons who could devote themselves fully to emancipate the soul. The practice of these values is considered to be closer to ordinary mortals. The intricate world of attachments in which women live makes them ‘incompatible’ to the demands of a spiritual world which is highly valued, powerful, and a typically male domain. Some women may strategize an escape from attachments and create a religio-spiritual space for themselves by renouncing their sexuality and sex roles through sanyas (renunciation of attachments) (Babb 1988, p. 280-285) and affiliations with religious movements and organizations looking for women in their fold to gain broader legitimacy.

To use Gaitskell’s analysis of South African women’s conversion to Christianity through the Christian Mission Stations (Gaitskell 1990, p. 253), these organizations provide women an alternative set of protectors and economic base which makes escape from the drudgery of life as a daughter, sister, wife or widow possible (Basu 1999, p. 200). In India, right wing organizations like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and others, which frequently invoke the goddesses and female spiritual gurus of the past and use women in liturgy have attracted many Hindu sanyasins (female religious mendicants/proponents/ascetics) like Ritambhara or Uma Bharati. The invocations are not only a bait for women but also a reminder to the women affiliates to see the scope for their philosophy and activity in supporting everything that these organizations are doing, including promoting hostility towards faiths and people perceived to be damaging Hinduism.

Talking of the Sangh Parivar, Arundhati Roy says, ‘its utter genius lies in its apparent ability to be all things to all people at all times’ (Roy 1999, p. 181). A broad understanding of ‘violence’ beyond the direct physical and mental abuse and as produced in people’s perceptions may help us in seeing the image of the Sangh Parivar as it exists in the minds of middle class, poor and home-bound women. This perception of violence is linked to the notions of religious domination and subordination, which subvert the chances of survival of another value system. For example, beef eating, spread of non-Hindu values, unemployment, religious conversion, inter-religious marriages, adoption of a Hindu child, etc. may be taken as attempts to denigrate the status and spoil the purity of Hindu religion. Therefore, these may be perceived as socio-economic and cultural violence against the ‘Hindu’.

The Sangh Parivar has articulated a feminist politics that reflects upon such perceptions and created ‘a space for personal accomplishment to which unskilled working class women and frustrated middle class women [across caste, particular religious community and region] might be attracted’ (Sahgal and Davis 1992, p. 9, text in brackets mine). While taking on the persona of a religious saviour, the Sangh seeks to mobilize women against the ‘perceived perpetrators of the violence’. The counter violence or support to fundamentalist organizations is seen by these women as an issue of religio-political identity and collective empowerment to oppose ‘occupation of minds and cultures’.

Kandiyoti in her paper ‘Islam and Patriarchy’, talks about women resisting the old normative order slipping away without any empowering alternatives and women pressurize men to live up to their obligations to provide protection in exchange of submissiveness and propriety as part of patriarchal bargain (Kandiyoti 1992, p. 36). The exchange of submissiveness and propriety for protection brings forth the issue of women’s bodies being treated as sites of community identity in a patriarchal society (Kannabiran 1996, p. 32-33). Submissiveness and propriety by these bodies is essential for patriarchal honour.

In India, for example, Ritambhara’s speeches, marked by incitements to reclaim male honour, remind men to live up to their part of the bargain. Similarly, when Uma Bharati asks women to play a political role without compromising their ‘basic nature’ (Llewellyn 2001), she is reminding that impropriety by female bodies would damage the Hindu honour which corresponds to male honour. The Sangh Parivar seeks to secure women’s support by playing on the tensions between ‘deeply ingrained images and expectations of male-female roles and changing realities of everyday life’ (Kandiyoti 1992, p. 36), which put a demand on women to step in the public space. By using the lack of alternatives before women, it attempts to consensualize women’s investment in patriarchal values and simultaneously puts conditions on her public engagement.

The offer of male protection comes with (i) the condition that women will have to become consenting custodians of patriarchal values, and (ii) an implicit guarantee that they will get the residual power and benefits that would accrue from their support to the Hindu male communal coercion (Sangari 1999, p. 398-408). The perceived notions of danger and security and the chance to exercise residual power through patriarchal bargains may make this offer lucrative for many women (Jeffery 1998, p. 223).

According to Moghissi, fundamentalism is ‘an attitude towards time’. It proposes ‘an ideal past, initial conditions’ or ‘golden age’ which contrasts to the present and can be retrieved…’ (Moghissi 1999, p. 69). All may not view the fundamentalist form of return to the golden age as conservative or retrogressive. For example, by linking fundamentalist space with religion and women’s welfare, the Sangh Parivar makes it possible for a woman to occupy public space and for her family to explain their daughter’s feminism as a form of sewa (Sahgal 2000, p. 198). This may appear as liberal to many.

Similarly, in the context of Muslims, ‘attempts by disadvantaged groups to rise in ritual status by strict adherence to "tradition" or the Shariat are not seen by them as a return to medievalism but in fact as symbols of achievement’ (Pandey in Chhachhi 1988, p. 23). So, acceptance in a social group closed so far or the move upwards in the social ladder may appear progressive and create an incentive for both poor men and women to support fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism also has a unique feature of constructing its own version of the ‘true identity’. In India, this is evident from the Sangh’s move to homogenize identity by disregarding the variety of ‘Hindu religions’, which have existed within the concept of Hinduism (Romila Thapar 1989). An interrogation of gender, class and caste in India reveal that the Sangh is promoting a uniformly brahminized, class-based, transregional modernity and a principle of formal gender equality located in a dichotomous upper caste practice.

The impact is visible in the spread of practices like dowry in states like Tamil Nadu (Kapadia 2002), wearing of sindur and mangalsutra and practice of karwa chauth by Hindu women irrespective of the region and culture. In the homogenization process, women’s space as well as capacity to bargain is being curtailed further by emphasizing brahminized feminine constructs and collective identity (Basu 1998, p. 175-76). Traits like self-sacrificing motherhood and devoted wife are now also being channelized towards building and nurturing a Hinduised social cohesion. In this brahminized, class-based, trans-regional modernization process, women may not have the space to think of separating their identities from the image of the ‘homogenized community’.

The Indian national movement, beginning in the 19th century, was imbued with simultaneous processes of socio-religious reform, specifically attempts to improve women’s condition within Hinduism. These attempts could be attributed to (i) initially, a desire to emulate what the reformers considered modern, i.e., the models of womanhood and conjugality of the colonizers, and (ii) later, the need to engage the wider masses in protesting against the colonizers. It would not have been possible to engage women in the protest without raising the issues which restrict their participation. During this period activists like Pandita Ramabai, Anandibai Joshi, Kailashbashini Debi, Tarabai Shinde, Haimavati Sen, Saraladevi, among others, challenged the patriarchal system by identifying the power dynamics which make man-woman relationships unequal (Chakravarti 1998, Sen 2000, Sarkar 1997, Omvedt 1980). Though dalit leaders started talking about caste, cultural, regional and class differences, but on the whole women were treated as a homogeneous entity.

The national movement identified the humiliated and colonized land with the image of a subjugated Hindu woman’s body – her body, sari and adornment encompassing present India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Afghanistan and Myanmar. The image stays even after 56 years of Partition. It also plays an important role in the projects of Hindu nationalism. The image of the motherland has been used to exhort proliferation of female deity or Shakti cult among women who find the concept of shakti empowering. The Sangh Parivar sees partition as a mutilation of the sacred body of the mother and holds Muslims responsible for this act of ‘desecration’ (Sarkar, p. 163-190 and 268-288). By laying claim to Hindu nationalist feminine icons and linking them to female power, patriotism, partition and a dream of Akhand Bharat the Sangh has successfully managed to mobilize Hindu women to support the cause of avenging partition.

Women’s support to the communalized politics of the Sangh Parivar also needs to be looked at from vantage point of individual women’s politics to benefit from the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution as well as BJP attempts to enlarge its vote constituencies. The BJP has much to gain by keeping women’s collective political empowerment within the bounds of socio-historically gendered subjectivities. However, any such analysis must also keep in purview the socio-historical factors.

Women in India have long been active in various types of social and political movements – at national, regional and local levels. They were engaged in grassroots caste-based politics during the Nehruvian period when political power was mainly with the upper castes.

The emergence of ‘backward castes’ and farmers’ parties brought in many other groups of women in politics. Throughout, mainstream politics neither allowed an orientation towards gender issues, nor allowed women to use their agency in collaboration with women’s activists to actively raise and interrogate issues of gender inequalities. If anything the incorporation of gender issues has been considered divisive in the mass nationalist/caste/community building processes and movements. The controlled participation did help some individual women to ameliorate their own situation but systemic gender inequalities have remained unaddressed (Jeffery 1998, p. 222) and women’s orientation towards collaborative agency has been constrained.

Women’s support to religious fundamentalism reflects a situation where women are caught between emancipatory aspirations and inherited notions of ideal womanhood. Notwithstanding multiple factors influencing women’s support to fundamentalism and the impossibility of talking about a common protest against religious fundamentalism, it is possible to turn this ‘situation of being caught’ into a ‘situation of struggle’. Not by ascription to the universal notions of womenhood and sisterhood but by recognizing women’s multiple realities of and exploring questions such as, ‘is there a dissatisfaction with the nation building processes because they have not addressed the issues of gender, ideology, power and identity’, ‘are the modernization processes being seen by women as socio-cultural and economic devaluation of women’, and so on. The contested relationships between women, religion, society, state, culture, nationalism need to be theorized afresh in the public space and ‘discursive and related historical frameworks alike need to be (re)addressed’ (Rouse 1998, p. 69).

Article originally published in Seminar #537, May 2004, India Shining at http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/537/537%20comment.htm

References:

Babb, Lawrence A. (1988), ‘Indigenous Feminism in a Modern Hindu Sect’, in Rehana Ghadially, (ed) Women in Indian Society, New Delhi/Newbury Park/London: Sage Publications.

Basu, Amrita (1998), p. 175-176, ‘Hindu Women’s Activism in India and the Questions it Raises’, in Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, (eds) Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, New York and London: Routledge.

Chakravarti, Uma (1998), Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai, New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Gaitskell, Deborah (1990), p. 253, ‘Devout Domesticity? A Century of African Women’s Christianity in South Africa’, in Cherryl Walker, (ed) Women and Gender in Southern Africa, Cape Town: David Philip.

Jeffery, Patricia (1998), p. 222, ‘Agency, Activism and Agendas’, in Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, (eds) Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, New York and London: Routledge.

Kandiyoti, Deniz (1992), p. 36, ‘Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective’, in N. Keddie and B. Baron, (eds) Women in Middle Eastern History, New Haven: Yale.

Kannabiran, Kalpana (1996), p. 32-33, in K. Jayawardena and M. D’Alwis, (eds) Embodied Violence: Communalizing Women’s Sexuality in South Asia, London: Zed Books.

Kapadia, Karin (2002), (ed) The Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender and Social Inequalities in India, London: Zed Books.

Llewellyn, J.E. (2001), ‘Uma Bharati at the 4th Akhil Bharatiya Sadhwi Shakti Sammelan at the Santoshi Mata Ashram’, in Kankhal, 10 April 1998, http://courses.smsu.edu/jel807f/sadhwi.html

Moghissi, Haideh (1999), p. 69, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism, New York: Zed Books.

Omvedt, Gail (1980), We Will Smash This Prison!: Indian Women in Struggle, London: Zed Press.

Pandey, Gyan in Amrita Chhachhi (1988), p. 23, ‘The State, Religious Fundamentalism and Women – Trends in South Asia’, in WLUML Dossier 4, August/September 1988, London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws.

Rouse, Shahnaz (1998), p. 69, ‘The Outsider(s) Within: Sovereignty and Citizenship in Pakistan’, in Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, (eds) Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, New York and London: Routledge.

Roy, Arundhati (1999), p. 181, ‘Fascism’s Firm Footprints in India’, in C.W. Howland, (ed) Religious Fundamentalism and the Human Rights of Women, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Sahgal, Gita (2000), p. 198, ‘Secular Spaces; The Experience of Asian Women Organizing’, in Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis, (eds) Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain, London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws.

Sahgal, Gita and Nira Yuval-Davis (1992), p. 9, (eds) ‘Introduction: Fundamentalism, Multiculturalism and Women in Britain’, in Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain, London: Virago.

Sangari, Kumkum (1999), p. 398-408, Politics of the Possible, New Delhi: Tulika.

Sarkar, Tanika (1997), ‘Women in South Asia: The Raj and After’, History Today, September 1997.

Sarkar, Tanika (2001), p. 163-190 and 268-288, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism, London: Hurst & Company.

Sen, Samita (2000), ‘Toward a Feminist Politics? The Indian Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective’, Policy Research Report on Gender and Development, Working Paper Series No 9.

Thapar, Romila (1989), p. 209-231, ‘Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity’, Modern Asian Studies, 23(2).

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Going Through Death to Give Birth

Yet a large number of societies and parents continue the practice of early marriage for several reasons including blind faith in culture or religion, hopes of financial and social gains, relieving their own responsibilities towards the child based on her gender and so on. In my view, the continuation of the practice is rooted in social acceptance of slavery of women. Internalization of servility and acceptance of the correctness of the practice is more likely to be successful if women are tamed early, as early as possible. Girl children and young adult women are easy to terrorize and therefore easier to be kept under control and by the time they could be expected to have developed some courage to protest, they are likely to be pregnant and socially isolated as a result of lacks of education and interaction with their peer groups. They are forced to accept their condition as their destiny. Many states and their governments, despite being signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, continue to turn a blind eye to the practice.

This is a brief introduction of a longer article first published by the Yemen Times: http://www.yementimes.com/defaultdet.aspx?SUB_ID=22147 and re-published at http://bellbajao.org/2010/05/04/going-through-death-to-give-birth/. Please follow either of the links for the full article.

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Regulation of Disabled Women’s Sexuality

Regulation of Disabled Women’s Sexuality

In general, women’s voices for their specific rights in the disability rights movement in India are hardly present. Voices of disabled women is almost absent in the mainstream women’s rights movement.

The politics of ‘normal’ or ‘able’ bodies and minds is further complicates disabled women’s identity. Societal norms with regard to the ‘ideal’ womanhood and the ‘ideal body’ render physically disabled and mentally challenged women invisible. They become objects to be hidden, never to be seen, heard or felt.

Since feminism is a politics of the oppressed against being pushed to the margins, disability, in my view, is a feminist issue. As an oppressed group, disabled women and men face challenges related to educational and training opportunity, inclusion, occupational attainment, economic status, and social outlets. But disabled women face particular issues of reproductive rights; control over their bodies; physical, sexual and emotional violence; and sexual rights and representations, which are considered taboo topics by the disability movement.

It is important, therefore, that feminisms in India change towards inclusiveness and support the disabled women in rejecting the traditional subservient and invisible role. There is a need for a new emancipatory politics for the disabled women, which is led by the disabled women from the centre of the Indian women’s movement.

The full article is posted at: http://bellbajao.org/legal-take/regulation-of-disabled-women%e2%80%99s-sexuality/

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Sexual Frivolousness and Innuendos: Freedom of Speech or Peddling Insensitivity in the Name of Humour of One Kind or Another?

I must admit that this blog is instigated by what I have been hearing recently, comments such as ‘It is too difficult to open my mouth front of you’, ‘I’m scared to speak in front of you’, and then the last night I read a frivolous insinuation/references to bestiality and drunken orgy. It angers me, fills me with disgust and tells me something about the person. For a while, it makes me doubt the people I associate with, work with or share my life with. All the more when it comes from people who are development workers or who speak of rights.


I have often heard people recounting second or third person account of trauma of rape or child sexual abuse that another person they know, has gone through. The retelling usually has the reteller in a saviour or compassionate role, somebody who lent support or is lending understanding and support. And the next thing I come across is completely casual or frivolous conversation replete with sexual desperation, titillation and filled with sexual innuendos. Such comments or way of communicating are meant to be about harmless fun, genuine humour, about making light of ??? and being able to talk in a relaxed manner.

Let me say that, in my view, sexual insinuation or jokes and communication filled with sexual similes are not funny. They are outright offensive and insensitive, to say the least. Do these people realize that when they are retelling another’s trauma, they are robbing that person’s right to tell her own story and tell it to the people she would like to tell and not some random individual or group? I think not. Do they realize that they may be triggering trauma to survivors of sexual violence? I think not. And when they talk in a sexually insinuating manner, do they realize that they are reinforcing insensitive stereotypes, myths, sexual perversion and indulging in cheap titillation. I think not; as I hear, it comes under the ‘freedom of speech’ and being able to be themselves. Being themselves, yes definitely, they are being themselves.

Do I object because I feel that nobody has a right to make light of or a casual conversation out of somebody else’s trauma? Yes, it is one of the reasons. Nobody has a right to expose somebody else's life and identity and put himself/herself in a do-gooder position by recounting something in second or third person. I do feel that the freedom of speech is being abused when language becomes the vehicle of transporting stereotypes and of sustaining perversion. I feel that nobody has a right to joke about sexual abuse when they no idea of what it means to be abused sexually.

I have been told that women of my kind are hyper sensitive about sexual jokes and innuendos. Yes, I am and I know so many others who are, even when they do not say it. Such language or communication is uncomfortable even when they appear funny to the person talking. For anybody with access to information sources, it is impossible not to be aware that vast numbers of women and children across the world are sexually abused and kept in sexual slavery. So why is it so hard for them to understand that they might be triggering further trauma or trying to make light of a widely prevalent form of human rights violation? And if they can’t mind their thinking and language, and reform their way of thinking and behaving for the sake of protection of women’s and children’s right to be free from sexual violence, what sort of belief do they have in human rights?! Just simple thinking of how they feel when they come across ‘making light’ of a behaviour that they had to face. If they do so, even if sexual abuse may not be something experienced by them, they can, at least, imagine how it would feel, because they would know how a similar behaviour when directed at them, feels to them.

Many women do not react to such sexualised communication and children fall in the no-right-to-speak zone. They may take it as a given way of talking and communicating but does that take away the need to change this way of thinking and talking? No, it doesn’t. A form of abuse or perpetuation of an environment that sustains abuse should not continue because the world is quiet about it or there isn’t enough ‘mainstream noise’ about it. One abuse is too many and calls for reform.

Sexual jokes and innuendos, whether coming from women or men, are not about things that are only matters of pleasure, they are not only about things that happens out there, somewhere unaffected by our own beliefs and conduct, to people who don’t really mind this kind of communication or are a good-sport-to-take-it-in-a-good-spirit (as I have heard sometimes). Sexual jokes and innuendos reveal the speaker, they are about me and many women and children around me who have seen sexual abuse day in and out, in public and private, and they are about how much violated and angry we feel about it. As a woman who has grown up being pawed in public transport and streets, ignoring sexual gestures from fellow commuters and others, dealing with the abuse faced by self and working with those who faced such abuse, I do not believe that sexual frivolousness or innuendos are about individual liberties or the freedom of speech.

I can’t even remember how often I have ignored such communication, often in public life and sometimes in personal realm. And I hate myself when I keep quiet. I feel my tiredness is letting me down, that I am being a person of acute double standards. And sometimes, this builds up and I jump with such revolt and anger that later I feel that I should have given the benefit of doubt to the offensive person, that s/he didn’t really mean to be a pervert or promiscuous. I feel that I could have tried explaining to the person that the joke/innuendos/behaviour was not funny. But experience also tells me that not all are willing to think that their way of thinking and the absolutist sense of their right to act and talk the way they want, makes them feel that it is an infringement of their individual freedom. Sometimes their resentment is quite obvious.

I just don’t understand how sexual frivolousness and insinuations can even qualify as humour or fun. Something that can violate a relationship of trust, care and protection or violate the bodily and mental integrity of another person, even in my wildest imagination, cannot count as wit. Crash crudeness, may be.

I wish, sincerely, that people would see this as an issue, first, of being aware of the abusive dimensions and sensitivity that awareness calls for, and second, of questioning that why jokes and titillation are usually at the cost of those who are socio-politically weak or rendered silent by the social structures. Why something that is atrocity and violence against some, can be normalised as a spicy way of talking?

Awareness means going beyond reading about abuse and meeting people who were abused. It is about understanding the extent to which their way of communication may contribute to the prevalence of an environment of abuse and in normalizing such behaviour and communication. They need to slap themselves hard in their brains, each time it tells them to behave or talk in a certain way that is offensive. Otherwise they would never see that they are part of the patriarchal pack; it would not cross their mind that their way of behaving or talking may be the norm but not necessarily right. Oversights and lapses are not meant to be reoccurring and if they tend to be, they reveal that the person is either abusive even when not accepting it or that the person prefers to keep clouded vision because they actually derive pleasure despite knowing that they are causing harm.

When people can make an effort to gain knowledge about how, for example, trade systems can aggravate poverty; I do not understand why they do not try to understand that their sexually frivolous behaviour and innuendos reinforce the patriarchal claim over women and children’s bodies? How is it possible that the people who study, decipher and advocate theories of poverty, development and change, peace and conflict, fail to see that the established norms of ‘personal’ or social behaviour and communication legitimize the option of not thinking, not understanding and not seeing the effects of their sexually insinuating behaviour and communication; that it gives them a choice not to change. Women and men, who behave or talk in this manner, may not be against women’s or children’s rights but they need to see the connection between their intentions and consequent actions.

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Unity in Diversity: Notion or Reality

Unity in Diversity is a reality that we must acknowledge and live with. Unity will not come by making everybody alike rather by agreeing on certain common values and principles and leaving the rest to the people. The first principle being equality and equity to enable people to achieve equality. Do we have unity in diversity? Not entirely, the Indian government and a large number of fellow Indians refuse to acknowledge caste discrimination because caste is different from race but they expect dalits to have the sense of unity. Same with women's rights; the state apparatus, society and families continue to kill female foetus, burn women, rape and molest women and girls and deny them basic rights in the name of religion, custom, traditions and so on but when women cry and make noise they are told that they have sold out to foreign ideologies as if only these inhuman practices are the foundation of the 'Indian ideology'.

The issue of unity cannot be left to nurture itself and remain a reality on its own unless the problematic of caste practice, the practices of abuse, discrimination, and violence against women and girls, and the inequality at large are consciously addressed. Do these practices threaten the concept of Unity in Diversity? Yes, if diversity is taken to mean and allow casteism, sexism, and so on even when these are to be ended says the Indian constitution. Citizens need to revisit the role of diversity that India holds in the national identity politics and construction of a national identity. The political ideology of a cohesive nation and national integration will not go far unless diversity based on the principles of equality and equity is given true meaning by the practice of it.

Diversity is a complex reality in India as a deconstruction of this reality will reveal innumerable sects, social groups and socio-economic segmentation by end number of castes, sub-castes, religious, regional and linguistic groups apart from further division and of these by sex. With this layered and amazingly complex reality of diversity within the nation-state, the concept of ‘one nation’ was and continues to be thrown away every time an effort is made to silence certain voices against discrimination, state led violence, caste and religion led violence and gender based violence. Or, the concept is thrown off by the unethical and unscrupulous political actors who use the issues raised by the voices to serve their vested ends. Demands for separate states and autonomous districts, mosques for women and so on are the symptoms of one or the other form of rejection of the notion of ‘one nation’.

The architects of the Indian Constitution were far-sighted enough to recognize this and sought to bring about a sense of an overarching Indian identity by ending the discrimination, inequality and violence and by recognizing the reality of diversity through inclusion of the fundamental rights and protection of dalits and religious, cultural and ‘habitation’ minorities (the last terms means certain forest habitats and those citizens who inhabit those habitats). The overarching national or unified identity has to bear the imprint of myriad political, social, religious, gender, and culture based lives in the country. It cannot be the other way round that these give way to accept national unity at whatever cost.

The notion and reality of an identity coming from Diversity is necessary not just from a patriotic sense of belonging to one geo-entity but also from the point of view of a mass of people being protected from the exploitative globalized forces, for the sake of economic advancement of a considerable chunk of humanity consisting of both women and men, for ensuring that identities of some do not swallow the identities of all, and for recognizing that diversity exists at all levels and in every social strata and segment.

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The Education Catch

Education, now-a-days, is hardly being looked upon for educating the mind. Primary education, mostly as a means of acquiring the ability to read and write – to be able to read labels and signs, Higher education, increasingly, is seen as a means to acquire better jobs and to some degree set up businesses – an economic avenue. This way of looking at education is universal. Reading and writing may not have been required as a survival skill a century back and therefore treated as something important for the brain and intellectual growth. That is part of the reason why it used to be a pursuit of the wealthy, ruling classes and the like. With time and changes in the economic contexts education has become a commercial investment for individuals, families, institutions, and governments. A small woman farmer needs to be able to read the amount that she is signing in the account book of her self-help group or fill the form that the disgruntled staff member of a nationalized bank wants her to complete before s/he can tell her that she will get that little loan. Today, the critique of the commercial value of education is a privileged criticism. Education is no longer a delicacy to feed the brain or an ability to intellectualize the small matters of life that would make the person someone to whom the working classes would turn to for advice.

‘Social Returns’ or economic returns to the family or society against the investment made in a child/person’s education have become an important measure to assess effectiveness of education. And this is where the catch lies. Social significance attached to particular sex, class, caste, region (or location), etc influence the understanding of ‘who’ can bring higher Social Returns from education. This influence is critical, of utmost significance, as it is this understanding that makes a father or mother or the family determine who will receive education, who will receive what education, and who will receive education where. This understanding also influences social decision about which education will get prioritised and demanded and since society is a whole only conceptually, only those who hold power in a society get heard. The understanding also shapes the strategies of the institutions – governments, academic or otherwise who are capable of investing in education – as to who will constitute their ‘clientele’, what kind of education they would offer to whom, in which location they would offer the services and on what terms. Supposedly poor socio-economic worth of women, the supposedly lower castes and certain classes, forest dwelling communities or those living in remote areas where any form of economic development will require very high investment and would have a much longer gestation period, etc become disincentive to investment in their education by the families, institutions and governments.

Different types of education - primary, secondary, technical, higher education, etc – also pose different gendered challenges. The challenges that each type throws up require different responses. The situation is further complicated by the fact that although some problems cut across geographical barriers, education is a “State” subject in India and each state government has different legislations that affect education differently. The role of the family and society in making the changes in the state is of paramount but so is the orientation with which the party in governance comes to govern the state. For example in Kerala, higher level of literacy has been possible because of the communist elected government which forcibly introduced land and education reforms. But there has been a set back in the quality of education in Kerala in the recent years because the same government did not attempt to influence social traditions or practices and limited itself to reform as far as economics goes. This doesn’t meant that there have been no social change and reform processes going on. There have been but these have been led separately by individuals and groups who are concerned about gender inequality issues and caste issues. The poor synergy between the two or the state’s inability to go beyond economics contributed to what has been otherwise a smooth growth in literacy. Having said this, the fact that the communist government created a space to address these issues, which is visibly absent in other states, including the current day communist state West Bengal, made it possible for the individuals and groups to create a demand and desire for change.

The ‘Social Returns’ perspective needs to be continuously critiqued for its top-down approach as well as for being divorced from the socio-cultural analysis. It will benefit immensely by aligning itself with the social change and reform agenda and with the demand for reform in gender relations or the social allocation of roles and responsibilities to women and men and girls and boys in relation to each other and in the public space. Without this alignment, the claims made by institutions and governments that education will address and find responses to social issues will just remain a rhetoric without any value. Education cannot be looked at in isolation and it will bring ‘Social Returns’ for all only if we recognize and consciously work on the gender, class, caste, regional (or locational) and religious dynamics within families, societies and cultures.

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Violence in Religion or Violence with Religion?

A look at history is good enough to tell us that the history of religion is a history of violence. Not surprising; religion is indeed opium of the masses - quoting it even though it comes from a racist political philosopher - and the elite alike. Unlike any other aspect of life, this one offers a remedy for all, if you are willing to believe. People are taught to protect what can salvage them from any situation. When so much of ' the potential' is at stake, obviously it is easier to instigate those who are afraid for their well-being, vulnerable because everything else has not just failed but also told them that nothing can save them from the doom of one or the other kind. Unpredictability of the future scares all and each wants to minimize that unpredictability as far as possible. If a belief that offers some level of security to people is portrayed as under threat, people rise and react.

Religion has never been a private matter - practice of religion gives identity, the nature of that practice makes one visible or invisible in a larger whole. Religion therefore has to be a major tool in the hands of those who seek political power or clout. The element of power has created such close relationship between religion and violence. All major religions, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism are tainted with violence.

Violence is said to be not part of any religion but when religion is the matrix within which identity is crafted, violence gets embedded in religion.

The sheer number of people - just in the sense of population - frightens humanity because humans have demonstrated consistent capacity to harm and destroy. The fear, therefore, is not unfounded. The fear then becomes the basis for social organizing, whether it is through the family or religion or any other institution which can assure the larger society that things will not go haywire and that they are not at each-other's mercy. Family, clan, religion, etc are some of the oldest institutions that have been set up to organize the society in a manner that the social as well as personal behaviours stay within certain agreeable boundaries. Since these are human creations, they can be used by humans to serve or dis-serve the humanity.

Since religion carries with what people regard as incomprehensible truths - truths which cannot be easily understood by ordinary beings and the only way to benefit from those truths is by placing their blind trust in them - even the state has often bowed before the power of religion. State and politics aim to command allegiance and compliance for the right or wrong reasons and religion has historically demonstrated its ability to galvanize allegiance and compliance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the state and politics use and abuse religion.

So while it can be said that religion does not carry violence, if eyes and ears are kept open, it can be seen that by its nature religion makes violence pursue it. And to say that religion and violence are completely divorced is not to recognise that many form of practices of religion condone violence when it takes place in form of animal sacrifice or identity politics killigs. Religion is what people practice, ie, the reality of religion lies in its practice, not in the texts that the majority have not read, cannot read or cannot understand. And religions, even in their purest forms, have tended to stand side by side with violence.

Since religion is so close to the core of human beings, the political and state machinery mix up with religions allow them to acquire much greater role. Since it is believed to have come from a supreme power, who all can trust and who can solve all problems of humanity and so on, it also gains the legitimacy to be the factor that should direct every day actions of human beings. Where that happens, it is not impossible to see how religion begins to influence practice of social justice, gender equality, rights, etc. And in societies where more than one religion exists, the competition among them is directly correlated with the level of religious involvement in violence and political involvement in religions.

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