STRUGGLE FOR GENDER EQUALITY CONTINUES IN INDIA

Mukesh Devrari

How the feminists should fight for gender equality in India is an elusive question? What should they demand is a settled narrative? At the first level, feminists should fight to reform the law. It must be based on rationality. It must not be discriminatory and biased. At least women in India are fortunate that the moral conscience keepers of our society were always sympathetic to the concerns of feminists.

Immediately after the independence first Prime Minister of India decided to amend the Hindu Code Bill on the modern lines despite the opposition from Hindu fanatics within Congress party. He successfully dealt with fundamentalism of the majority community but decided to bow its head in front of fanatics within the Muslim minority. Perhaps that’s why uniform civil code could not be implemented in India. Feminists in India must ask for the changes in laws that are gender biased and discriminatory. That is the first battleground.

At the second level, feminists must deal with the mindset and prevailing attitude towards women in India. This author believes psychological or attitudinal behavioural patterns have their roots in economic reasons. Generally, women are economically dependent on man. For meaningful emancipation of women that has to be changed. As long as women are dependent on men for survival, they cannot expect equal treatment. If women were made self-dependent, men’s attitude may change towards them. 

What if the situation did not change even then? No doubt there is no certainty that economics will change everything. In the middle-eastern Muslim countries, people have a lot of wealth, but still, their lives are driven by religious ideas which are mostly rejected in the modern world. People are indoctrinated to such an extent that they submit themselves, men and women, alike, to barbaric laws simply because they have religious sanctity.  

In countries like India, men will lose its ability to influence the wider discourse on the role, rights and place of woman in society, if they were economically empowered. At the third level, feminists must not be timid and fearful. They must speak their mind. It is a fault of our education that it has taught us political correctness. Indian middle class has two sets of notions. One is ‘notion of real’, other is ‘notion of the ideal’. People behave mostly as per the ‘notion of real’, but at the same time, people are convinced that the ‘notion of the ideal’ is more humane, justifiable and truthful.

Well educated Hindu men would recognize that every girl has the right to pursue her career and make her own decisions regarding marriage etc. But as a girl child grows old, families start the search for a husband. In India we call it arranged marriage, west call it forced marriage. The day feminists would be able to turn ‘notion of an ideal’ into ‘notion of reality’. There will be gender equality in India. Defining and deciding the place of half of humanity on the basis of their biological built is akin to animal behaviour. There is an agreement on the broad contours of feminists, now the struggle is to achieve it.

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