Freedom for Women Still a Far Cry

International Women's Day was celebrated the world over on March 8, but have women really been liberated?

I belong to Maharashtra, the state of Jyotiba Phule and Baba Saheb Ambedkar. I was born in the so-called 96 clan Maratha community. Seventy years ago, our family was a joint family, in which my father and his three brothers and one of his two married sisters lived, The other sister in her in-laws' house. My other aunt's husband left home after marriage and became a sadhu. His whereabouts were never known. Because of this, my elder aunt, who was the eldest, lived with us. She was childless.

So, apart from the five women in our house, including my father and his three brothers and their children, we had a family of 25-30 people. I am 72 years old now. I have never seen the women of our house coming or walking in front of men during the day. I have never seen my parents talking to each other. And the five women used to eat whatever was left after all the men and children had eaten. If there was insufficient food for them, I have never seen them cook again. That is why, all the women of our house have been physically weak and underweight! I

In Hinduism, women have been given the status of Annapurna Devi! But all the Annapurna Devis of our house were victims of malnutrition.

We worry about the rights of Muslim women. But I have seen the phenomenon of darkness under the lamp. My village is also included in the history of Satyashodhak Samaj. But, I have never seen the women of the houses of the so-called Satyashodhak leaders moving around the village during the day. Although this was 70 years ago.

How do women become victims of malnutrition? It is my opinion that women suffering from anaemia should not be measured by economic issues. This includes women from affluent families as well. Both men and women living below the poverty line are victims of malnutrition. On the contrary, among the so-called affluent sections, too, women are reminded from their birth, even during lactation, that they are girls. In this regard, the book, Second Sex, by French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir, looks at women from all aspects -- biological to social, economic and cultural. Every man and woman doing public work needs to read it.

In the early 1980s, I started visiting Bihar because of the JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) movement. After visiting the homes of socialist leaders, Gandhi-Vinoba Bhave followers, I saw that food, tea, snacks, everything was being served regularly, but the hands that made them were not visible. Even today, over 50 years have passed, but I have still not met the life partners of some of our socialist friends.

However, the names of Jayaprakash Narayan and his wife Prabhavatiji in Bihar’s public life are similar to Mahatma Gandhi-Kasturba. But if we leave this exception, the condition of women in all the states of North India is not very different even today.

A socialist leader had once occupied the seat of the country's Prime Minister for some time. Mrinal Tai Gore, a prominent socialist leader then, and some women got the opportunity to visit his ancestral house. Mrinal Tai Gore told me later that she felt the lack of women in the room. She said that she took advantage of being a woman and went inside the house and met the women of the household. And from the conversation, she found that some of them were post-graduates, while the other women were graduates. But they were forbidden to come into the meeting room. During his tenure as Prime Minister, this socialist leader’s wife was never seen in public life.

During 1990-91, while working on the aftermath of the Bhagalpur riots in Bihar, our team had to frequently visit Muslim localities because the community had suffered the most destruction. We saw some women gathered near the windows watching us very closely, but they were all veiled. There was no dearth of hospitality there either. But the hands that cooked the food were not visible.

Once Manisha Banerjee, Vani Sinha, Shamli Khastgir and Veena Aalase, who were among the women who often visited us from Calcutta and Shantiniketan, informed me that in a Muslim- dominated village named Rajpur, an exclusive meeting of women was being organised on the roof of someone's house in the evening, and I should address that meeting. After climbing the roof, I saw that except Manisha, Banidi, Shyamlidi and Veenaadi, all the other women were wearing burqa. But, as soon as I started my address, I saw that almost all the faces covered with burqa were now visible. I felt a bit embarrassed. Our meeting went on till it was quite dark, but the atmosphere was beautiful and pleasant.

Similarly, 15 years ago, I had gone to Aligarh Muslim University for the Maulana Azad Memorial Speech. The main speech was delivered in Kennedy Hall. I saw that all the students sitting in the lower hall were males. The female students were seated in the upper gallery. When I looked up, I could see only burqas. I had an extra day, so I expressed my desire to see the university. A professor was given the special duty of hosting me. After breakfast, he took me around in a university car. He also took me to the tomb of Sir Syed Ahmed. When I was returning from there on foot, an elderly gentleman wearing a sherwani greeted me and said, "I am the head of the department of Islamic studies, and I was very impressed with your speech yesterday. If you are not busy right now, can you come to our department for a chat for some time?" I promised him that I would visit the department some time later. When I stepped into his department, the very small hall was full of students sitting in burqas. The gentleman said: "Yesterday, you spoke about how Muslims of the whole world are being targeted in a planned manner in the name of political Islam. And this is the reason that these girls of our department wanted to meet you after listening to your speech from the gallery”.

 I told him, “You have done me a favour. Because for the last 20 years, I have been working on the Hindu-Muslim issue after the Bhagalpur riots and in that, I especially try to focus more on women. Because it is women who have to bear the wounds of any riot and war more than anyone.” I noticed that in that hall, too, all the girls had lifted their burqas. A serious debate went on with all the girls for at least more than two hours.

All those girls were post-graduates and some of them said that they would go for higher research studies later.

Half of the world's population is women. But the condition of women is still very unequal, to a greater or lesser extent. The worst situation is in those parts of the world where the feudal system still prevails.

The status of women is still very pitiable in almost all of North India and South-West Asia. The writings of Tehmina Durrani of Pakistan, Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh and Shirin Abad of Iran show that even today women are treated as ‘slaves’.

And in the so-called Western culture, women are still projected like a commodity, and object. Which why there is a competition to display their bodies in advertising and fashion shows—whether it is an advertisement of a men's underwear or his shaving blade.

Sex trade is a product of this very trend and has turned into an industry. I remember (in 1993-94), I got a chance to attend a conference on Human Rights (Huron) in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu. It was inaugurated by the then Nepal Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. Speakers at the gathering were only focusing on the excesses of the monarchy, police, and army. So, when my turn came, I said that "All the speakers before me have spoken of numerous reprehensible acts of oppression, atrocities and exploitation being done by the government and the royal family. But I have come from India, and I am from Calcutta. I am from Maharashtra. I have noticed one thing since my childhood, that from the towns of India to the big cities like Calcutta, Mumbai, 50% of girls in brothels are from Nepal. I have not seen anyone even close to Huron thinking about this subject, which is a very serious matter. Now the Rana regime has ended and democracy has begun. So, I expect the Honourable Prime Minister that special efforts should be made to stop the trade of all these women.”

Immediately after my speech, Prime Minister Koirala took the mike, and said, "I assure Dr. Suresh Khairnar that I will try, especially from my government's side, to end this practice!"

The Nepal Women's Organisation told me that I was the first person who had spoken on women's issues at the event.

Similarly, I have seen women working in every field in Kashmir and Palestine. We have seen women from the Kurdish-dominated triangle of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, which is also called the Total Kurdish Area. We have seen women wearing jeans and T-shirts and fighting, riding vehicles and horses. We have seen them working in every field of life.

The writer is former president of Rashtra Sewa Dal. The views are personal.