Friday 11 July 2014

Police & Judicial Reforms First Priority - Need for Surgeon's Precision while Amending the Anti Rape Law



Written and Oral Submissions by MANUSHI before the Justice Verma Commission
The countrywide anger and protest following the brutal gang rape of a 23 year old student has galvanized public opinion as never before. Even though the ostensible demand of protesters is to make the rape law more stringent, the real intent is to express "No Confidence" in the machinery of governance, especially the political class, police and law courts. That is why protests refuse to die down despite numerous pious announcements by the highest functionaries of the state- from the P.M to the Home Minister to the Chief Minister. True to character, the government has come up with a series of knee-jerk responses. These include appointing a Commission to suggest changes in rape laws in 30 days, a Special Task Force of all the big wigs in Delhi Government, proposal for chemical or physical castration of rapists, death penalty for all cases of aggravated sexual assault, mandatory registration of F.I.R.s in every complaint of sexual violence, special fast track courts, and gender sensitization programs for the police and so on.

Changes urgently needed in existing rape law: The most basic improvement required in the anti-rape legislation is to get rid of antiquated definition of rape as "outraging of modesty" of a woman. This needs to be replaced with "assault on the bodily integrity of a woman". The second important change required is to treat rape by security forces at par with custodial rape meriting stricter punishment than meted out to civilians because their job is to protect citizens, not violate them. However, this amendment should include safeguards against malafide complaints and misuse of law to weaken anti-terror operations.

However, many of the demands being made by the anti-rape protestors as well as those proposed by the UPA government have come as knee jerk reactions and are potentially harmful

Demand for stringent law: A common demand from both public and media is that the rape law should be made more "stringent". This overlooks the fact that in India, the gap between what the law prescribes and what actually happens in practice needs to be addressed as the first priority. When a law fails to deliver what it promises, instead of undertaking a cool headed honest review of what is wrong with the law and its implementation, the tendency in India is to assume that the law is not stringent enough, that it has too many loopholes which enable the culprits to escape punishment.

Unfortunately, most of those demanding changes in law to make it more draconian, including most T.V. anchors at the forefront of this mass hysteria, have not read the existing law.The rape law was amended in 1983 due to pressure from women's organizations following the rape of a young woman named Mathura in a police station of Hyderabad. It provides for a minimum 7 year punishment which may extend to life imprisonment. It also has special provisions for custodial rape including a minimum of 10 years in jail since Mathura was raped while in police custody. In case of brutal rape leading to murder, our law already provides for death sentence. Thus the existing law can hardly be called "lenient".

Proposal to chemically or physically castrate men indicted of rape: This has come from leading national parties, including the ruling party in the Centre. Such a punishment assumes that rape is all about uncontrollable sexual urge or certain men being oversexed. Apart from being an instrument of striking terror with a view to subjugate women, rape is often accompanied by brutal forms of violence of the kind the 23 year old gang rape victim went through. Rods were shoved into her vagina and her intestines pulled out. It is common for rapists to shove stones and other pain giving objects inside a woman with our without penetration of the rapists' penis. These pathologies and brutal acts will not be controlled by castration. In fact, there is evidence that men with performance anxieties are usually more brutal.

Demand that police be trained to be gender sensitive: Our colonial minded police are no doubt very gender insensitive and have a disgraceful track record of handling cases of violence against women. But it is not as if they treat men any better as is illustrated by examples below. Police are trained to understand only two codes: a bribe from below or a kick from above. Whether the hand that bribes or the one who gets the kick delivered is that of a woman, a gangster or a terrorist makes little difference to the police. It is well known that the likes of Dawood Ibrahim exercise enormous influence on the police and can make it dance to its tunes. Our police have no hesitation in harassing and brutalizing men. Women are no doubt doubly vulnerable but only if they are not well connected. Ask the poor slum dwellers, street vendors, rickshaw pullers, auto rickshaw drivers and other vulnerable groups who survive on the mercy of the police, whether the men among them have any special advantage vis a vis the police.

Compulsory registration of sex crime complaints: Another common refrain is that the police must be obligated by law to register an F.I.R on the basis of every complaint of rape or sexual harassment that comes to them and that rape should be made a non-bailable offence in addition to mandating longer and harsher prison terms.  It has also been suggested that women should be able to make online complaints of rape and it should be mandatory for the police to register instant FIRs on the basis of such online allegations.

It is also being demanded that the burden of proof in rape cases be shifted to the accused, even though in most other criminal cases, including murder, the burden of proof is on the complainant. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha has set a high benchmark by announcing a 13 point plan of action for her state which includes amendment to the Goonda Act to include sexual offenders. This law provides preventive jail for one year, with no scope for bail. To this list, Sunitha Krishnan, one of the most courageous and inspirational gang rape survivors has added another important demand that once the lower court has convicted a man of rape, appeal to the High Court or Supreme Court should not be permissible at all.

When we demand that every complaint must result in an instant F.I.R and that bail to alleged rapists be denied as a rule, we are opening the flood gates for fraudulent cases being registered by the police to extort money and other vested interests to browbeat those who stand in their way. If all those accused of sexual violence are going to be booked under the Goonda Act and kept in preventive detention for one year without the possibility of bail, as announced by chief minister Jayalalitha, there is nothing to stop extensive abuse of law given the lawless police we are saddled with. Let us not forget the kind of attacks R.T.I and other political activists have faced from police and politicians for exposing their criminal acts. (As an illustrative example see Indian Express report dated 3/1/13: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bengal-crusader-against--rape--pays-with-his-life-because-of-police-harassment/1053560/)

The problem is not confined to police reluctance to register cases of genuine victims but also its increasing propensity to blackmail innocents by registering false cases against them as an instrument of extortion or implicate genuine victims in patently bogus counter cases in order to force them into withdrawing their complaints against powerful persons. This happens even in first world countries which boast of efficient police and law courts. The manner in which WilkileaksgeniusJulianAssange has been hounded by the US and European countries on what appears like a trumped up rape charge after adult consensual sex, points to the ease with which false criminal cases can be used to destroy lives, especially if you shift the burden of proof on the accused, as is being demanded.

This danger is even more acute in our country where we are saddled with a totally lawless police. I am myself saddled with the burden of facing a whole array of false counter cases on account of my policy reform work for street vendors which brought MANUSHI, into conflict with political mafias who prey on the illegal status of street hawkers. Every time I or other MANUSHI volunteers were subjected to murderous attacks from politically patronized gangsters, the goons succeeded in filing fake counter cases against me and other MANUSHI members involving serious criminal charges-- including attempt to murder, Section 420, impersonation, extortion and fraud-- with a view to forcing us to abandonour work.(Read http://www.manushi.in/articles.php?articleId=1586&ptype=campaigns)

One of our most active and valuable members Mehboob, has also been implicated in a bogus "attempt to rape" case through the use of call girls who he had never seen or met before. They just came to his shop and started beating him with chappals alleging that he had tried raping them. When one of the men named Sanjay who knew those call girls intervened to save Mehboob, he was attacked by local goons with iron rods and bricks which resulted in serious head and other injuries. He could have died from the injuries but the police refused to file an F.I.R. on the basis of his complaint though they quickly entertained the complaint of the two women hired by local goons to implicate Mehboob in a bogus "attempt to rape" case. This happened in 2008. Five years down, Manushi is still saddled with defending Mehboob in this false case. If there was no provision for bail, this poor street vendor would have rotted in jail for endless years.

The horror story does not end with Mehboob. When Sanjay insisted with the police that they file an F.I.R. against local goons who caused him serious injuries for defending Mehboob against false charges, the S.H.O. of KotlaMubarakpur police station arrested 5 adult male members of Sanjay's family, locked them up in the thana and threatened Sanjay that if he did not withdraw his complaint, all of them would be locked up and sent to jail under the Goonda Act. Those arrested included the old bed-ridden grandfather of Sanjay, plus his father who is a Class IV employee working as a maali in a government department. We took up this case to the Deputy Commissioner but got no help. Therefore, we had no choice but to advise Sanjay to withdraw his case. These cases, filed in 2008, have gone on and on without an end in sight. They have caused us endless grief, humiliation, harassment and a waste of time on addition to financial burden.

This is not a solitary case. Implicating innocents in false cases is a well-established practice of the police. The Muslim community is particularly vulnerable on account of the popular stereotype of their being pro-Pakistan and pro-terrorism. But even well-educated Hindus from respectable families are not spared wherever and whenever the police decide to hold them to ransom. For an account of how my brother became a random target of extortion by the police, read  "Police Can't Be Women Friendly without BeingCitizen Friendly".

In short, you cannot make our police "gender sensitive" by subjecting them to special training sessions or sermons unless they are made "citizen sensitive". This too doesn't happen by subjecting them to occasional sermons. It happens only by institutionalizing principles of accountability and transparency in the very structure of the police - including better recruitment criteria, and creating incentives for honest work.

In other words, the existing failure of the police to act honestly, to follow due diligence in investigating whether a complaint merits filing an F.I.R. cannot be set right by doing away with the need for honest investigation altogether. Let us not forget, even Rahul Gandhi was implicated in a gang rape case by some woman in his constituency. It was later pronounced as a fabrication. Not everybody has Rahul Gandhi's clout to escape being locked up in jail without bail.

Shifting the burden of proof: The demand that the burden of proof should be shifted to the accused appears reasonable in cases of brutal violence is also fraught with danger. It is noteworthy that under pressure from women's organizations in case of dowry related violence, the burden of proof has already been shifted to the accused and the bail made extremely difficult. Can anyone claim that dowry giving and receiving has stopped or that incidents of domestic violence on account of dowry demands have come down? Can we claim that all genuine victims have been dealt with fairly by the police and law courts as a result of stringent laws in favour of alleged victims of domestic violence?

On the contrary, we have plentiful evidence of gross misuse of law by the police, lawyers and their unscrupulous clients to implicate innocent families in false cases with a view of extorting money from them. Even in terrorism related arrests, the police have consistently misused provisions that shift the burden of proof as well as denial of bail to the accused. In the process, lives of numerous innocents have been destroyed while real terrorists roam free. If the police have failed to use these provisions responsibly in cases involving national security, why do we put so much faith in their ability to use them with integrity in cases of rape? There is no substitute for honest, professionally competent investigations by law enforcement agencies.

Denying provision for appeal to higher courts: The most dangerous of all is the demand that once a man is convicted by the lower courts, there should be no provision for appeal to the High Court or the Supreme Court. This is no doubt proposed with good intent by people who have seen how rapists go scot free by dragging the case for years on end through adjournments and appeals to higher courts which also function at a snail speed. During that time, the rapists roam free on bail and often intimidate the victims into turning hostile against themselves

Once again, the dysfunctionality and tardiness of our judicial system cannot be set right by doing away with the right to appeal. By that logic, why not do away with courts altogether and let the police deliver instant justice? The right to appeal is available even to perpetrators of terrorist attacks as well as those who indulge in mass murder. Those guilty of communal massacres are also protected under this constitutional right. To demand that this right be denied only to those who commit atrocities on women is to play with fire. When brushing aside of constitutional rights and due process gains legitimacy, it has a way of spreading into all areas like a virus and eat into the very vitals of democracy.

Marriage to rapist cannot be treated as rehabilitation measure: Police and courts have often pushed for such a settlement as a measure to "rehabilitate" the raped woman. Therefore, the message needs to go down strong and clear that forcing marriage between the two parties amounts to legitimizing rape.

However, what if a woman demands this "relief"? We need to take into account all those cases as well where the woman files a rape case as a retaliation measure against a man who refuses to marry her after a long standing sexual and/or a live in relationship. Several such cases are reported routinely in the press. I have personally been approached by a half a dozen such women but declined to take up those cases. We have also witnessed the ugly drama played out in the media, including on TV channels, by a young woman who dragged famous film director MadhurBhandarkar to court pressing rape charges when by her own account she had sexual relations with him over a long period in return for his promise to cast her as a heroine in one of his films. This in my view is a patent misuse of law. A woman who enters into pre-marital sex with a man or offers a sex bribe in return for a favour, ought to take full responsibility for her actions, instead of playing victim, if the man changes his mind and terminates the relationship or fails to deliver the promised reward as did Bhandarkar. This may amount to "cheating" but certainly not rape.

Demand that "marital rape" be included in the anti-rape law: Mahatma Gandhi was among the first in modern times to assert that a woman has the right to say "No" even to her husband. This was much before feminists came to demand that rape in marriage be treated as a serious offence. I strongly support the Gandhi's position but including marital rape as a punishable offence is a very tricky proposition. How does a man prove that the sexual relation on a particular day or night with his wife was with her consent? Have her sign an affidavit every time they go to bed together? The law against domestic violence already gives strong protection to a woman who alleges "cruelty" by husband with or without rape. This too has been subject to wide spread misuse because of insufficient safeguards against false charges. Adding "marital rape" is likewise fraught with danger unless strong safeguards are put in place against baseless, malafide complaints.

Selective fast track courts: The demand for special fast track courts in cases of rape comes from an unrealistic faith in "special measures". In a country where national security related crimes, including open and shut cases, take decades despite all the attendant "special" procedures, including suspension of due process requirements, to expect "special courts" for rape to act as a magic wand is to live in cloud cuckoo-land. Just as special police stations for women cannot perform miracles when the regular police stations are citadels of crime and corruption, so also "special courts" become mere tokens if regular courts are dysfunctional and court procedures are not thoroughly overhauled. In any case, there is no "fast track" provision in the High Court or Supreme Court. Our courts have not only failed rape victims, they have also failed victims of caste and communal massacres, hate crimes, victims of criminal mafias, as also those involved in simple property disputes.

There is much to be learnt from the fate of special dedicated courts set up in 1986-7 to deal with monetary compensation and rehabilitation of victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984. This case attracted widespread national and international attention. In full glare of national international media, first the Government of India played foul by making an infamous settlement with the Union Carbide in return for payoffs. Then it played foul in disbursing the pitiful compensation it announced. When gas victims sought the intervention of the Supreme Court, special courts were set up to deliver the measly compensation to be given to families of those who died of the poisonous gas as well as to those who developed serious illnesses.

The delays, deliberate hurdles, harassment and humiliation suffered by those who went to claim the money due to them was no less than those inflicted in regular courts. Hardly anyone got the full promised amount. Families had to accept far lower amounts than officially sanctioned and even from that they had to give cuts in order for payment to be processed. This when some of our best NGOs worked tirelessly to help victims make claims through "special dedicated courts". They brought the corruption and harassment suffered by victims to the notice of the Supreme Court. Yet the scam continued unchecked. It has been 28 years since the tragedy. Ask what the victim families think of these special courts!

Closer home, in February 2010, in response to a PIL by MANUSHI, the Delhi High Court passed a historic order banning the lawless confiscation and destruction of cycle rickshaws by the municipal agencies and police. This order was endorsed by the Supreme Court. When both these agencies continued flouting the High Court and Supreme Court judgments, the Delhi High Court set up a dedicated special court in June 2012 to investigate complaints of rickshaw owners whose vehicles had been confiscated involving contempt of court. Till date, the special dedicated court has been able to cross examine only 8 complainants! The procedure for cross examination remains as farcical as it is in regular courts. To add insult to injury, all of us complainants and victims are being treated as if we are in the dock. The entire attempt of lawyers representing government agencies is to prove us liars who brought in false complaints. All this is happening even though two of the best judges of the High Court, Justices Ravindra Bhatt and Murlidharan are monitoring the case.

Merely naming a particular court "special" cannot work as a magic wand to cure our colonial minded legal system of its deeply entrenched incompetence, inefficiency and deviousness.

Demand for special courts has come from many other disadvantaged groups- environmentalists, anti-corruption crusaders, victims of domestic violence, as well as those routinely displaced from their lands and villages through arbitrary land acquisition laws. The list of those demanding special fast track courts will keep growing if the entire judicial system is not reworked thoroughly. The soul destroying, torturous and corruption friendly court procedures require fixing for all cases, not just for those crimes that become hot issues thanks to high profile media coverage.

Need for accountability of lawyers: Among many other judicial reforms, one of the most urgently required measures is to clarify the role of lawyers as officers of the court. At present, it is taken for granted that the job of a lawyer is to defend his/her client and save the person from punishment, no matter what the crime and no matter how foul the measures used for the purpose. This makes a total mockery of the entire judicial system and renders it incapable of delivering justice. Those who can afford to hire competent lawyers can get away with murder, rape or worse. This is because giving false evidence and browbeating vulnerable victims through hostile and devious forms of cross-examination to mislead the court in practice is never treated as unethical. Perjury and false testimonies are almost never punished under our judicial system.

The job of a lawyer is to assist the court in arriving at the truth, in ensuring that no innocent gets punished, no wrong doer escapes the punitive action he deserves, and that the punishment is in proportion to the crime. Lawyers who encourage their clients to give false testimonies to browbeat the system should be dealt with severely.

Police and judicial reform first priority: In short, the situation calls for far reaching police and judicial reforms, not knee-jerk tokenisms. The rape law certainly requires improvements. But simply providing for "more stringent" punishment will achieve nothing except enhance the scope of abuse, if the police as an institution are not thoroughly overhauled to make it a fit instrument for ensuring safety of life and liberty of all citizens. Likewise, without simplifying court procedures, making laws more rational and investing heavily in improving the quality and proportion of judges and making access to justice more affordable, a few fast track courts here and there will inevitably rot out. In any case, if the police have messed up the evidence at the stage of primary investigation, what will fast tracking of the case achieve?

We have all witnessed the crude and mischievous ways in which the police used lathis, tear gas and false cases against people to break the morale of anti-rape protestors at India Gate in full view of T.V cameras. This was proven when some of the young men arrested for allegedly causing the death of a policeman were acquitted by the court because they could prove that at the time the police claimed they were stoning policemen at India Gate they were travelling in Delhi's Metro. This was corroborated by the CCTV footage provided by the Metro. The policeman who collapsed during the protests suffered a heart attack, he did not die on account of injuries caused by protestors as the police have falsely alleged. Can we afford to put AK-47s in the hands of those who routinely use their lathis to tyrannize people?

Finally, when demanding changes in legislation or legal procedures, let us not think of men only as potential rapists or wife-beaters. We are all connected to men in intimate caring relationships- as brothers, fathers, uncles, sons, nephews, lovers, husbands, friends, colleagues and caring neighbours. My pain and grief at the life of my brother or nephew being ruined on account of being implicated in false cases is no less than when I am directly victimized by our corrupt, criminalized police and dysfunctional judicial system. 

In short, we cannot let our concern for women victims of domestic or sexual violence blind us to the possibility of further damage by the already corroded police and judicial system of our country, leave alone blind us to the dangers of selectively depriving people of their constitutional rights. We need a surgeon's precision while amending the anti-rape law, not a butcher's hatchet. All cases deserve speedy trials without sacrificing due process. If so many countries in the world can do it, why can't we?

Immediate measures needed for improving police & judicial performance:
While the task of refashioning our police and judicial system requires many far reaching systemic reforms-something that can't be done in haste with unrealistic deadlines --the following immediate measures can kick start the process without delay:

  • Speedy implementation of the Supreme Court directives regarding police reforms. Contempt of Court proceedings against all those chief ministers, home secretaries, chief secretaries of state governments who fail to implement these modest guidelines.
  • Installation of CCTV cameras in all police stations to monitor how the police handle complainants and their work style.
  • Mandatory video recording of all complaints so that the police don't get a chance to distort the complainant's testimony. This should be made available to the court instead of shoddily written, incomprehensible F.I.Rs that are usually submitted to the court.
  • Institutionalised mechanisms for involving local communities in policing their neighbourhoods in coordination with the police.
  • Independent audit of the functioning of police stations every three months by qualified professionals.
  • Mandatory recording of court proceedings to monitor whether lawyers and judges do justice to their jobs.
  • Encouraging petitioners to argue their own case to reduce the dependence on lawyers.
  • Providing dedicated time to petitioners to present their case in person even when they are being represented by a lawyer, especially in cases of rape.
  • Restrictions on adjournments so that the case is not allowed to drag on endlessly.
  • Holding district magistrates under whose charge the police functions, and the Lt Governor in the case of Delhi, accountable for police lapses.

The following non police measures which can be implemented with speed can play a vital role in making our cities safe
  • Well lighted streets all over the city
  • Safe footpaths for pedestrians
  • Keep cities alive at night by creating citizen friendly public spaces with benches, vendor kiosks, night stalls, spaces for performances for local artists to keep the city alive at night. Deserted areas are more crime prone. Cities are safe only when they are walking friendly and ordinary families come out in the evenings to keep the streets and public spaces alive.
  • Massive investments in adequate and safe public transport-such as buses- in all our towns and cities as well as for connecting urban centres to villages equipped with CCTV cameras and other technological devices to monitor their movements.
At the same time, the government should facilitate a nationwide debate on the recommendations of various commissions on police reforms as well as proposals for judicial reforms suggested thus far in order to seek inputs from a range of concerned citizens as well as best available experts on measures needed to make our police and our law courts worthy of a democracy. This debate will be taken seriously only if the government announces clear time frame and mechanisms for implementing the systemic reforms arrived at by way of a national consensus.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Diagnosing and Remedying Backwardness- English Education Defines the New Brahmins and the New Dalits of India

The current simplistic debate over reservations as a key remedy for inequality, injustice and backwardness has been reduced to a single point — should educational reservations be caste-based or include economic criteria as well? The underlying mistaken assumption behind both these alternatives is that deprivation has only two facets in India — being born in a caste or tribe listed in government records as backward or depressed, and/or being born in a poor family.

In the process we are ignoring a vital aspect of deprivation and denial of opportunity that has come to acquire crucial significance in modern India. Today, in our society, the single most influential factor that determines access to elite educational institutions, and hence to important avenues of economic and social advancement, is the ability to use the English language with ease and facility. This is the magic wand that opens many doors that can lead to inclusion in the social and economic elite.

By operating the modern economy in India only through the English language, the ruling elites that emerged during the British rule have ensured their own perpetuation and continuing dominance over the rest of society. They have also ensured that most Indians are unable to attain a high level of proficiency in English, as a result of which people fluent in the language are in perpetual short supply. A person who has acquired even reasonable proficiency in English will enjoy a major advantage while competing for jobs while those few who have a good command over the English language behave and get treated like an imperial race. They have any number of highly paid jobs both in the public and private sectors to pick and choose from, no matter what their other abilities, class or caste background. The rest, who lack this skill, are made to feel worthless and therefore lose self-confidence.

However, someone who has failed to acquire this magical skill can qualify neither for entrance to any institution for higher learning nor for any decent white-collar job. He or she may be a first-rate scholar in Marathi, Hindi or Assamese but that will not make the person eligible for anything more than a peons’ job even within the linguistic boundaries of Maharashtra, UP or Assam — states in which these languages are spoken by millions of people. He/she may have great expertise in botany, the since of healing Indian architecture or astronomy. But that will not qualify her/him to any of the institutions of higher learning for these subjects.

A Passport to Privilege
Why is it that this routine and pervasive aspect of discrimination and elitism has ceased to bother us, while caste and class have long dominated the discourse of those who claim to oppose sources of privilege? Despite the widespread prevalence of caste-based deprivation, it is easy to cite any number of examples of persons from SC, ST and OBC backgrounds who have come to acquire high status jobs in both the government as well as the private sector. But it would be impossible for any of us to name people who have succeeded in getting admission into an IIT or any other elite medical, engineering or management institute, or cite instances of someone securing a high status job in the modern sector of our economy — public or private — without having acquired a certain level of competence in English.

If you want to qualify for medical school, you have to know English — even if you want to practise in rural or small town India, where very few of your patients are likely to speak in English. If you want to train to be an architect in India you have to know English, even to apply to a school of architecture. People who do not know English are treated as a lower species, unfit for any place in a modern society or economy.

A Vicious Divide
The English-speaking pan-Indian elite is entrenched in the higher echelons of bureaucracy, politics, the armed forces, corporate business and diverse professions —medicine, engineering, architecture, law and so on. Consequently, this tiny elite dominates the terms of intellectual discourse on most issues, be it social legislation, defence policy, farm policy, educational, legal or electoral reforms. They act as though that they alone have a national perspective on vital issues of national importance and the regional language elites represent narrow sectarian and divisive tendencies. They present English as the language of modernity and those rooted in indigenous languages are projected as being leftovers of a pre-modern, traditionalist, anti-progress, even obscurantist worldview. For all their nationalist pretensions, they insist on using a colonial language for their project of modernising India and project themselves as saviours of national unity and national culture as well as repositories of intellectual merit and progress. The only role they assign to the masses is to uncritically accept their version of progress and modernisation, which includes a good deal of denigration of their own cultural heritage.

Since the domination of the English-educated elite depends on preserving a centralised state structure, movements for political decentralisation have often been presented as threats to national unity. However, since this elite lacks social and cultural roots in Indian society, and their lifestyle and aspirations are all directed towards the Western world, they lack the vision and the competence to govern a society as diverse and complex as ours. That is why the laws they enact, including those for the ostensible benefit of the people, are observed only in their violation; the system of governance they preside over is marked by corruption, incompetence and tyranny; the law and order machinery they preside over has become increasingly lawless. Because their social reform discourse is couched in an alien language and uses an alien framework, the social reform measures they propose usually create a backlash or at best remain on paper.

The New Brahmins
By retaining English as the medium of elite education, as a requirement in the professions and in government offices, even after India was formally freed from colonial rule, we have ensured that the schism that was deliberately created by our colonial rulers between the English-educated elite and the rest of the society has grown even further and acquired deadly dimensions that are destroying the minds, souls and self-respect of the majority of our people. The edge that English-based education provides often trumps the traditional divides of caste and class.

Traditional Brahmins used Sanskrit mainly as a language of higher intellectual pursuits, for chanting mantras to gods and goddesses and performing certain types of religious rituals. The new Brahmins speak in English even when talking to their dogs or their little infants. They insist that their children learn their nursery rhymes in English. They use local languages only when ordering menials who service their needs.  The power of the old Brahaminical elite was effectively challenged by various Bhakti movements with women and people from castes supposedly lower down the hierarchy defying the dominance of the Sanskritised elite by asserting their right to talk to their chosen gods in the mother tongue. Today the descendants of those very castes are in such awe of the English language that they too have learnt to prostrate before its soul-destroying hegemony.

They do so because they see that you gain instant entry into the charmed circle of the social and cultural elite if you can speak English in a manner and accent deemed appropriate within the national elite, even if you do not come from the high castes, while the doors are as good as shut for those who can’t, even if they were born into the highest among twice born castes. They are assumed to be from a lower species.

People rarely ask me what caste I belong to. They simply assume I am from one of the twice born castes because I speak English with a noticeable public school accent. It is ironical that in order to draw attention to the damage being done by the unhealthy dominance of English, I have to write in English. If I wrote the same thing in a regional language and did not have a certain level of competence in English, my critique would be dismissed as an expression of envy of the incompetent.

No matter how high your caste, no matter how much land your family owns, if there is no good English-medium school within easy reach of your village, your children will end up at the bottom end of the job market. That is how the sons of Jats of Haryana, Punjab and UP, who constitute the landowning and political elites in these two states, end up as bus conductors and drivers if their families reside in villages that do not have good English-medium schools close at hand. That is how so many Brahmins end up as street vendors, selling paan bidi, vegetables or other tidbits when they migrate from poverty-ridden villages, which do not have reasonable quality English-medium schools within easy reach.

Conversely, Christian boys or girls living in certain districts such as Ranchi, where missionaries run far better schools than those run by the government in villages and towns of India, stand a far better chance of getting good education and good jobs than upper caste young men and women from backward villages without such schools. A person who has studied in Modern School or St Stephen’s College, no matter what his caste by birth, is easily accepted as a member of an all India Super Caste and thereby has far more opportunities than anyone can get by relying on his or her caste by birth as his main qualification.

Most educated people have come to consider this state of affairs as so ‘normal’ that this is not even seen as a matter of note, concern or alarm. However, the absurdity and injustice of this situation becomes obvious if we look around and observe the fact that there are not many other countries in the world where people suffer such severe deprivation and disability within their own motherland for having failed to acquire education in a foreign language.

Demands of Globalisation
It is true that, in a fast globalising economy, English language skills are somewhat at a premium in every country. However, in most of these countries, English is used for communicating with the outside world, for international transactions or exchanges. It is extremely rare for a country to adopt English as the language of internal governance, education (including technical education) or internal business dealings. A person in China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, France, Turkey, Iran, Chile or Germany can become a lawyer, doctor, architect or engineer without knowing any or much English. In India such a person will not be able to get anything above a menial, blue-collar job. A person who does not know the local language would not even be considered for any worthwhile job in most countries of the world and would be considered a weird aberration. India is perhaps the only country in the world where highly educated people who have been raised and educated within their country consider it a mark of status to declare that they are illiterate in their mother tongue and cannot speak ten sentences in either their mother tongue or in Hindi, which is officially the national language of India, without mixing in a good number of words and phrases in English.

Many will counter this by saying:

  1. It is not English language skills that are the key to success, but rather that the English speaking elite just happens to be overwhelmingly from the upper castes. Their real dominance comes from their caste and class position.
  2. English language skills can be picked up easily since there is no caste bar to learning them.
This is as naïve as saying that anyone can qualify for an IIT-type entrance exam merely because the test is open to all those who qualify on merit irrespective of caste or class background.

Despite the dominance of English in our education system for over a century, only a minuscule minority, even among the educated upper caste sections of our society, is able to use the language with any clarity and effectiveness. Most of our MAs and PhDs cannot write three correct sentences in English even though all their exams were given in English.

However, they get away with it because even the pretense of knowing English, no matter how poor the person’s actual language skills and knowledge, works better than being genuinely proficient in any of the Indian languages, if you are not simultaneously competent in English. That is why upwardly mobile segments of the middle and even lower middle classes are ready to sacrifice an incredible proportion of their social and financial resources in bribes and other forms of influence in order to get their children admitted to a school or college that provides quality English-based education, beginning with the crucial admission into one of the highly regarded English-medium nursery schools.

Denied Access to Knowledge
The growing preference for English-medium schools is primarily due to the poor quality of education imparted in non-English-medium schools and the low status value ascribed to learning in regional languages. If you are going to be treated as an illiterate for not being fluent in English, you have no choice but to prioritise learning it, even at the cost of other necessary skills. Given the lower standards that prevail in non-English-medium schools, it is assumed that those who have studied in English are better educated and hence make better teachers. This despite the fact that teaching quality is so poor in most of our English-medium schools, barring a few exceptional institutions, that most of our students are ill-equipped to make sense of even newspaper reports, leave alone read serious books in English. Yet, they spend just about all their energy trying to grapple with English and willfully neglect learning their mother tongue, Hindi or any of the Indian languages, which they could master with great ease.

In the process, they end up with nothing more than a pidgin language — a confused mixture of poor English and their mother tongue — that damages their over-all linguistic abilities for life. This also seriously impairs their thinking capacities because language is the primary tool for understanding the world, for grasping ideas and using concepts for effective communication. A person’s thinking is seriously impaired if they are not well rooted in at least one language. Linguistic cripples grow up to be intellectual cripples.

This is also one of the major reasons why there is huge deficit of good school and college teachers in India. Those who know good English ordinarily move on to higher status and better paying jobs. The few who choose teaching gravitate towards elite schools and universities, while those who have studied in Hindi-medium schools, or in schools using any of the regional languages, by and large end up being intellectually stunted because they have far less access to sources of knowledge and learning without good knowledge of English.

The dominance of English has consequences far beyond what most of us dare acknowledge. Those who study in various regional Indian languages, and know only a smattering of English, do not have access to all the knowledge and information being produced in various disciplines, including the politics, history, geography and sociology of India. Consider the absurdity and injustice evidenced in the following examples of the arrogance and callousness of our English-educated elite:
  • There are no medical or science, technology or social science journals in any of the Indian languages, including those that are spoken by millions. All scientists publish their findings in English. All technology institutions teach in English as if English is the natural language of science and technology. This is not the case in Thailand, Korea, China and Japan, not to speak of Germany or France.
  • The medium of instruction and examination in all our schools of architecture as well as the course content is in English, even though India has an exceptionally well-developed and distinct architectural tradition of its own.
  • It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find training manuals for plumbers, electricians or masons in Hindi, Marathi or Tamil. As a result, people who take to these occupations end up acquiring half-baked knowledge as apprentices on the job by observing the work of others, or by word of mouth. The children of our impoverished farmers and artisans learn what they can by simply following traditional ways or picking up new skills by observing others. There is hardly any educational material available to them in their own languages for upgrading their skills.
  • India is one of the very few places in the world where pharmaceutical companies do not bother to write the names of the medicines they produce in any local language. Almost all the allopathic medicines produced in India are labelled in English; the accompanying literature about directions for use, side-effects and precautions are provided only in English. Today, even the fashionable among Ayurvedic companies label their medicines in English. Most doctors, including those who work in government offices and service low-income groups, write their prescriptions in English. Given that only a tiny percent among the educated sections can make sense of things written in English, imagine what it means for those who are barely literate to decipher their prescriptions and understand the nature of treatment and medication prescribed to them.
  • Our lawyers draft petitions in English on behalf of even those clients who do not know a word of English; court proceedings, especially at the higher levels, are all carried out in English, legal judgments are delivered in English, the laws and precedents on which those judgments are based are leftovers of British law and are written in English. Thus most people who approach the courts for justice cannot comprehend a word of what their lawyers write or say on their behalf, or make sense of the verdicts passed in their favour or against them, except through the agency of their lawyers. The sense of helplessness and crippling dependence this creates is a major reason for corruption and unaccountability, and for the exploitation of the poor by our legal system.
  • India is the only country where no social science journal is published in any of the Indian languages. All “eminent” historians write their histories of India in English. All “eminent” sociologists publish their micro and macro level studies of Indian society in English. For those who are not well-trained in handling the English language, all the new knowledge being generated about the past and present of Indian society is inaccessible. There are no serious books or journals available to them in the subjects they study or teach. A large proportion of them have never read anything other than cheap student guidebooks, many of which are in turn written by poorly educated people. Consequently, most of our MAs and PhDs, especially those from small town universities, are so poorly educated that they cannot write five correct sentences in the language in which they have to submit their thesis. Not surprisingly, high status scholarly conferences on Indian history, politics, sociology and even Indian religions are mostly held in American,      British, even Australian and German universities rather than in Kurukshetra, Patna or Meerut universities where few even among the senior faculty are likely to be fluent in English.
One of the reasons why Indians have so deeply internalised the disdainful view of their colonial masters about indigenous Indian society is that very few among the educated elite are able to read or make sense of Indian language sources of Indian history and society. Consequently, we depend on the accounts written by colonial administrators, foreign missionaries and sundry foreign travellers to get a sense of our past. Scholarly studies and translations of Indian epics and dharmic texts are also mostly done by Western scholars. As a result, their biases, their interpretations, their critiques become ours. We begin to view our successes, our failures, our problems and delineate even our aspirations through the eyes of outsiders.

We celebrate those who are celebrated by the West. We ignore those who are disapproved of or looked down upon the West. Today, if you ask anyone among the English-educated elite to name three good current Indian literary authors, they are likely to name the likes of Vikram Seth, Shashi Tharoor or Amitav Ghosh. Very few will name OV Vijayan, who is one of the best writers in Malayalam, or Vijay Tendulkar, who wrote some of the finest plays in Marathi. Why? Because these writers wrote for fellow Indians in Indian languages and won Indian literary awards, not a British or American award. They have given us profound new insights into our society and made significant literary innovations both in form and content. But we do not consider these authors as important as authors who have won a Booker Prize. Can we think of an important Chinese, Japanese, German or French writer who has never written in the language of his/her own people? Writers elsewhere get international recognition after they have been read and admired at home. In India, we are intellectually browbeaten into admiring those who are smart enough to achieve recognition in the West.

Those who think English is the language of opportunity would do well to remember that while it opens doors for a select few and provides them the wherewithal to be internationally competitive, it shuts all doors on those who are denied the opportunity to get a good education in English. We are so obsessed with and enamoured by our ability to be able to communicate and work with people in New York, London, Toronto, Sydney that we don’t seem bothered by the fact that English acts as a barrier in communicating with hundreds of millions of people living in our own country and is making them feel like third class citizens.

English can never serve as a vehicle for mass education in India. Proficiency in English is unattainable for most and creates conditions of unequal competition for the vast majority. More than a century and a half after English came to be imposed as a language of governance and for the elite professions, no more than one percent of our people use it as a first or second language. For the majority, even of educated Indians, English remains at best a third language. Nearly 45 percent people live in states where Hindi is the official language while a significant percentage of people even in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kashmir, Assam, Punjab, Bengal, Andhra, Orissa have a working knowledge of Hindi. And yet, the English-educated elite gets outraged at the idea of Hindustani replacing English as a link language.

The Politics of Language
Regional languages have become the vehicle of mass literacy as well as a medium for the assertion of new regional cultures emerging through the process of subsuming many of the folk languages and dialects and non-official languages in various states. For example, Hindi as the official language of UP has marginalised Bhojpuri, Awadhi and the many other dialects of Uttar Pradesh and in the process homogenised the culture of the state, though at the cost of the latter. However, it is impossible for non-official languages to gain respectability if the official regional languages get treated with disdain. Though these languages are downgraded socially and economically, they are the vehicles of political discourse in states. It is no coincidence that today, there is only one Chief Minister of a state in all of India — namely Navin Pattnaik of Orissa — who is not comfortable in speaking in the language of his State. He too could not have won an election but for the tremendous goodwill built by his father Biju Pattnaik, who was well rooted in Oriyan culture. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have both had to learn Hindi with sustained effort, after they developed political aspirations, whereas for the first 30 years of her life in India, Sonia Gandhi did not bother to learn Hindi nor taught her children to learn it seriously.  

The political power of regional languages and regional elite is evident from the fact that a person who is not deeply entrenched in the language and culture of his/her constituency is not likely to win an election, no matter how high his/her other qualifications. This is an indirect indication of the language policy that people actually endorse when they have the power through their votes. However, the judiciary, bureaucracy and elite professions are dominated by people who cannot write five sentences in the regional language, all because people have no power to influence the language preference of the elite in those areas, as they do in politics through their votes.

However, this has also meant that our politics has come to be dominated by people who have failed to acquire good quality education. Consequently, most of our elected representatives are ill equipped to handle the job they are meant for, namely, legislation. Therefore, bureaucrats and hired legal professionals end up conceptualising and drafting most of our laws, rather than people who get elected to legislatures. Thus the decline in the performance and standards of our political institutions is a direct consequence of the dual language policy we have adopted, which leads to poor quality education for the general mass of people in India.

First Published in Manushi Journal (Issue No. 154) : 
http://www.manushi-india.org/pdfs_issues/PDF%20Files%20154/MK%204-10.pdf






Saturday 5 July 2014

Why I do not Call Myself a Feminist



“I have a horror of all isms, especially when they are attached to proper names.”
M.K. Gandhi, Collected Works, March 123, 1940, Vol. LXXI, p.323

Ideologies can play an important role in uniting people to bring about and hasten social change; in providing inspirational symbols for an organized expression of discontent; and in helping make individual struggles collective. Today, when I refuse to be labeled a feminist, it is not because I prefer to be identified by some other “ism”. It is because I find the currently dominant ideologies inadequate, and even harmful.

Time-Specific Isms
A distinction must first be made between two different kinds of ideologies which operate in political theory and practice. The first kind of ideology evolves under the pressure of the specific challenges in a given society at a particular point of time. Often, it comes to be identified with the name of a particular thinker or political leader, such as the ideologies of Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism. However, when the movement dies down, or once it achieves some of its immediate aims, and usually after the leader’s death, the ism ossifies. It is then used more as a ritual chant, reduced to a set of deadening formulae by its votaries to justify their own actions, though these may or may not be logical outcomes of the original ideology. A good example is the manner in which the Indian Communists defined their relationship of hostility to the Mahatma Gandhi led freedom movement, attacking Gandhi and his colleagues with the vocabulary and critique borrowed wholesale from Marx, Lenin and Stalin fighting a totally different set of opponents.

My problem with this kind of ism is that while in its origination it may play an important role in a creative upsurge of ideas and action, it becomes moribund once it is institutionalized at a later point as the final truth and then applied in changed circumstances. What may have been a very creative idea or strategy in the course of a movement, as enunciated by its leaders in response to the immediate situation, becomes a bizarre parody when used in a completely changed context.

Another effect of such ossification of an ideology is that it furthers the common tendency to approach reality with a preconception of what it should be, and to justify one’s own actions on that basis, by manipulating the ideological jargon. For instance, the section of Marxist-Leninists which used to lend support to the politics of the terrorist brigades inspired by Bhindrawala in Punjab justified their approach on the grounds that this was a class struggle of poor and middle class peasantry against the kulak farmers represented by the Akalis. Likewise, Marxists who opposed the Bhindrawala type of politics dismissed the urgent significance of the ethnic and political strife in Punjab and considered it merely as a sign of “false” consciousness which was being promoted to destroy the potential of real class struggle. Similarly, some of those leftists who wish to climb on the bandwagon of the new peasant movements are trying to bestow Marxist credentials on these movements, portraying them as anti-capitalist even though these movements make no such claim. There is little attempt made to grapple with these movements on their own terms.

It is also apparent that isms which are founded by individuals who defined certain tenets in response to a specific situation in a particular society at a particular time - like Marxism-Leninism and Maoism - are in crucial ways both time-specific and culture-specific. While certain elements of these isms may be relevant at other times and places, while they may provide inspiration or one may learn much from them, applying them as formulae in other societies at different points in time most often proves counterproductive.

Culture-Specific Isms
The second kind of ism does not arise from one movement or one individual leader or thinker, but often pervades many different movements in the form of a structuring idea or tendency. Some examples of this second kind of ism are anarchism, humanism and feminism. Feminism was an outgrowth of eighteenth century humanist thought in Europe and the USA, reinforced by thinkers from many other schools of thought, such as utilitarianism and Marxism. This second type of ism may not be as time-specific as the first, but it is as culture-specific.

As I mentioned at the start, though I stand committed to pro-women politics, I resist the label of feminism because of its over-close association with the western women’s movement. I have no quarrel with western feminist movements in their own context, and feel strengthened by the existence of women’s movements in western as in eastern countries. Manushi has received a lot of love and support from all over the world from women who take pride in their feminist ideology and solidarity and there are many feminists in India whose work and ideas I respect.
However, given our situation today, where the general flow of ideas and of labels is one way, from West to East; in this overall context of a highly imbalanced power relation, feminism, as appropriated and defined by the West, has too often become a tool of cultural imperialism. The definitions, the terminology, the assumptions, even the issues, the forms of struggle and institutions are exported from West to East, and too often we are expected to be the echo of what are assumed to be more advanced women’s movements in the West.

Importance of an Independent Self-View
Anyone working for women’s rights in India is automatically assumed to be a feminist, no matter what form their work takes. Yet people working for peace and disarmament in the West are not assumed to be Gandhians, even though Gandhi is the most outstanding leader of modern times to have provided a philosophy and politics of non-violence, and led the most noteworthy mass movement based on non-violent principles. The Green Movement in Germany and the peace movement in the West in general, do not need to display more than a mild and patronizing interest in Gandhi, because westerners assume that they have the right to define a self-image and choose their own terminology to describe themselves. But the same right is not granted to us, the hitherto colonized. We are labeled “feminists” without so much as a by-your-leave, not only by western feminists but also by their counterparts in India. Many view our refusal to accept the label either as an act of betrayal or as a sign of insufficient ideological growth. I believe that accepting or rejecting labels is not a meaningless ado about nothing. Being able to choose an appropriate name and definition for one’s politics is an important aspect of evolving an independent self-view, provided the exercise is not merely restricted to ritual debates about words.

Imported Labels and Copycat Responses
Sections of the women’s movement in India have picked up not just the term “feminist” from the West but also all of the norms, assumptions and debates that emerged from it, as well as to some extent those that emerged from the polemics of the Russian revolutionaries. The most blatant example of the movement here being compelled to act as an echo of the supposedly more advanced movements in the West is the way divisions were assumed to exist before they had taken shape. When, in the late seventies, Manushi and a number of new women’s groups began to emerge, certain self-appointed theoreticians immediately went about labeling different groups and individuals as belonging to one of three trends: bourgeois feminist, socialist feminist or radical feminist. Some of these self-appointed certificate givers descended directly from the West; others, although “natives” like us, were better grounded in the western women’s movement debates than in the reality of women’s lives here. I remember my bewilderment at that time at the ferocity of the label warfare. From where did it descend? Certainly not from any split in India on ideological lines! There were a handful of groups and individuals at that time working on women’s issues. Most of the groups had not crystallized organizationally or theoretically. No political action on any significant scale had yet been undertaken, and so hardly any meaningful dialogue over strategy and tactics had taken place. Yet, those mesmerized by the rhetoric of other movements tried to force us to assume the existence at that time not only of a major women’s movement here, but also of major divisions within it. We were supposed to have split even before we got a real opportunity to get together, to see or hear one another, let alone carry out a debate among ourselves. 

These labels were not used as descriptions of the positions taken by individuals or groups or the work being done by them, but as epithets to condemn people you did not like, that is, as good or bad character certificates. Label givers assumed that the most respectable term was “socialist feminist.” This was usually reserved for oneself and one’s friends, as proof of one’s correct political credentials. Those one did not like were sought to be condemned as “bourgeois feminists” or “radical feminists”. The utter absurdity of these ism labels was evident. They have been used as sticks to beat up people, to stifle intellectual growth and enquiry, to frighten people from thinking things out for themselves, to bully them into blindly accepting formula-ridden politics and repeating meaningless mantras, and to subject them to slander if they resist. Therefore, I found it difficult to identify with them emotionally or intellectually.

Interestingly, Manushi was honoured often, at one and the same time, with all three epithets. We were called everything from radical feminist man-haters to bourgeois feminists to leftist extremists, even though we steadfastly refused to adhere to any of the labels. Those using these labels to describe Manushi were clearly not describing our politics. Those who imagined themselves socialists called us bourgeois, those who were also Marxists called us Naxalites and radicals. Realizing that this ideological ism warfare was an unreal one, we chose not to enter into it. Instead, whenever accused of being bourgeois feminists or whatever else, we would ask the persons concerned to define the term and then to point out what in the magazine conformed to their definition. Not one of the label givers we spoke to actually ended up completing the exercise.

The labeling requirement distorts not only the present but even the past. I remembered being attacked at a seminar organized by a group of feminists at Lady Sri Ram College in Delhi University for presenting in a positive light the life and poetry of women like Mahadeviakka and Mirabai. Their argument was that these women did not talk of women’s independence and equality as they ought to have, that they merely chose to substitute the slavery to a husband with slavery to a god. In short, that they were inadequate as historical sources of inspiration for women because they could not be called feminist. Expecting Mirabai to be a feminist is as inappropriate as calling Gautam Buddha a Gandhian or Jesus Christ a civil libertarian.

This approach to evaluating our past is as inappropriate as the one that looks for feminists everywhere at all times. We need to understand the aspirations and nature of women’s stirrings and protest in different epochs in the context of the dilemmas of their age, rather than imposing our own aspirations on the past. The past ought not to be studied to seek justifications for, nor faulted for, not having lived up to our present day political inclinations, but viewed on its own terms, while acknowledging it as our inherited legacy.

Expected To Be a Mirror Image
The use of the term “feminism” and the resultant ism warfare brought with it a host of other problems. Even in forms of organization, we were expected to live up to the standards, patterns or mythologies evolved by western feminists, and to mimic all the stances taken within the movement there. You had to pre-decide, for instance, whether you were going to walk hand in hand with, ahead of, or behind men. We were bullied to take a position on separatism simply because the issue had been the cause of a major controversy in the West and in certain left movements in other countries.

In the early years there were occasions when certain feminists from the West who believed in totally excluding men from participating in women’s movements threatened to launch a boycott against Manushi since it included articles and letters by men. At the other end of the spectrum a section of those who considered themselves socialist feminists in India accused Manushi of being anti-men and also attempted to organize a boycott against it. During all these years, despite these pressures and attacks on us, we studiously avoided duplicating the postures and responses of factions within the western feminist movement on the issue of men’s participation in the women’s movement. It seemed as foolish to take an a priori position against men, as some separatist feminists insisted on doing, as it would be to insist, as a cardinal principle, on an unconditional alliance with men, as those who called themselves socialist feminists required of everyone. It made no sense to expect an undifferentiated response from all men - or from women for that matter. We felt that the actual responses of people, men and women, to the issues we advocated would provide a better indicator of whom to build meaningful alliances with. Thus neither did we shun men on the basis of theoretically postulated confrontation, nor woo them insisting on a preconceived alliance. Partly as a consequence, Manushi has over the years received an unusual amount of support from numerous men with a variety of ideological orientations.

Likewise, it was assumed that we must work through what western feminists call “non-hierarchical stet collectives” even if the experiment had not really worked in the West. I have always opposed authoritarian structures. However, the particular notion of a “collective” common at that time, and the unrealistic expectations that it created, proved to be a mistaken import from the West. In the early phase of Manushi’s existence, we unwittingly used the term without being aware of its history in the western women’s movement. We were then confronted with the task of putting together a loose heterogeneous group of volunteers whose work commitment was often not sustained. With fluctuating attendance and very unequal work contributions, it was hard to say who among the volunteers would actually persevere and take responsibility in a continuing way. We could not announce a fixed set of names as a core group, since none existed. Though we provisionally chose the term “collective”, we were eventually compelled to drop it because it became a liability. Nevertheless, the entire set of controversies aroused by the terms in the West descended on us lock, stock and barrel. We were besieged by any number of self-appointed inspectors out to examine the health of our collective. The idea of collectives was poorly thought out even in the West. The attempts to import a structure that in actuality functions only rarely and at best temporarily in the West created bizarre results among Indian women’s groups.

Another example of the importation of institutional forms in the name of feminism is that of homes for battered women. Over the last decade, innumerable western feminists have asked us: “Do you have homes for battered women in India?” The assumption is that not to have such homes is to be at a lower stage of development in the struggle against violence against women, and that such homes should be an inevitable outcome of the movement’s development. The psychological pressure exerted on us when the question is repeatedly asked should not be underestimated because many activists begin to wonder whether all organizations in any way related to women should in fact be creating battered women’s homes. Some may ask what is wrong with having a common international response to the common problem of wife battering. My answer would be that the completely different socio-economic and cultural contexts should be studied before we accept any predetermined response.

Homes for battered women in the West seemed to act as a useful type of short-term intervention because of:

a) the existence of a welfare system which includes some, even though inadequate, provisions for public assistance, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, and free schooling for children;
b) a national employment situation which is certainly very different from that in India;

c) Lower stigma on women living on their own and moving around on their own: and
 
d) The existence of certain avenues of employment there that is not considered permissible for middle class women here, for instance, in domestic service. 

Most feminist groups in the West who run homes for battered women aim primarily to offer the moral support required by a woman making the transition from dependence on a husband to self-dependence, in a context where natal families are not usually available to offer this support. In India, hardly any women require simple moral support - they are in dire need of economic and social support. So a home for battered women, like a home for widows, inevitably turns into a few token charitable establishments which provide a subsistence level survival. Charity, by itself, cannot be said to further women’s equality. The battered women’s homes run by women’s organizations most often end up trying to persuade the marital families of these women to accept them back on slightly improved terms. Only rarely have we been able to help women carve out independent lives.

Yet, such is the hypnotic power of feminist ideology that comes from the West that, despite our different experience of dealing with women in distress, setting up refuges and shelters continues to be presented as one of the key components in resolving problems of battering and maltreatment. This is so even though the movement in the West for setting up shelters and refuges has lost much of its steam because even there it is not proving to be as effective a remedy against domestic violence as the movement originally hoped.

It is unfortunate that the import of ideology follows a pattern similar to that of other imports, for example, that of certain technologies and drugs. Many things known to be obsolete or unworkable and therefore discarded in the West continue to be dumped in third world countries. Likewise, ideas and institutions which have been discarded by major elements in the feminist movement in the West continue to be advocated here as appropriate feminist responses.

It is not just that issues and campaigns have been imported. There has also been an attempt to emotionally live through the responses of the women’s movement in the West, even though the situations women face have been different in India. For example, while the feminist movement in the West did experience ridicule, and even outright hostility, especially in the mass media, feminists in India (as distinguished from the oppressed women they try to represent) have, by and large, not been rudely treated. Sometimes they even get disproportionate attention. The mainstream mass media has gone out of its way to give favourable publicity to feminists and their work. The media created this space for feminists without resistance. Their support has been fairly uncritical on the whole. Yet, the vocabulary used by feminists in India is nevertheless often one that is used by a persecuted movement, and India’s mass media are often portrayed as though they have responded as critically toward Indian feminists as have many sections of the western media.

Most feminist groups in the West who run homes for battered women aim primarily to offer the moral support required by a woman making the transition from dependence on a husband to self-dependence, in a context where natal families are not usually available to offer this support. In India, hardly any women require simple moral support - they are in dire need of economic and social support. So a home for battered women, like a home for widows, inevitably turns into a few token charitable establishments which provide a subsistence level survival. Charity, by itself, cannot be said to further women’s equality. The battered women’s homes run by women’s organizations most often end up trying to persuade the marital families of these women to accept them back on slightly improved terms. Only rarely have we been able to help women carve out independent lives.

Yet, such is the hypnotic power of feminist ideology that comes from the West that, despite our different experience of dealing with women in distress, setting up refuges and shelters continues to be presented as one of the key components in resolving problems of battering and maltreatment. This is so even though the movement in the West for setting up shelters and refuges has lost much of its steam because even there it is not proving to be as effective a remedy against domestic violence as the movement originally hoped.

It is unfortunate that the import of ideology follows a pattern similar to that of other imports, for example, that of certain technologies and drugs. Many things known to be obsolete or unworkable and therefore discarded in the West continue to be dumped in third world countries. Likewise, ideas and institutions which have been discarded by major elements in the feminist movement in the West continue to be advocated here as appropriate feminist responses.

It is not just that issues and campaigns have been imported. There has also been an attempt to emotionally live through the responses of the women’s movement in the West, even though the situations women face have been different in India. For example, while the feminist movement in the West did experience ridicule, and even outright hostility, especially in the mass media, feminists in India (as distinguished from the oppressed women they try to represent) have, by and large, not been rudely treated. Sometimes they even get disproportionate attention. The mainstream mass media has gone out of its way to give favourable publicity to feminists and their work. The media created this space for feminists without resistance. Their support has been fairly uncritical on the whole. Yet, the vocabulary used by feminists in India is nevertheless often one that is used by a persecuted movement, and India’s mass media are often portrayed as though they have responded as critically toward Indian feminists as have many sections of the western media.

All these factors seriously inhibit and stunt the process of understanding the reality of women’s lives in India. Women’s struggles in India have followed quite a different course. However, feminist scholarship has often failed to provide an appropriate means of analysis. Its literature is subject to wide swings with every change in fashion in the West: structuralism yesterday, deconstruction or postmodernism today.

The International Bandwagon
In the West, feminism undoubtedly played a liberating role for women. The differences in impact there and here are due to the channels through which this ideology is today reaching third world countries. In the West, feminism evolved from women’s own struggles against oppressive power structures which excluded them from equal participation in many aspects of the economic, social and political life of their society - for example, denial of the right to vote or exclusion from universities and other professional institutions. As a result, an important component of western feminism has been a radical and anti-authoritarian thrust.

However, the bulk of third world women who got exposed to the ideology of western feminism did so at a stage when western feminists, after years of struggle, began succeeding in occupying a few positions of power and influence in various institutions, especially universities and international funding agencies. Through Western feminist pressure and influence more money began to be made available for what came to be called women’s projects as well as for women’s studies programs in universities, first in the West and later in the third world countries.
Thus, in India, new opportunities were made available for a small number of western educated women who gravitated towards feminism. Being absorbed in international feminist circles brought upward mobility in jobs and careers, and invitations to international conferences and study programs. This access to jobs and grants, especially in universities, came relatively easy for those calling themselves feminists as compared to those unversed in feminist rhetoric. This was contrary to the experiences of western feminists who had to struggle hard to find acceptance in professions for themselves. Since feminism brought with it a certain amount of easy international mobility for many third world feminists, the ideological domination of western feminism and the resultant importation of frequently inappropriate issues was absorbed uncritically. In this context, the use of radical anti-establishment rhetoric borrowed by Indian feminists from the early stages of the western feminist movement appears especially inappropriate.

The process of mindless import of issues is most evident in many of the international conferences. Third world feminists are invited to such conferences with the expectation that they will join the campaign on whatever issues are currently fashionable in the West. Those who have resisted or expressed reservations are usually excluded. To give just one example: some years ago I was invited by a leading German feminist, Maria Mies to attend a conference on reproductive technologies to be held in her country. However, since the invitation letter mentioned that those who attended the conference would be expected to campaign against the use of certain new forms of contraception and reproductive technologies being developed in the West, I wrote back saying that while I was willing to discuss these issues, I was not prepared to commit myself in advance because, on the basis of available information, I had not yet been convinced about the need to oppose all these reproductive technologies. I was summarily told that in that case they would cancel the invitation they had extended.

In most cases, third world feminists end up becoming part of so-called international campaigns on the basis of materials that present only a partial picture of the issues. They are often without access to any sources of independent research and investigation, even when the issue requires careful study, interpretation and evaluation of specialized technical data. The campaign against injectable contraceptives, launched through newspaper articles about a decade ago, is one of many examples of how many third world feminists end up taking up cudgels on this or that issue without doing proper homework. This campaign was launched without even finding out whether these methods were being used in India and if so, how widespread their use was, leave alone conducting careful evaluations within India to assess the negative side effects of these contraceptives in comparison to other available options. The opposition was based on campaign material prepared in the West using data from some of the inconclusive studies available at that time. It seemed foolish for us to set such a high priority on a campaign here against something we were not even sure was being used in India, while we had not paid sufficient attention to higher priority issues such as the millions of deaths being caused in India due to lack of availability of safe contraceptives for the majority of women, and the government pushing sterilization operations as the preferred method of contraception, performing them under extremely unsafe and unhygienic conditions, causing serious health problems for millions of poor women. Nevertheless, a whole spate of articles by Indian feminists continue to be written on the subject, based mostly on data provided by their western counterparts rather than any independent investigations within this country. Often issues are picked up simply because funds are available to work on these issues while they are not available for other more pressing priorities. Thus the dependence on funding agencies causes an undue emulation of the changing fashions in the West. 

Labels Tell Very Little
Apart from serious ideological reservations, there are more practical reasons for refusing to call Manushi a feminist magazine. The use of the term “feminist” does not tell me enough about those who use the term to describe themselves. It, of course, tells me that in some way they believe in women’s equality, but so do many non-”feminists”. It is possible to be a Gandhian, a liberal, a Marxist, and believe in women’s equality with men. Experience has shown that those who call themselves feminists may disagree with each other on almost all possible issues, including the definition of women’s rights and freedoms.

I have often been asked reproachfully by feminists: “How can you refuse to join the campaign on such and such issue if you are a feminist?” But, on many important issues concerning women, I often find myself differing more with current feminist opinion than with other political groups not claiming to be feminist. One way of resisting being dragged into currently fashionable feminist issues on which I hold a differing position was to learn to say: “I do not call myself a feminist, though I am committed to the struggle for women’s rights. Let us discuss the concrete facts of the case and consider the pros and cons of the approach being proposed and find out if we share any common ground, instead of starting out by assuming an overall solidarity or agreement just because we all assume we are feminists.”

Let me illustrate the point. Some feminists have campaigned and lobbied for more stringent legislation and tougher implementation of laws to deal with obscenity or the degrading portrayal of women. I have had serious reservations regarding their approach and could not make common cause with them on this issue, despite my abhorrence of insulting images of women. My reservations were not related to a lack of commitment to women’s equality but to my mistrust of the State machinery and of attempts to arm the State with even more repressive powers than it already has, in the name of curbing pornography. I find this a risky and unacceptable way of fighting for women’s dignity. In this case, my commitment to freedom of expression assumed primacy.

Similarly, a number of feminists welcomed the death penalty for wife murderers, as they did in the Sudha Goel murder case or when it was included as part of the anti-sati law after the protests about the killing of Roop Kanwar. I continue to demand an end to capital punishment, no matter what the crime, based on my objection to the legitimization of killing by the State machinery, even when the pretext may be protection of women. A similar conflict arose over the Muslim Women’s Bill of 1986, where a supposedly feminist position became the pretext for a large section of opinion-makers to stir up anti-Muslim hysteria. This could only work to the detriment of Muslim women. For this reason, even Shah Bano decided to withdraw her case challenging provisions of Muslim personal law. Thus, the position one takes on various issues is not guided solely by considerations of women’s equality - other considerations do come in, whether or not they are acknowledged.

Therefore, I find that the use of feminism as a label does not guarantee anything. It does not provide sufficiently significant information about people’s perspective. Someone calling herself/ himself a feminist need not necessarily have better insights into women’s predicament than those who do not call themselves feminists. Over the last 10 years of editing Manushi, we have often received articles from women who called themselves feminist. Often, the writers assumed that merely by labeling their articles “feminist” they were guaranteed not only ideological correctness but also superior grasp of the issues. However, in judging the worth of a piece of writing we have never tried to ascertain whether or not the writer is a feminist or an adherent of any other ism. When judging the worth of our own writing or that of others, we find it more useful to ask: Does it make sense? Has it got the facts of the situation right? Does it take into account the many sided versions of a situation or does it oversimplify reality to fit it into a preconceived notion of what the situation ought to be? Will the solution proposed lead society towards more humane and egalitarian norms, and expand the horizons of people’s freedom rather than further restricting them? Does it aid oppressed people to survive and make greater efforts to throw off their oppression?

An important reason for Manushi’s survival has been its ability to keep a deliberate distance from many of the preoccupations of western and Indian feminists as well as from the wars between various other isms in India. Paradoxically, this has enabled us to have a genuine, mutually beneficial interaction with many western feminists and believers in other isms. It has enabled us to reach a much wider cross section of concerned people as well as to keep our minds less fettered.

Finally, all this does not mean I do not have an ideology. I do, although it does not have a name. I would like to see a world in which the means for a dignified life are available to all human beings equally, where the polity and economy are decentralized so that people have greater control over their own lives, where the diversity of groups and individuals is respected and non-discrimination and equality are institutionalized at all levels.

I believe in a non-authoritarian politics of consensus and non-violence and my immediate political goals include: working to ensure the survival needs of all, especially of vulnerable groups; working for the accountability of governments to the citizens with minimal State control over people’s lives; ensuring social and political space to minority groups for the evolution of their identities; and moving towards the lessening of economic disparities. A primary motive in my life is working for women’s equality and freedom in all areas of life.

I do not rule out the possibility that if in the future any ism arises that seems to me to be sufficiently specific to our culture and our times in a way that it can creatively further the goals listed above, among others, I may choose to accept it. However, I do not feel any sense of loss or disadvantage in working without the support of an ism. In fact, it gives me a much greater sense of freedom in trying to work out meaningful responses to our specific social situation, for I have to assume full responsibility for my political ideas. I cannot blame any ism or others for the mistakes I make.

Madhu Kishwar

Madhu Kishwar
इक उम्र असर होने तक… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …اک عمر اثر ہونے تک