hyphenated twentysomething

 

I thought I would post this interesting transcript of Suketu Mehta's speech from India Today Conclave 2006 with the theme of "Bridging the Divide."  India Today is a South-Asian magazine and the purpose of the conference was to bring together leaders from various arenas to discuss India's future.

 

INDIA TODAY, the largest and most influential weekly newsmagazine in South Asia, presents the fifth INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE, an international event that will see a convergence of great minds to chart the future of India in relation to the world. (link)

 

Mehta makes some interesting comments on his observations of traditional vs modern marriages, the roles of women, similarities and differences between NY women and Bombay women, relationships between men and women or between same sexes, and the evolution and role of feminism and its counterpart, machoism. In the end, roles of women will differ based on their location (ie urban vs. rural or NY vs Calcutta) and power structures will differentiate depending on the relationships between women and men, and between women and women. However, women and their roles should not be labeled, boxed, and stereotyped into some neat little box just because their culture, religion, or society perceives them to be. Some women are modern, some are more traditional, some are aggressive, and some are passive. Some are athletic and some are clumsy. Some have careers and some don't. Some are mothers and some are not. Some are married and some are single. But none of these contrasts denies the fact that women are strong, nurturing beings who deserve the right to form their own identities without being subjugated to what "society" tells them to be. More importantly, they are humans like the rest of us and should be treated as such. Moreover, as Mehta points out in his speech, the strongest people he ever saw were the dance girls in Bombay. Sure many would like to write them off as dirty, uneducated, and corruptive beings who should be ignored. But with deeper insight, one will notice that they too have lives, families, and in their own ways contribute to feminism and the meaning of being a strong woman. Of course, this is a much more complex topic, but my point is that being woman and being proud of it, willing to fight and defend it, does not equate you to being an extreme, man-hating feminist. It simply means that you realize that women too have special needs and their own rights, and that they themselves, dictate how they want to live their life.

 

Moreover, women of today from Chicago to Bombay are making great strides in all fields and are great leaders, mothers, teachers, inspirers. And yet it should not be forgotten that violence, abuse, and ignorance of women still exists and that it will exist for a long time. Yes, many women in India and around the world are still treated as inferiors and subject to violence. However, a lot of women are also independent, educated, and hold powerful positions. Let's not look at women in just these two black and white categories.  Instead lets explore all of what women have to offer and what they can be, even the grey areas, in all parts of the world.

 

But what's most important is that these two ideas, feminism and machoism, can co-exist and even blend to create powerful women when one puts down all their labels, and is simply a humanist. When one is willing to be strong, passionate, moral, and understanding of each others' needs whether it be at the workplace or in a personal relationship, then only will we create meaningful dialogues and build better relationships (even between the most extreme feminsts and machoists). Of course, this is easier said than done. But hopefully we can all just be better human beings in our own way and create our own identites, appreciating our own traits, while also the differences in others.

 

I particularily like these paragraphs from his speech:

 

But the Westerners are also partly right. Last year, five thousand women were burnt alive because their families couldn't give the dowry their husbands' families demanded. In the last century, fifty million Indian girls were aborted or killed immediately after birth, for the simple crime of being female. More than half of all Indian women are illiterate, compared to a third of Indian men. These are issues where men and women can should not just be talking together but fighting together. You don't have to use the 'f-word' - you don't have to be a feminist to see that a man beating a woman because her father hasn't come through with the dowry, or a woman earning half the wage for the same amount of work as a man, is just wrong. You don't have to be a feminist; you just have to be human. Humanism could replace feminism and whatever its converse is - machoism? Masochism?

The modern urban Indian woman doesn't need anybody to fight on her behalf. She's perfectly capable of taking on the world on her own. The middle-class women that I know in Delhi and Bombay are powerful, resolute, and successful. They have the love of extended families, and are far more comfortable with fathers and brothers than most of the women I've seen elsewhere. Indian women like their men. They even love some of them. And if a man expresses interest in them, they know how to handle it; they know how to say no and they know how to say yes. If their boss makes a pass at them, they are perfectly capable of kicking him in the balls; if he then denies them a raise, they know how to sue him, and win.

Please, go read his speech. If nothing else, it's thought-provoking.