It's time to clean our burdensome culture

Whenever I used to question some rituals or some rules that were imposed on us, for being a boy, or on my sisters for being a girl, I used to get a very common response, just do it, this is our culture. No one bothered to answer why. Things have not changed much in the last 30-40 years, rather I see that people have become more aggressive and sensitive about these age-old discriminatory rituals and practices. Still, certain things are questioned or imposed as they may hurt the religious sentiments of the majority or minority. Any woman not subscribing to these oppressive traditions is labeled as Western, uncultured, or worse, an anti-something (put Hindu or Muslim or any other group in the place of "something"). I wonder what fun people get in carrying the weight of this burdensome culture, why people insist on continuing with openly discriminatory practices, and why it is so difficult to understand that just because something has been practiced for centuries it does not make it right. 

Females are worst affected by these discriminatory cultural practices. In many cultures across the world, females are expected to carry the burden of cultural traditions, they are at the receiving end of any rituals that require obedience or submissiveness. They are expected to fast, expected to serve, expected to cover their body, expected to take the blame for blatant sexual assaults directed towards them, expected to bear the burden of parenthood, expected to protect their and their family's honor, the list is long and includes different things based on which part of the world we consider. The time has come for all of us to let go of this burdensome culture, no matter how old it is. Just because it is old, or going on for ages, it doesn't become worthy of protection, it does not become right, and definitely, it does not become acceptable to discriminate. Discrimination is very subtle in many of these rituals, after all, the people who designed them were not stupid, they wanted to create a patriarchal system that could go on forever, conditioned, both, men and women so that both can carry these traditions with equal faith and conviction. This is why it is not easy to fight against these discriminatory traditions because many who suffer and get discriminated against by these traditions support them thinking that these are sacred and need to be protected. My personal experience is that fighting against these discriminatory and burdensome traditions is one of the most difficult challenges one can take, mainly because many times, you have to fight against your own. One needs to stand up against their own parents or other family members, it is complete hypocrisy to speak against these things on social media or other places and keep mum when it happens within our own family. I have seen many who claim to be progressive and against any type of discrimination keeping mum when their own parents or other so-called respected relatives practice some of these discriminatory traditions. This type of double face is very common nowadays in the era of social media where people have different personalities in the virtual world and different in the real world.

The time has come to get rid of this discriminatory and burdensome culture, we need to create our own traditions and culture that suit our time and place. Old is not always gold, we need to evaluate old traditions with our current set of standards and get rid of the junk or modify it to suit the needs and demands of our time. Let's start cleaning our culture, during the festival season it is not only important to clean our bodies and house, but let's clean our culture also.

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic.  

Discriminatory traditions and my battle against them

The topic of discriminatory traditions is not limited to any particular country, region, or religion, it is a widespread phenomenon. Almost all cultures and religions of the world have traditions or rituals that are openly discriminatory on its face. The discrimination can be about gender, marital status, or something else. Even today, many of these traditions are still followed with the utmost respect and dedication. There are many who find some value in these traditions, many also believe that there is nothing discriminatory in them, some even think that these traditions need to be protected just because of what they are, age-old traditions. While there can be some intelligent arguments to justify them or some need-based justifications for their existence, personally, I have not found any logical justification to rationalize most of them. I have been battling against these discriminatory traditions from the moment I became aware of their blatant discriminatory nature. One important disclaimer before you read any further, I was born and raised in a Hindu family and spent three decades of my life in India, hence, all my personal experiences are related to discriminatory traditions belonging to those two identifiers, this does not mean that such traditions only exist in India or Hinduism. People who are familiar with similar traditions in other religions or countries should feel free to comment about them, in this post, I am going to stick with my personal experiences.

I have already written about one such festival Karva Chauth. However, Karva Chauth is just one of many festivals where discrimination based on marital status exists, many others exclude the participation of widows. I personally witnessed this discrimination because I saw both my grandmothers not celebrating any of these festivals. Both, my paternal and maternal grandmother lost their husbands early in their lives, they spent most part of their life as a widow because the second marriage was out of the question for them. I know stories of quite a few widows who lost their husbands in their early twenties (some even before that) and spent the rest of their lives as a widow, but I don't know a single man who was forced to live as a widower because he lost his wife so early in his life. This impacted me really hard. There are many festivals in India that only married women whose husbands are alive are supposed to celebrate. Just a few years back there used to be a blanket ban on widows to participate in any so-called celebrations, thankfully, this has changed now, but still, there are festivals that widows are not supposed to celebrate just because their husbands are not alive. The irony is that most of these festivals claim to be about love between a husband and wife, but hardly there is any participation of husbands, and if at all husbands participate, they do as if they are some revered entities to which their wives need to be grateful or worship them just for being what they are, a husband. The sole purpose of most of these festivals is to make a wife pray for her husband's well-being and be thankful that her husband is still alive. Therefore, one of the justifications offered for not allowing widows is that as their husband is not alive widows don't have any use of such a festival. People don't even realize how insensitive this justification is. it must also be noted that there are many such festivals where a wife is supposed to celebrate the existence of her husband. But I have not seen similar festivals where a husband has to perform any ritual for his wife's well-being or be thankful for her being alive, nor men are barred from any social gatherings or forced to dress any differently based on whether their spouse is alive or not.

Also, these festivals are celebrated by many: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, in cities and in villages, within India or abroad. The appeal and popularity of such traditions are really widespread. Many men and women who celebrate these festivals know women within their own families who can't celebrate such festivals because their husband is no more. These people feel bad for such women, but that's it, they do not think that these traditions are in any way discriminatory or insensitive. Even the women who are at the receiving end of these traditions don't feel that they are being discriminated against, these women blame their own misfortune or bad karma (if not this life then from their previous life) for their fate. I never saw my grandmothers complaining about the discrimination that they faced on countless occasions in their lives. They just blamed their fate, nothing else. Most of the victims are not even aware that they are being victimized, and this is the saddest part. 

My battle against these traditions started when I became aware of their discriminatory nature. As a child, I was not aware of discrimination in any form, not because it was not happening around me, but because I was not sensitized to detect and fight against it, I was taught obedience and respect. However, the training of obedience and respect did not stop me from opposing them since I became aware of the discriminatory nature of these traditions. I am trying to change them within my own family. Honestly, most of my attempts have been unsuccessful so far. I have no shame in accepting my failure and I am very well aware that there is a strong possibility that I may not be successful in changing any of these in my lifetime, but this doesn't deter me from fighting my battle. I don't participate in any such rituals, some of them are celebrated within my own family, I am not part of it, I oppose them, but the reality is that they still continue. There is also a possibility that one day things may change, and people around me might agree that I have a point, whether this will happen or not I don't know, but I know that my battle against such discrimination will continue.    

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic. 

 

Prevalent sexism on social media

I have noticed prevalent sexism in social media conversations, especially on WhatsApp. Unfortunately, I notice sexism very easily and I am very sensitive to it. I notice it multiple times a day, in many WhatsApp messages. I receive, jokes which people forward to me, comments they make on various social media platforms, traditions they talk about, traditions they praise about, and many other things. I tirelessly try to point it out to people around me, especially to people from my own family because first, I should make my own family aware of this prevalent sexism before I try to change rest of the world. Many times people who forward or say those things don't even realize that there is something sexist in it. The main reason behind this mindset is a deep cultural history of sexism in every society. Developed nations are taking conscious efforts to remove this sexist mindset but in countries like India with strong patriarchal culture, these things still go unchallenged. To give a simple example about this, yes I have to receive a single husband-wife related joke in Indian groups where a wife is not depicted as a money spender, totally dependent on the husband, non earning partner. By default, every joke or message has this image of the wife, occasionally there might be a message to praise sacrifice of women and laud their tolerance and dedication towards their partner, but this is again very stereotypes description of women.

I always wonder why people don't try to offer somewhat different perspective? Why even women don't take notice of such stereotyped depiction of their image? Maybe it is true that in developing countries like India there are still many wifes who are dependent on their husbands. It is not because they are any less capable of working outside their homes, but because their family structure or social and cultural settings doesn't allow them to accept any job. They are so consumed by household work, which is equally important and valuable that they can't do any other work. Traditionally, household work is valued as much as it should have been, and hence the image of stay home wifes is that they don't earn anything. This notion also results in the image of wifes as a creature who survives on husbands hard earned money without doing any hard work of their own, and all these jokes and sexist TV serials just reinforce this image on men and women's mind generations after generations.

This sexist behavior and attitude need to be questioned, I do it from my side. I get into trouble because of this, many times people get annoyed because of my net picking small small things. But the reality is, that these small things slowly build a sexist attitude in boys and girls which subsequently becomes part of cultural nuances of our society. These things then create rigid barriers, glass ceilings, gender stereotypes, and many other things which stereotype gender roles. The only way to remove sexism is to point it out and make people aware of it. If even after that they want to continue with those jokes and that attitude it's their choice, but at least make them aware that they are being sexist. This is one basic thing we all can do to curb the prevalent sexism around us and our own family or freind circle or social group is a good place to start this.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

We need to understand, analyze and evaluate all traditions and rituals

I was born and brought up in a conservative Hindu family. There were many rituals and traditions that were followed in our family for generations, and as a child, I used to participate in them or observe them with a lot of curiosity and interest. One thing that always surprised me was that no one around me actually knew the real reason or logic behind why we follow certain traditions or perform certain rituals. They just did it because it was a practice followed by their ancestors. If anyone raised any question, then the standard answer was, "This is what our ancestors did, there must be some reason behind it and therefore we need to continue doing this." While this answer was enough to snub a curious child, it is not a rational and logical explanation to quench the thirst of an inquisitive mind. There were many questions that remained unanswered for a long time, A few of them were: why fast only on a particular day? Why not eat meat during some religious festivals? If meat is that bad, then why do people eat it at all? How come it's good to eat it on a particular day but not good on any of those so-called auspicious occasions? Why women are not allowed to worship during their menstrual cycle? Why feed rice only to crows among all birds to pacify souls of dead people? There were many questions like this and I tried to find answers to many of them on my own. Actually, it is not that difficult to search for answers to many of these questions, mostly it is a matter of applying some common sense. But, the first necessary step is to ask a question, if your faith stops you from asking these questions, then you may never be able to find any answers related to any of your doubts.

Many of these traditions were the result of some sort of social needs of that era. Sometimes it was a combination of medical, hygiene, and economic reasons. It makes lots of sense if we analyze these things with respect to that time, but things don't look that rational and logical when we do the same things today without even evaluating if we need to practice these things today or not. Without the availability of personal hygiene products, menstruation can be a difficult thing to handle, maybe at that time it made sense to quarantine menstruating women and force them to rest. Occasional fasting can be good for our health, so it made sense to fast a few days of the year. Rice was an easy and cheap agricultural product and a crow was one of the abundant bird species that never attained the status of being a pet bird, so maybe it was a great idea to have some ritual where everyone could feed this ignored bird so that they also survive. Meat is a very tasty food, people eating meat might get addicted to its taste and consume it to threaten the existence of those animals, that's why they might have restricted consumption of meat on some particular days. Understanding and analyzing these things is very necessary and we all should do it. We can go on like this, finding some kind of explanation or reasoning for each ritual and tradition, but this is not at all the reason to practice these things blindly in today's world.

It doesn't make sense to restrict women from worshiping during menstruation when proper means are available to deal with personal hygiene. A healthy diet is important, with so much medical advice available, what and how much food one should eat should be a personal choice. Like this, we can rebut most of these outdated practices to which people tend to cling just because it is part of their culture. Cultural heritage is undoubtedly something we should study and preserve for the reference of our future generations, but we should not get trapped in it and stop moving forward. So, please try to understand and analyze each and every tradition or ritual, try to find logic and reasoning behind it, if they are outdated then don't hesitate to discard them, if they need any change then change them, but please don't get stuck in the web of cultural dogma. This heritage and knowledge should act as a launching pad for future discoveries and progress not a stinking trap to get stuck in the past.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Let's see if age old discriminatory traditions withstand the challenge posed by modern women.

Women empowerment is still a subject of debate in many societies. Many developed countries are still trying to work out many policy changes which can help women to be a part of work force and contribute equally in all sectors of country's development. Many developing or undeveloped countries are still battling with many issues where discrimination against women is still practiced without any remorse or guilt. Recent issues related with entry of women in some temples or mosques of India is ideal example of it. Actually struggle for rights of some oppressed class is not new for any civilization, many great people have fought for causes like these, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is one such example. This time it is good to see that the challenger to these age old traditions is the group of women, they themselves are fighting for their rights, there is not some political party or some charismatic leader leading their cause but it is a group of women who are leading this fight. I believe that this is really good thing, unless and until women themselves realize about discrimination against them and fight against it any number of laws or policies will have very limited effect. In reality there are already many rules, laws and constitutional rights which forbid any type of gender discrimination but in reality all those things just remain on paper and some age old traditions or beliefs take precedence over any law or rights. So it is good that women themselves decided to take on this task to challenge some of these discriminatory traditions. If they are really serious about this challenge then I am sure these traditions are facing the toughest threats they ever faced.

In reality, every religion has some discriminatory practice or tradition against women, it doesn't matter what their book or manual says one can easily notice that men and women are treated differently by every religion. For centuries most of these discriminatory practices were unchallenged but in last few decades things started to change. Many of these movements which challenge such traditions started on really small scale but they gained momentum as more and more women became aware of this discrimination. I guess they realized that just having an academic discussion about equality or conducting debates about feminism is not enough to change the things on ground. Many of these beliefs are centuries old, very strong opposition from section who is suffering because of them is required to change these things, just discussion and debates are not enough. I am glad that this is happening in India, I am sure things will change. Already many things have changed so this movement also will bring some desirable change. It might take some time but governments and courts can't ignore these protests for long, they definitely need to do something about this. I hope there will be some discussion about these issues with involvement of both parties and something positive will come out of all this. Actually it is not just about right to pray or enter the temple, this is a question about equality. One issue related with entry in temple is already in supreme court, this decision might act as a catalyst to change things across India, so a lot depends on what decision supreme court of India gives in this matter. Historically courts have always been more progressive compared to respective governments in such matters. On some occasions government reversed court orders on some sensitive matters for short term political gains, so it will be interesting to see what happens in this case. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright : Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Seeing the Girl - a classic example of gender-bias

"Seeing the Girl" is one of the very important processes in the case of arranged marriage. This process may sound outrageous or very backward to many who don't know about the process of arranged marriage, but it is still a very important part of arranged marriage and it's still practiced widely.  Also, this is not just limited to villages or rural areas, but educated people, living in big cities or abroad also practice this ritual. I always felt that this process was a very humiliating process for prospective brides. I felt bad for them that they had to go through this and always admired their courage and the efforts they took to go through this process without complaining.

The process itself is not very standard and can differ widely from region to region or family to family. In many places, they just want to make sure that it's the same girl (whose photo they saw), and that she doesn't have some obvious issues that were not disclosed to them (like some disability, etc.). Some families want girls to display their talents like singing, dancing, cooking, etc. Some people take proper interview of that girl by asking a variety of questions starting from her hobbies to her career goals to her opinion about living in a joint family, etc. So, the process can vary from place to place and family to family. I think this process was necessary for an era of child marriages, especially when women (of any age) were not allowed to go out of home and men-women interaction was minimal outside of the family. During that time it might have been necessary to go and interview potential brides. "Swayamvara" was one unique tradition in ancient India where a girl used to choose her future husband from a list of suitable candidates, this ritual gave all the right to girl to choose whoever they liked as their future life partner, but this was in ancient India, today one can only see very distorted version of this on some reality shows.

I am not against arranged marriage or social traditions where people can meet and try to know each other before deciding to get married. But having a social gathering to know each other is one thing and when a group of people analyzes physically and interviews only girls as if she is some article they want to purchase is a totally different thing. In most cases, people who should be actually involved (bride and groom) never even get a chance to interact with each other, which is a major flaw of this process (especially in very conservative families). When I expressed my desire to have a face-to-face meeting with my wife before our marriage everyone in our family was shocked and they were wondering what purpose this meeting will serve? They never heard of any boy meeting the girl before marriage in their community, so it was confusing and shocking to them.

I feel this process of seeing the girl should be abandoned for good or at least made gender-neutral. A bride has an equal right to get to know her future groom, so the process should be balanced for both. It should be entirely left to the prospective couple to decide whether they want to go through this process or not and the decision of marriage also should be theirs. I am sure that today's generation is mature enough to take decisions about such an important step in their lives. Let's give them a chance I am sure they won't disappoint their elders. After all, it's their life and they are more concerned about it than anyone else, so just believe in them and give them a chance.

Thanks for reading and please share your views about this topic. 

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)

Domestic violence and masculinity

The latest episode of 'Satyamev Jayate' (June 17th) dealt with the issue of domestic violence. We might think that in today's era of women's liberation when there are so many feminist groups, and many women working in various sectors issue of domestic violence is not that serious. Our world is touching new heights every day in the area of science and technology, we are conquering new frontiers almost every day in many fields but there are still some areas such as our attitude towards domestic violence, the situation of women in society, cultural and traditional attitude towards them are some of the areas which need massive improvement. People normally think that the issue of violence in the family is strictly a personal matter and should not be resolved with the help of the criminal justice system or should not be discussed in public for the sake of the honor of that family. This thinking is very strong and still pervades today. 

Today we have many laws that are designed to help domestic violence victims and help deliver justice in these cases but our social and cultural norms still nurture culture or attitude of violence against women. This violence is not always physical in nature, many times it's mental, social, and personal suppression, it's used as a means of patriarchal control over women. In every culture or society, men have created various norms, rules, or traditions that help them to keep control over women through social, economic, and physical dominance. We have constantly ignored this very important issue which is an integral part of our social health in the name of protecting family structure and sanctity. Domestic violence is an under-reported crime in many societies. The causes of domestic violence include strong beliefs about masculinity and male dominance.

Many cultures and societies have some stereotypical images of men and women, they have very rigid rules about what men should do, how they should behave, what type of personality they should have and similarly, they have a set of rules for women. Men are supposed to be masculine, full of power, dominant, expected to perform, and expected to lead and women are supposed to be patient, obedient, kind, caring, and full of many so-called feminist qualities. Current conceptions of masculinity and femininity make it very difficult for the victims to come out of these relationships. Our society or family also doesn't make it easy for them, strangely the whole counseling is directed only towards victims. We tell them to adjust, tell them to be patient, be tolerant, and put the onus of maintaining family structure on them. WHY?

Most cultures, religions, and religious scriptures (I am trying to be very lenient to say most actually all of them) don't give equal status or rights to women. People may not accept this and may give many reasons to justify that whatever is written in those books can put very intelligent arguments in favor of them but the fact is when it comes to women's power and equality they fail miserably. But why I am blaming these books who can not defend themselves or putting the blame on religion or traditions or so-called culture. Why can't I leave them alone? These books, our culture, and traditions shape our thinking, structure our societies, and make people believe in certain patterns, and rules that they think are designed by God, transferred to them from generations, and which was received directly from that superpower so one cannot challenge them. According to men, if the superpower, the creator of this world (God) has given them the right to dominate then who are they to change it, it's their natural right. Even in most religions, the gender of God or Godhead is male, the basic cause of this problem is religion. I know many of us won't agree with my diagnosis but this is what I think.

What is society or culture after all, from where we get it? It's not the product of the last few years or even a few centuries. It's the product of our existence on this planet. Many traditions we can trace thousands of years back, their foundations are very solid, so solid that even if we know that some things are wrong we can not challenge them or change them and we are very proud of them. Yes, many of them are good, and they teach us many good things I won't deny that, at the same time many are bad, totally unfair towards particular gender or sections of society, and need to be condemned no matter in which book they are written. Let's fight them. My friend Anand Pawar (http://www.samyakindia.org/) who was featured on this show and expressed his views very aptly works in this area and I am really proud of his work and efforts. Once we decide that we want to change the world around us, then we can bring any change that we want. Let's be the change that we want to bring, let's start with ourselves. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views.

References:

1. http://www.samyakindia.org/

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing at vvt1974@gmail.com)