A Breath of Fresh Feminine Air

A Breath of Fresh Feminine Air
Praful Bidwai
he News International, 24 September 2005

The past ten days have brought depressing news to us South Asians. The Manmohan Singh-Pervez Musharraf encounter in New York confirmed that there’s an impasse in the India-Pakistan dialogue. The two leaders’ speeches at the United Nations were replete with uncomplimentary references to each other’s positions, and reminiscent of the point-scoring India-Pakistan rivalry so starkly evident till early last year. Their four hour-long dinner meeting could not fully reverse the damage despite some efforts at recomposition of differences. Unlike in April, they couldn’t summon the courage to say the peace process is "irreversible".

Even more disheartening were Musharraf’s offensive remarks to The Washington Post on rape in Pakistan as a money-making racket and his intemperate attack on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who fight for women’s rights, whom he just fell short of branding as traitors. He said: "A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped".

When this outburst was greeted with condemnation, not just by women’s groups, but even the Canadian Prime Minister, the Pakistan government resorted to a familiar trick: denial. It alleged that Musharraf’s comments were distorted. The Washington Post has since replayed the tapes of the interview with three of its reporters and confirmed that "Musharraf—who was surrounded by aides who took notes and also recorded the interview—was accurately quoted". Instead of apologising for his remarks, Musharraf launched yet another attack on NGOs, accusing them of following anti-national agendas.

Why should this dismay and shock us here in the subcontinent? For one, Musharraf demonstrated a deplorable failure to understand rape as a form of sexual violence directed at women. By its very definition, rape is perpetrated against unwilling women and violates their bodies. The claim that any woman would willingly get raped to secure residency rights in the West or become "a millionaire" beggars belief.

For another, such attitudes are rooted in nauseatingly patriarchal ideas and a perverted notion of patriotism: Mukhtaran Mai, who created history by taking on the high-caste criminals who ordered her to be raped, must not be allowed to travel abroad because she might give Pakistan "a bad name". This "my-country, right-or-wrong" attitude mocks the idea of universal human rights, which do not derive from a particular nationality, but are intrinsic to all men and women.

And for a third, South Asian societies are characterised by vicious forms of male-supremacism and social hierarchy. Although violence against women is universal, it acquires a particular grotesque dimension in our region. Discrimination against women is structured, systematic and visibly ubiquitous. It occurs right from the foetal stage, through childhood, to adulthood and all the way to the grave. Surveys too numerous to be cited show that women are denied equal access to education, healthcare, even basic nutrition in our countries. Poverty is gendered; so is exclusion and social disempowerment.

India rates higher than Pakistan in female literacy and other gender empowerment measures. India’s Gender Development Index rank in the UN Human Development Report is 98, Pakistan’s, 107. But India is probably no better when it comes to violence against women or denial of their right to develop into full human beings. The average age at marriage in our societies is barely 15. This means that girls altogether skip the stage of adolescence, which is crucial to their growth into people with independent agency, who can confidently deal with the world and take responsibility for their actions.

Recent surveys show that 42 percent of Indian women suffer physical abuse. A woman is burnt to death, killed in other ways, or driven to suicide every six minutes. Discrimination, including female foeticide and infanticide, has caused the disappearance of 180 million Indian women in the past century. Anti-women violence is a means of social control and "discipline". This can only be sustained through the internalisation of patriarchy, and its rationalisation through pernicious ideologies, including religious beliefs.

Musharraf isn’t the only South Asian leader to have trivialised rape. Some years ago, Kerala’s Chief Minister rationalised the rape of a White tourist by saying casual sex is a way of life in the West; "they have sex like we have tea".

The remark betrays utter illiteracy and an inability to distinguish between rape and consensual sex. It’s the more condemnable because it comes from Kerala, India’s most literate state—the only one with a female-male population ratio (52:48) approaching the natural-biological pattern. Kerala’s human development indices remain unmatched in the Third World. Even worse, the Chief Minister was a Communist Party member. Communists supposedly stand for modernity, equality and gender justice. They are India’s only parties which uncompromisingly support one-third reservation for women in legislatures.

The only silver lining to this South Asian dark cloud is women’s growing resistance to patriarchy, both through an assertive feminist movement and in more subtle, understated ways such as music, theatre, dance and literature, besides analytical writing, which challenge patriarchal stereotypes. Women’s literature has acquired a distinct identity, especially in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They now boast of exceptionally creative and accomplished women writers. Writing not just in the local languages, but also in English, they explore and develop a specifically feminine sensibility in ways unknown before.

Like other fields of creativity, literature too is crossing borders and boundaries. One of the foremost examples of this is the publication this week in India of a selection of short stories in English by Pakistani women writers in a volume entitled "And the World Changed". The anthology is edited by the distinguished Karachi-based literacy critic and writer Muneeza Shamsie, and published by "Women Unlimited", that remarkably feminist venture, and associate of "Kali for Women", South Asia’s pioneering feminist publishing house.

This volume of stories by 24 women (itself a very impressive number) comes as a breath of fresh air. Until recently, the larger English-speaking world, and the subcontinent in particular, was only acquainted with a handful of Pakistani women writers such as Bapsi Sidhwa, Sara Suleri, Kamila Shamsie and Fahmida Riaz. Now, it will be exposed to many more writers who explore a wide range of genres spanning fables, fantasies, memoirs and autobiographical accounts, as well as "realist" story-telling.

The anthology, being co-published in Pakistan by Oxford University Press, displays some of the finest traits in the new fiction of South Asia, including the diaspora. The stories are all originally written in English—a testimony to its emergence as a language we have naturalised, adapted and made our own.

"There is plenty of diversity in the stories", the volume’s editor Muneeza Shamsie told me. "Diversity of experience, social background, sensibility, location and style was one criterion for selection. Yet, a common theme runs through them, that of a search or quest for identity, for the past, its meaning for the present, and the complexity of what it means to be a women in our part of the world".

A cursory glance suggests the volume is exciting. Shamsie and three other contributors—Feryal Ali Gauhar, Sabyn Javeri-Jilani and Humera Afridi—are now in India. It’s a safe bet that they will be heard in public panel discussions, in small intimate groups, and interactions with the media. More important, they will be widely read with interest—and delight.

Copyright 2005