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Old Traditions Can Be Broken

Everything can be taken from a person
but one thing: the last of human
freedoms – to choose one’s attitude
in any given set of circumstances, to
choose one’s own way.
_{Viktor Frankl}

Who is responsible for the suffering of our women? And what is the solution?

Although the impression given is that women are oppressed by men, this is not always the case. As people are quick to point out there are many cases where women are the instigators or perpetrators. Why do women, who have themselves faced inequality and oppression, turn around and hurt other women? Let us examine several scenarios which we see occurring in the lives of women every day.

Why does a poor, uneducated woman willingly choose to eliminate her fourth daughter? Perhaps because all her other “choices” have been taken away from her: her husband refuses to take contraception and does not allow her to either; she cannot afford to bring up another child; she cannot afford another dowry; she has “had it” – had enough with the incessant cycle of childbirth, nursing and rearing over which she has no control; she is physically exhausted after years of bearing the double burden of working outside the home and taking care of her family. In her mind, an abortion is the only choice she has.

Choice in the absence of autonomy is no choice at all.

Why does a wealthy, educated woman choose to abort her daughter? Unfortunately neither wealth nor education necessarily equate with high self-esteem. Perhaps this woman has been brainwashed from childhood to accept the “reality” that sons are necessary to carry on the family line and inherit the wealth. Perhaps this woman does not have the self-esteem required to resist pressure from her husband and his family to “keep trying till we have a son.”

Young women are not born with high self-esteem. Self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem are precious gifts which her parents and society have the power to either give to her or withhold from her.

Why do some mothers-in-law oppress their daughters-in-law?

Preeta Mehta (name changed), age 31 years: Ever since the birth of her daughter, her mother-in-law hasn’t stopped berating her, pointing out that all her husband’s cousins have sons. The mother-in-law insists that to perpetuate the family name, she too must have a son. “She tells me to have an abortion if I conceive a girl,” she says. Her husband agrees with his mother. What does she herself want? “I don’t know.”
_{Shefalee Vasudev, “Missing Girl-Child”}

Women hurt women for the same reason that prisoners exploit other prisoners, and beggar children bully other beggar children on the street. It is our human nature that if we are needy and can do anything to get a little more – an extra roti, a few rupees, a little more status, power or leisure – we will do it. Within a family, if all the women are economically and socially dependent on the same male – whether the head of the household is a father, a brother or a son – and they all have to compete with each other for security, recognition, attention and love, this situation may naturally make them into each other’s enemies.

Besides, brain-washing and social conditioning are very powerful forces. In a patriarchal society women are victims of tremendous social pressure to toe the line. In the days of sati, who was it who shaped a girl’s thinking from childhood to accept the “reality” that to become a sati was her ultimate destiny? It was her own mother. Who dressed the young widow as a bride and led her to the funeral pyre to be burnt alive with her husband? It was the women around her, and they did it knowing that one day this could be their own destiny. Women hurt women because they have been conditioned to accept their own inferiority from their very infancy. This is what makes patriarchy work – gaining a woman’s complicity in her own inequality.

When a bird has been kept in a cage from its infancy and then many years later the cage door is opened, what are the chances the bird will take the opportunity to fly? She may hop out, but then will hop back into her comfort zone, even if that means being imprisoned all her life. For such a bird, the prospect of soaring is not liberating, it is frightening.

This is exactly how we have crippled so many of our women. Perhaps instead of judging them, we can find it in our hearts to have compassion for them, or at the very least, understanding. For they are victims of the system as much as the women they victimize.

When we hear about the great injustices perpetrated on women, perhaps our first reaction is to apportion blame. Who is responsible, we want to know? What are the law enforcement agencies doing? The answer to the question – who is responsible? – is not what we might expect.

To begin with, there are very few women in law enforcement. Moreover, law enforcement – the police force and the judiciary – consists of people who are drawn from society; they have the same beliefs as the rest of us. There have been numerous occasions when a policeman has turned away a hapless woman who has come to file a complaint about dowry torture, telling her kindly that a woman’s place is with her husband; telling her she should try to reconcile her differences with him.

One study conducted to assess the attitudes of judges towards violence against women found that a very large percentage of judges believed that there were certain occasions when it was justifiable for a husband to slap his wife; that the preservation of the family should be a woman’s primary concern even if she faces violence; that “provocative” clothes are an invitation to sexual assault; and that dowry has an inherent cultural value.¹⁸ These beliefs are deep-rooted in our society.

Law enforcement blames parents for the dowry system: when parents themselves give and take dowry freely, they say, it is very hard to enforce the law. And law enforcement blames both parents and doctors for the crisis caused by sex-selection: it is not easy to enforce the law, they say, when the decision to abort a girl is freely made by her parents and the doctor in a closed room in a medical clinic.

Doctors, in turn, blame the parents who come to them with the request. Many doctors believe they are fulfilling a social need; they believe that if they did not perform the abortion the parents would get it done from some other doctor anyway; and they believe that the life of the girl, if she were allowed to live, would be miserable. Many doctors believe they are being merciful to both the parents and the unborn daughter by fulfilling the parents’ wish to abort her.

How can you deny her [the mother] the right to have a son instead of a third or fourth daughter? You can’t wish away centuries of thinking by saying that boys and girls are equal ... it is better to get rid of an unwanted child than to make it suffer all its life.
_{The opinion of one doctor ¹⁹}

Parents turn around and blame society. They say societal norms, traditions and pressures have put them in such an untenable situation that they have no option but to get rid of their daughters.

And so we come full circle. The answer to the question – who is responsible? – is not pleasant. We, the society, are responsible. When we point one finger, there are three pointing back at us. We are the parents, neighbours, doctors, policemen and judges who must change our values. We are the teachers who must teach our children about equality between the sexes. We are the politicians and administrators who must implement the laws. We are the members of the media who must raise public awareness and bring about change.

We are all responsible.

Since we are all part of the problem, we must all be part of the solution. The solution lies in the choices we make – as individuals and as a society.

Human beings have a God-given gift, a quality called vivek, or discrimination: the ability to distinguish right action from wrong. Let us use this sense of discrimination to choose right actions. Let us choose to be contented, compassionate, law-abiding and loving human beings.

To make moral choices, we may have to forsake some of our traditions. Undoubtedly, this will not be easy. Our traditions and beliefs are so deep-rooted, we tend to carry them with us even when we emigrate to a different country. Today, female foeticide is prevalent in the Indian community in Western countries like the USA, Canada and the UK. And NRI Indians who come back to India to find brides command the highest rates in the dowry market.

It is hard to give up old traditions because we are proud of them. Our customs are rooted in an ancient heritage that goes back centuries. Traditions create a comfort zone: a known, familiar set of behaviours passed down by our parents and grandparents which generate a sense of security. And traditions serve a purpose: they create stability in society.

However, as a society matures and develops, old traditions give way to new. To stay healthy and in step with the times the culture adapts. Our country’s strength over the centuries has been its capability to adapt and absorb new forces, new knowledge, new thought. India’s rich and extraordinary cultural heritage is because of this. And just imagine: if we had not demonstrated the ability to give up old traditions and old ways of thinking, a woman would not be allowed to vote; she would not be educated; she would certainly not be allowed to remarry – she would probably be placed on the funeral pyre with her dead husband and burnt alive with him.

These were all traditions at one time, yet we have moved beyond them. We were able to do this because we knew in our heart that blind adherence to old, irrelevant traditions would poison and weaken our society. And we were able to do this because there were some courageous people in our society at the time who were catalysts of change.

So, where does change begin?

It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men’s attitude towards women, and in women’s attitude towards themselves.
_{Vera Brittain}

The most fundamental change in thinking must begin in the minds of women themselves.

Today a woman’s attitudes and her entire belief system are controlled by the social customs of the past. Her self-esteem is developed from the meaning that others give her. Her self-esteem depends on her ability to successfully carry out the limited roles that her community has given her. Women often lack the self-confidence and belief in their own ability to take on further roles that will emancipate them.

But the truth is that every woman holds extraordinary power within herself. She is special. She must reach beyond her inhibitions and fears to fulfil her dreams with courage and determination. And she must do this both for her own sake and for the sake of her family.

Every woman is a role model for her daughter. A woman with high self-esteem will teach her daughter to esteem and value herself. A woman who pursues her dream will free her daughter to fly.

Resistance to change is natural because old beliefs and attitudes have been ingrained in us for generations. Our mindsets are deep-rooted. They are hard to tear up from their soil. It will take great courage on the part of men to give up positions of power which have always been their domain and right. It will take great courage to move out of their comfort zone. But real change will only occur when a man’s thinking undergoes a transformation. Men must understand that empowering women will not pose a threat to them or disrupt harmony in the family and community. Rather it will enhance life, not just for them but for the entire family.

Today men have the power to raise or lower the status of the women in their lives. A woman’s status at home will largely determine her standing in the world. Respect for a woman, for her needs and aspirations, is essential, because only then will she give her best to her home and society. A happy woman will make a loving home and bring up sons and daughters who have a healthy outlook towards life.

Every man is a role model for his son. Children listen not to our words, but rather they learn from our behaviour. When a man has the courage to treat his wife with dignity and respect, he teaches his son to treat all women with dignity and respect.

There are several examples of courage from different parts of India where individual people are breaking with old traditions and allowing their conscience to speak up against the prevailing norm.

One example of change is the small village of Sheopur Kassi in Sri Ganganagar, a district with the lowest sex ratio in Rajasthan. The people of the village could see that the male-female imbalance would have far-reaching repercussions and they decided to do something about it. They celebrated a Kanya Lohri festival and honoured 101 baby girls in front of a 7000-strong crowd. This is especially significant because traditionally Lohri is a festival in which sweets are offered in a large bonfire to seek blessings for the longevity and good health of male infants. In the same village two young girls performed the last rites for their mother, breaking the age-old tradition of sons performing the last rites for parents.²⁰

Deora was a village in which for six generations and more than 100 years, no girl-child was allowed to live. Female infanticide was a tradition there. Babies were killed soon after birth in the labour room itself. It was an open secret. Everyone knew, everyone tacitly approved. If outsiders asked for a reason the villagers would say that the water in the well was such that only sons were born there. All this stopped when Indra Singh and his wife said “no more.” A daughter had been born to them just fifteen days after a son had died, and he and his wife could not bring themselves to kill her. They literally gave their daughter, Jaswant Kanwar, the gift of life.

Young Jaswant was an oddity in the village initially, but her father, who went on to become sarpanch (village headman), educated her until the eighth grade which is as far as the village school could educate any child, boy or girl. Emboldened by Indra Singh’s decision, his brother and uncle both had a daughter each. Jaswant Kanwar was married in 1998. People from all over the region came to witness the occasion. The last time the village had seen a girl’s marriage was in 1883. Today, although infanticide still occurs, it is possible to see young girls in the village. Indra Singh and his wife had the courage to break an unquestioned tradition. They were catalysts of change.²¹

Nearly 80,000 women in Rajnandgaon in Chattisgarh have come together to form self-help groups and start a successful micro-banking initiative. Known as the Maa Bamleshwari Bank, it has 5,372 branches and reaches out to every village in this district. Each self-help group is a branch that raises its own resources and makes its own decisions about lending. Within a year the bank, wholly managed and operated by women, has raised Rs 1.19 crore and disbursed Rs 70 lakh in loans in types and sizes that public-sector banks would not even think of.

“We give loans for everything from pregnancy, vaccination and medical care to buying a second-hand cycle,” says Swati Agarwal, a member of one of the groups. The loans vary in size from Rs 200 for buying seeds to Rs 10,000 for buying tractor parts. The campaign is controlled by the women of the district and does not depend on government aid.²²

Born in the backwaters of Bihar, and that too in the lower section of the caste pyramid, it was expected that Anita Kushwaha would shepherd goats, stay away from school and marry young. Her father, Janardhan Singh, a poorly-paid employee at a grocery shop, was determined to make Anita follow what girls had always been doing in Bochaha village of Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district.

But one person did not agree: Anita. She wanted to break the shackles. Now, at 21 and in the final year of a Bachelor course, Anita is an established honey-trader with an annual turnover of Rs 2.5 lakh. It was hardly easy. Anita won her first battle when, as a six-year-old, a local teacher and she persuaded her parents to let her attend school. “It wasn’t just our argument; my parents agreed because education till Class V was free,” says Anita. Since they were incapable of meeting their daughter’s schooling expenses after Class V, Anita began teaching children to pay for her education. She also took to running errands for honeykeepers from neighbouring villages who would visit her locality thanks to the litchi trees. “That’s how I learned beekeeping,” Anita says. Fired by ambition and troubled by her poverty, she took to beekeeping full time. Using her savings of Rs 5,000 from tuitions and some money from her mother, Rekha Devi, she set up her business in 2002, with two bee-boxes and as many queen bees. In just a few months, she had made a significant profit.

Anita was stung by bees many times and her swollen face would be an object of ridicule. But she kept going. “People would ask me if I get stung. Yes, I’d say. ‘Does it hurt?’ Yes, I’d say,” she says. But it does not matter now. Anita’s father left his job to join her business and visits other districts with the bee-boxes to collect honey from different sources.

Anita is studying for an English literature degree and she has made her parents promise not to arrange her marriage until she has completed her college degree. A pucca house has replaced their modest dwelling and Anita has gifted a motorcycle to her younger brother. Her improved social standing is reflected in the fact that her mother is now the village chief of a political party. Her success has inspired other families to take to beekeeping and, remarkably, every girl in her village goes to school now.²³

These are inspiring stories of courageous people trying to make a difference. We can all choose to be instruments of change; we can all play a part in transforming the future of our daughters, in transforming our own future.

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