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The ideal of women’s emancipation

The Indian Constitution, in Articles 14, 15 and 16, provides for equality between men and women. But in practice there is often denial of equality for women in large parts of India, particularly in the rural areas, due to the disgusting survival of remnants of feudalism and medievalism.

Feudal, agricultural societies were based predominantly on physical labour. Being usually physically stronger than women, men were dominant in feudal societies, and women largely confined to household work. Small-scale and middle peasant farming shackled women, tied them to individual households, and restricted their outlook. They were practically slaves of their husbands, who often beat them cruelly. Upon marriage their property often passed to their husbands, as we note in Emile Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

The lives of women in feudal societies were marked by continual, unending labour, a kind of labour that was looked down upon and bore the imprint of bondage. She had to cook, wash clothes, clean the home and do other household chores, apart from bearing and rearing children. She was deprived of education and cultural development. Petty household work crushed, strangled, stultified and degraded her, chained her to the kitchen and the nursery. She wasted her labour on unproductive, petty, nerve-racking and stultifying work of drudgery. The oppression of women in feudal societies was expressed in the novels and stories of the great Bengali writer Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (see Shrikant, Brahman ki Beti, Gramin Samaj).

In industrial societies brains are more important than physical labour, and much of the physical work is done by machines. Wars in modern times are not fought with swords and spears, which require physical strength, but with sophisticated aircraft, mechanised weapons and computers, which even women can operate. Hence in an industrial society mental ability is more important than physical strength.

No doubt even in industrial societies it is women who have to give birth. However, since much of the work in an industrial society is mental work and does not involve hard physical labour, women can continue to work till almost the end of their term, and an industrial society provides them maternity benefits, for example, leave with full pay for two or three months. Women can leave their children in crèches, nurseries and kindergartens while they go to work. Household work is often done by gadgets, for example washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and microwave ovens. This work is often shared by menfolk.

Intelligence quotient tests have established that the IQ of an average woman is the same as that of an average man. In fact, given the opportunity women show they can perform as well as men in almost all activities. Elizabeth I of England and Catherine the Great of Russia were great leaders. Madame Curie was the first person in the world to win two Nobel Prizes, in Physics and in Chemistry. Hence, it is not due to any inherent inferiority but due to the fact that women were not given education and other opportunities that they could not often come up to the level of men in the past.

In feudal and agricultural societies there was gender-based division of labour: men did outdoor work involving harder physical labour, and women did household chores. But in industrial societies this division of labour has almost entirely vanished, and women often do the same work as men and have become economically independent. Since in an industrial society brain is more important than brawn, and since the IQ of an average woman is the same as that of an average man, women should have equality with men.

However, in practice that is often not so. Many of the legal provisions for equality remain on paper. Equality before the law is not necessarily equality in fact. In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary we see how women were driven to suicide for not accepting an unhappy marriage.

Indian society is still largely male dominated, and women are often looked down upon. The birth of a female child is often regarded as a disaster, and female foeticide is common in parts of India (despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994). When a male child is born everyone rejoices, but when a female child is born many seem dejected and crest-fallen, as if a tragedy has occurred (see Sharat Chandra’s novel Parineeta).

There is also the disgusting practice of dowry. It is said that an Indian Administrative Service officer’s dowry price is Rs.1 crore, and that of an engineer or doctor is Rs. 25 lakh to 50 lakh. Is this not disgusting, this practice of treating women as cattle and of actually paying the purchaser?

Indian courts are flooded with cases of crimes against women, including dowry deaths, often caused by pouring kerosene on a young wife and setting her on fire, or by hanging her (and calling it suicide). Wife-beating and other forms of cruelty to women are rampant. In fact, such acts seem to have grown by leaps and bounds. (It must be added, however, that very often legal provisions that are meant to protect women, such as Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, are grossly misused).

We have no doubt made some progress in the matter of women’s education since 1947, and now many women are educated. That was not the case earlier. Women have entered many professions, for example, law, medicine, teaching and journalism. This is due to the partial industrialisation of India after 1947. However, in many other respects the position of women is as bad as, if not worse than, before. Probably this is due to the large-scale commercialisation of society in which everything, including human relations, has been reduced to an exchange value.

In India we live in a transitional age, the transition being from a feudal, agricultural society to a modern, industrial society. We are neither totally backward nor totally modern, but somewhere in between. Hence remnants of the feudal culture, for example, casteism and communalism, persist. It is for this reason that our society is still largely male-dominated, and most women do not have real freedom. For instance, we often hear of ‘honour killings’ of young men and women of different castes or religions. They are killed, harassed or threatened merely because they want to marry a person belonging to a different caste or religion. This is really barbaric, and shows how backward we still are. It has been condemned by the Supreme Court in Lata Singh vs. State of U.P. and Another (2006): 5 SCC 475.

What is the remedy? We have to get over the transitional period and become a modern, industrial state. We must spread scientific thinking on a massive scale, and encourage people to give up superstitions and backward, feudal ideas, for example, casteism and communalism. This is only possible by means of a complete revolution in our thinking and attitude towards women. What is needed is a massive cultural struggle involving hundreds of millions of people which will sweep away all remnants of the disgusting feudal and medieval practices and mentality, particularly with respect to women. These should be replaced with scientific thinking and genuine and complete equality between men and women.

When and how this will come about is not known. But come it will, and all patriotic people in India, including men, must strive and contribute to this goal.

Here are some verses from the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi who wrote around 1908-1910 powerfully in favour of women’s emancipation:

Gummiyadi! Tamizh Nadumuzhudum

Kulungida kaikotti gummiyadi!

Nammai pidiththa pisasugal poyina

Nanmai kandomendru gummiyadi!

Yettaiyum pengal thoduvathu theemai

Endrenni irundhavar maaindhu vittaar;

Veettukkulle pennai pootti vaippom endra

Vindhai manithar thalai kavizhndhaar.

(Dance and celebrate, so/the whole Tamil Nadu reverberates/that all evil forces which/surrounded us are driven away for ever.

Those who declared it was evil/for women to get educated are dead and gone;/The strange men who were for sequestering women/have left the scene in disgrace)

The following are from “Pudhumai Penn” (The Liberated Woman)

Aanum pennum nigarenak kollvathal

Arivi lo’ngi ivvaiyam thazhaikkumam;

(Holding men and women as equal/will lead to growing wisdom all over the world)

Vilagi veettilo’r pondhil valarvathai

Veerap-pengal viraivil ozhiparaam

(Courageous women will end the custom of/keeping them holed up at home)

Here is a verse from “Murasu” (Beat the Drum of Freedom):

Kangal irandinil ondrai kuththi

Kaatchi kedutthidalamo?

Pengal arivai valarthal, vaiyyam

Pedamai attridingng kaaneer

(What good is it to blind an eye

and trying to look at the world with partial vision?

If women are allowed to be enlightened,

the world will appear in all its glory)

(Justice Markandey Katju is a Judge of the Supreme Court of India. For the translations from Tamil, the book Bharathiar Kavithaigal, published by Bharathi Puthaka Nilayam, Madurai, 1964, was consulted.)

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