Portraying women
A few initiatives to remove sexist bias in textbooks have also been undertaken. Books in which visuals of girls or women were absent, these were merely "added on". Besides, role reversal was used as a strategy to depict equality amongst the sexes. Textbook writers in the 1990s, for instance, made the achievements of Indian women "visible" by mere transference: penning highly masculinised, militaristic accounts of women's lives, as that of Rani Lakshmi Bai or Razia Sultan.
Those of us writing the Civics textbooks were aware that inclusion of gender concerns had to move beyond this approach. It was a tremendous challenge to represent women as women and as members belonging to different social groups. Contextualisation was the key. We weren't simply talking about women, but of poor and middle class women, Dalit and tribal women, professional women and farmers.
For example, the chapter on migration includes a specific case study of Milani, a migrant domestic worker in Delhi. The economics of migration, its impact on her family and her place of migration is specific to her location as a person from Jharkhand, as a tribal and as a woman.
Change in outlook
In the new textbooks, there was also an attempt to move away from the familiar "woman-as-victim" mode. How do we articulate women's agency while recognising the limiting role social structures play in their lives? For example in the chapter on Panchayati Raj, the protagonist is a woman called Lachi. A first-generation beneficiary of reservations for women in the panchayat, Lachi is nervous and anxious in her first Gram Sabha. Reservation (for women) has not transformed her overnight into a powerful panch, but it has given her the space and opportunity to participate in the decision-making processes in her village.
In another example, Kesar, a young girl from a farming family in Haryana wonders why she is not allowed to plough the land even though she is perfectly accepting of the fact that her brothers are the inheritors of their land. Kesar's example indicates that socialisation is a complex, often contradictory, but always "incomplete" process. Even "victims" can and do raise questions on certain aspects of their lives.
The Civics textbooks also include women as social and political critics — writers, political activists, travellers or scientists. In the chapter on Fundamental Rights, Maharashtrian Dalit writer Baby Kamble's autobiographic descriptions of the caste system (in the early 19th century) demonstrate the logic of the fundamental right to equality. And Aung Sang Suu Kyi figures in the chapter on Democracy.
However, the decision to write the chapter on Citizenship with the feminine as the norm, emerged from a different understanding. An Indian woman's identity is primarily governed by family, caste, religion or community. And women in India carry the responsibility of maintaining the purity and distinctiveness of these facets of their identity. They are rarely, if ever, identified as independent citizens, with entitlements and direct access to the institutions of power and decision-making.
If a proactive link is to be made, then women need to be visibly identified as citizens. What can be more discomfiting than to visualise the citizen as a woman? It challenges and breaks the boundaries between the family and the State, the public and the private, the home and the world.
Isn't it time children imagined their world differently?
Dipta Bhog
Courtesy: Women's Feature Service
DIPTA BHOG
The author is a founder member of Nirantar, Centre for Gender and Education, Delhi. She was co-ordinator of the team that wrote the Civics textbooks for Classes 6-8. The examples used in the article are from these textbooks.
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