Dear Chetan Bhagat, how was your Karva Chauth?

When a blockbuster novelist of your country comments on gender, you know you have found a leader worth following.

That is what happened to me when I read our beloved bestseller Chetan Bhagat's recent remarks on feminism.

Now, you can’t dismiss someone like Bhagat easily. He is an author, political analyst, social commentator, IIT-ian, IIM-ian and economist, all rolled into one. His latest social project is “feminism”. His stage is a novel called One Indian Girl.

I could not resist, so here is my second open letter to Mr Chetan Bhagat.

I must confess that I admire your courage to speak so eloquently about feminism in this land, which boasts of 5,000 years of civilisation, an ancient philosophy that worships goddesses and respects the cow as a mother.

After all, feminism is that Achilles heel of most modern-day societies and dare I say even the evolved ones. But nothing is a no-go zone for you Mr Bhagat. After all, you are an MBA. And MBAs, in general, know it all.  

Feminists like Germaine Greer, Simon de Beauvoir, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and other formidable names of their ilk can take a hike because you, Mr Bhagat, have spoken.

And your words are based on “research”, you say. You have, after all, interviewed about 100 women for your book One Indian Girl.

“They are elitist bullies, these feminists”, you declare in a recent interview to the magazine Open. If this has come after your arduous research, it must be the unalterable truth.

You say that these feminists lack an understanding of local contexts. You must be right, because the crusading feminist from Rajasthan called Bhanwari Devi must have hidden the fact that she was rich, English-speaking and lived in South Mumbai. 

You tweeted a question recently: Are feminists ok with flirting?

You have emerged as a true champion of the dying art of flirtation, Mr Bhagat. And you have declared that feminists do not flirt. I am sure this comes from your personal research – did a feminist admonish you when you tried to flirt with her? I understand now that this probably comes from your deep anguish.

Dear Mr Bhagat, where were you all these centuries? The women of the world have read the wrong books all this while and grossly misrepresented feminism in the un-researched elitist works like, Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History, The Female Eunuch and The Second Sex. All they ever needed was to read One Indian Girl based on research interviews with women.

At one point, in that masterpiece interview, you say, “There are feminists out there who say: this is not feminism. Feminism is (about) being strong. It is not going after a man. But that is dehumanising”. You have nailed it, Mr Bhagat. Being strong dehumanises a woman, but being strong makes a man “alpha-male”.

Hats off to you for introducing a new genre of feminism — “weekend feminism”. You said: “In a small city like Indore, feminism is ‘Sunday ko mujhe lunch nahin banaana hai. Mujhe baahar jaana hai (I don’t want to cook lunch on Sunday, let’s go out).’”

You are right, women should have unlimited roaming flexibility when it comes to feminism. But, the beauty of this flexibility is that it also works the other way around. Women can be CEOs all year, but on one day, they must exercise their choice of observing Karva Chauth.

You probably learned about gender sensitivity from an elective course in the Business Management program at college. I also have little doubt that among the various other remarkable books you read pursuing higher education, Feminism for dummies must have been your favourite.

You put elitist feminists well into their place when you further say, “They (elitist feminists) bully men. They bully women and they say until you are 100 per cent with us don’t talk about feminism”. Wow, just wow Mr Bhagat. You are a social scientist par excellence. Seriously, I always used to think that a feminist bullying a man is almost as rare as a Dalit — who has been oppressed for centuries — bullying a Brahmin, who has normalised this oppression over centuries. But I guess it’s not as rare an occurrence. With this new found wisdom you have shared with the world, I looked around, read the newspapers, even the regional ones, suffered TV prime time debates and I realised how right you were. I could see clearly how these elitist feminists were chasing men, like the Nazis going after the Jews! Thank you Mr Bhagat for showing me the real face of these “bindi walis” — as one cop in a recent Bollywood film calls these elitist feminists.

I must admit though, in spite of my sincere efforts, I am yet to find a woman who has been bullied by these elitist feminists. My bad. You see not everyone is a good management graduate from a premier, elitist institution like you.

Keep enlightening us. First you went after the “liberals”, then “privileged influencers”, now “feminists”. You are decimating them all, one by one. I await your next salvo. I wonder who you will train your guns at now.

By the way, how was your Karva Chauth?