Why Indian women must stop crying all the time
The modern woman needs to take heed of the saying: "With great power comes great responsibility". There seems to be a pattern in women, who selectively play the victim when it suits the purpose. After years of being in a live-in relationship, she accuses her ex-partner of rape. Married women who want out of marriage accuse their husbands and their in-laws of abuse. Later these charges are found to be untrue. To make matters worse, society reinforces her victimhood.
The issue here is that the modern Indian woman is forced to victimise herself to be heard. She is obligated to prove her helplessness. She is compelled to have a shaky voice and shed crocodile tears. But the notion that these theatrics of female helplessness that presumably will evoke the saviour instinct, is quickly becoming defunct. Like the boy who cried "the sky is falling" too often, the modern woman stands to lose authenticity of her call for help, especially when the real wolf appears.
By setting up women in the power to accuse, but not to be accused, the Indian society is jeopardising the fate of its daughters. Moreover, this duplicity is also usurping the rights of the less fortunate people who actually, don't have a voice. Why is there such a vicious systemisation of woman's victimhood in contemporary India? French writer Simone de Beauvoir wondered whether what drives this victimhood is the universal fear of losing femininity. She asserted that every female is not necessarily a woman in the gendered sense. To be considered so, she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as "femininity". Does this mean India is afraid to lose its women even as it pretends to empower them? Is the Indian woman, and consequently, her sanskaar being sacrificed at the altar of feminism? Is that why she must play her part, however dubiously, even as she makes gains in the modern society?
For centuries, Indian writers have made a sincere attempt to understand the Indian woman and give her a place in our social fabric. For example, Hindu mythology has more than one archetype of a woman. There's Durga-the angry dark one, Saraswati-the quintessential nerd, and Laxmi-the material girl. The Hindu woman is the manifestation of Prakriti, the complementary half of Purusha-in Ardhnarishwar.
In Ramayana alone the variety is endless; Manthara, Kaikeyi, Sita, Shurpanakha, to name a few. Vyasa chose a lustful and proud woman, a princess called Draupadi to be the heroine of his magnum opus Mahabharata. Her mother-in-law, Kunti is a politically savvy king maker - a precursor to our women politicians of today.
Our only Nobel laureate in literature, Tagore described women caught at the crossroads of modernity unable to fully grasp the implications of their newfound roles. He captured eloquently the domestic squabbles and external pressures in the expanding dominion of Indian women. His novels, such as Ghare Baire, forewarned against the cowardly, half-formed woman, who can bring potential ruin to herself and her family. Premchand showed women frustrated in their domesticity and unsure of how to break free as he wrote Godaan.
But regardless of these rich descriptions of women and the roles they play, we always end up at square one-the feminine ideal that we pay lip service to but never subscribe to. Some of the worst offenders of this are women themselves who deny their own nature against all odds. In their kitchens and courtyards, they crib and gossip and fume and plot to their hearts content, but in society, they refute all such claims playing the role of caring, non-beings that they themselves know they aren't but somehow should be. In the land of multiple goddesses and tempestuous heroines, we seem to be suffering from collective amnesia on the complexity of woman and wholeness of her being.
Modern Indian woman is also additionally saddled by the western stereotyping of her gender. The fairy tales that she grew up with, rooted in Victorian provincialism, told her that there is only one valid type of woman in the world-the timid, fair lady who waits for her prince to rescue her. If she is not this, then she is a witch. If she is jealous then she is the evil step-sister. She is beautiful when subservient and ugly when assertive. That is why when the modern woman catches herself in the mirror, she tries to paint herself into a beatific self she is probably not. This self-belief of being angelic, of being feminine, as the world prescribes is important for her to be human. Her humanity is dwarfed by the fairy tale theatre of damsels in distress.
In the 2003 essay titled "Against Love," Laura Kipnis, a film studies professor and a feminist cultural critic, asked, "What becomes of students so committed to their vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency?" The essay was published in a chronicle for higher studies concerning regulations limiting romantic or sexual relationships between students and faculty. The essay suffered from backlash but she did make a very valid point; consensual sex is messy.
Indeed the idea of seeing grey when the canvas is universally black and white is intellectually befuddling. But this should not prevent us from discussing them as issues of adult life that plague both men and women equally. That a woman can get her hands dirty and take responsibility for her decisions favours reconceptualisation of the idea of feminine. Restructuring roles forms the very basis of the evolving relationship between the man and woman.
The need of the hour is that women do away with the assumption of "abla nari", a presupposition for all, regardless of age, education or social background. This is the first step towards laying claim to her humanity as a whole. Besides, we must be cognizant of the prescient words of Doris Lessing who said, almost 40 years ago, that if a woman has to lay claim to being equal to man, then she must be able to proclaim her right to all emotions including those of aggression, hostility, and resentment.