Bharat is not Modi: Let her do a selfie with daughter for once

It feels like there are too many critiques of "Selfie with Beti" by too many people whose grandparents had gone to college. Instead, may we please encourage the conservative sections of our society in such doings? Consider, for one, that the history of large swathes of the Hindi belt has been extremely rough.

It seems no woman, in what is now Haryana, was safe from roving bandits for the last 300 years except within her village... and if that has not changed much, the reasons may be more complex than we know. Compare this to, say, the ancient temple town of Mannargudi in the Kaveri delta, where a girl can safely take a bus alone at night back to her place of work in Chennai 350km away after a weekend at home with her parents. In fact, a girl can take an overnight "sleeper-bus" alone from Chennai to Bangalore, all the way to another state, without any worries.

Instead of crowing about this comparison, shouldn’t we get a perspective on the differing regional histories, make allowance for the fact that people in Haryana have seen terrible things that "we" cannot imagine in our relatively easier lives elsewhere? For instance, in 1857 some Haryanvi villagers caught fleeing redcoats and made them draw water from wells. When the British recaptured power, they extracted brutal revenge. We know what they did in Lucknow, Kanpur and other places but nobody tells, except locally, that in what is now Haryana, the British had lined up all the village men and executed every male above ten and below 70 years of age. Old fathers-in-law had no choice but to marry their suddenly widowed daughters-in-law to keep the family going, for that was the only social security they had. This was barely 150 years ago. Nor did the trauma of state failure and social disorder of the preceding centuries disappear for the people of this region at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, as India became independent.

Family survival is a deeply entrenched issue in khapland where change was further delayed by the slower spread of education in these parts compared to "our" snug, tightly-administered erstwhile presidencies and early-progressive princely states like Baroda, Mysore, Travancore, and so on. "Our" grandfathers and great-grandfathers had the environment and opportunity to modernise way before the Haryanvis - who are certainly not "bad" people as frequently portrayed by narrowly judgemental English media. They are kind, affectionate, reasonable people when you get to know them and old-fashioned politeness is still the key to "Bharat", if no longer to "India".

So keep up the pressure but nuance it. People have to be persuaded and convinced to bravely go forward and not fear change, by holding up examples like Saina Nehwal and her parents and by encouraging imaginative initiatives like that of the Bibipur panchayat, and wherever change is starting to come from within. Sneering patronisingly at traditional people and shouting at them in big-city accents will not help the cause; that will only put their backs up. It is a solidly patriarchal society out here but so were/are "ours". There are benefits and disadvantages to every situation and if so many of "our" families could change with education and opportunity, so will others.

But it looks like the trolls have inadvertently made it all about "us" yet again - the articulate city women, while the little girls, the intended beneficiaries of the catchy "Selfie with Beti" idea, have been pushed off the map. "India" has hijacked the attention away from "Bharat" and the Bibipur fathers and other fathers may now feel that their enthusiasm and participation in "Selfie with Beti" was worthless. I sincerely hope not. It’s a charming idea with tremendous symbolic value. I love it that some young fathers in Haryana actually said they felt bad they did not have daughters. That is surely worth a million rants by people of the big cities.

What it comes down to is that "your" way is not the only way, "big-city, know-all India". Give "Bharat" a chance to think of their own ideas and applaud them too. They know what works for them, who are you to sneer, because... oh, got it, because some of you can't stand the prime minister and must automatically oppose everything he decides to back? Go ahead, the prime minister can fight his own battles but this time, don't you see, you were rude to Bibipur and to so many fathers and daughters with your sneers and jeers? That hurts.