Finding Words for Peace in a Season of War

 And so it has happened.

***

The terrorist attack targeting tourists in Pahalgam lifted the curtain on an eager chorus ready with war cries. Night after night in television studios and on location, they told us about the perfidy of the other side and whipped themselves into a vengeful frenzy, hoping that we would join them. They shouted so every household in the nation could hear them.

Beyond them, an enigmatic government escalated diplomatic measures, such as suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and cancelling visas, and spoke about giving the armed forces operational freedom.

***

Those of us that have spent our lives talking about peace and working towards it, one small task at a time, have watched in horror. We have preached to the choir of our friends and associates—because that is the extent of our reach. We have sat with our words because we have nowhere to put them. Our voices reach no one. We have reflected on how much agency and voice we have lost in the last decade or so. The sense of futility has equalled the horror felt as war-mongering voices have become louder.

***

On April 30, 2025, I wrote on Facebook:

Terror, or indeed any violence, by any actor, state or non-state, is wrong and its consequences are always tragic. The tragedy begins with its immediate victims, lingers in the vengeful anger we feed as we perform outrage and finally, decimates our own humanity--our ability to feel for others and our ability to think.

We can close the door on this by pausing. Feel deeply, but do not equate grief and solidarity with vengeance. Perform grief with care--for those directly hurt, for those indirectly affected. Perform care with thoughtfulness--that considers consequences, that considers who will pay the cost of what you demand, that considers the means more important than the ends.

Responding to violence with violence is always wrong. It always feels like it's now too late for pause, for patience or for dialogue, but it never is. When the chorus mounts, peace seems to be the talk of the weak and witless. But it is when the crisis is most acute that it is time to breathe. It is time to maintain balance. Rising vengefulness is a sign that one is becoming the other, or more truthfully, a sign that one IS the other.

At a time when I feel less confident in my agency as a citizen, I am writing this because my silence would be my failure.

It is Akshaya Tritiyai and I wish you peace. May peace abound--in our thoughts, in our lives and in the world!

***

Today, Indian cities will carry out civil defence drills with air raid sirens and sheltering. For people my age and older, this is reminiscent immediately of 1971.

We shifted school buildings, had two drills a day, ducked under tables, had blackout paper on our windows.

One evening, my father stepped out just before the air raid signal went out. He was on the road when there was a fly-by of Pakistani aircraft. We ran from our flat to our neighbours’ flat to shelter together with them—my great-grandmother, my cousin, my mother, my 1-year-old sister and I. My paternal grandmother came to stay in the middle of the fortnight long war and told us stories to keep us occupied during the blackout.

But nothing ever removed for me the memory of loss. I went to a school where students and teachers alike came from military households. Twice or thrice a day, we would hear announcements about fathers and husbands who had fallen. Those moments of silence remain with me today. They keep me here, writing, so there is no silence about war.

***

These disjointed pieces of writing are what I can manage today, like stuffing paper into the cracks in a crumbling wall, hoping to keep the wind and water out. Not doing even this is worse than its pointlessness.

***

When civilians glorify the military and the sacrifices of those who serve, they also do them a disservice. There is always glory in doing what you have assumed as your duty and there is satisfaction in doing what you think is right. However, when those of us who do not serve, stop at vacuous praise and romanticising militarism, we also abdicate our duty as the people they defend. It is their job to defend and protect. It is our job to protect them by practising restraint, by resisting the temptation to join a vengeful chorus, by holding our leaders accountable for trying every measure and by making sure, their blood is not shed in order to satisfy our egos. The military’s job is to protect us and it is our job to protect them from our own vengeful bloodlust or our leaders’ egotistical vision. Military options should be the last option. The very last option.

In security decision-making, there is little transparency and therefore, there is no accountability. Are we sure that every other option has been exercised?

Most important, have we insisted that every other option has been tried?

***

The problem with terrorism is that it tempts you to insist that only a violent response will satisfy. The truth is we have no patience for the alternative—which short-term may be to press on diplomatically and long-term to understand the appeal it holds. We are also defenceless against those who will goad us into demanding violent reprisal. That chorus is so loud that it sounds like a universal demand. For governments, a violent response is an easy simulation of action—someone else carries it out and pays and you get to say you did this. But nothing really changes.

The fog of war distorts our knowledge about what is going on. Who struck whom? Did they actually hit their targets? Did they hit something else? Were they felled or did they make it back? Very quickly we do not know. And we do not ask because asking is not allowed in times of war (and let’s face it, now also in times of no-war).

The fog of war also obfuscates our real reasons and agendas. Everywhere.

The real impact of this surreal time is on people. Soldiers who die. Families on the border. Families of soldiers. What looks glorious and glamorous at a safe distance is actually a lifetime of grief (mixed with pride for military families), displacement, disruption, disability and a struggle for those at the epicentre.

I am not belittling this sacrifice. I am questioning why we let it happen if there is even a chance it could be avoided.

***

Even when there is no war, life in the border areas is war-like. Over the years, we have seen and read countless reports of schoolchildren playing cricket and landing on mines. We have heard about the military presence in small towns, taking over schools or subjecting people to searches. And yes, there is always a justification for all this.

But really, honestly, truly, is there?

***

I live two lives that are apparently incompatible.

I am a peacenik, peace activist (whatever activist means), pacifist, peace educator—one of those people—you pick your word. In a small measure, this is because even in everyday life, I hate shouting and confrontation. Everyone should just get along and leave me alone. In a large measure, this is because I cannot separate violence and conflict and war from their dehumanising and cruel consequences. This is what is foremost in my eyes. This is who I have always been.

I am also a security studies scholar. This means my professional credibility depends on being and sounding like a peer group of (mostly) men--some of them my friends--who sit in suits, know everything (and everyone) and having spoken of all they know, are convinced of the rationale for war. Decisive action, forceful responses, cool reasoning, realist thinking—all of which add up to understanding and justifying the exercise of coercive power. It takes a generous and confident display of testosterone-driven aggression. 

I came to this field because I wanted to be a more effective advocate for peace. I respect my colleagues for how much they know and for their integrity in speaking their minds. But their conclusions have never become my truth.

***

There is a gender dimension to war. It should be obvious but I will state the obvious here.

Those who were shot in Pahalgam were men. Those who shot them were men. Those who shouted in the TV studios were mostly men. Those who sat in those televised but secret official meetings were mostly men. Those whose op-eds got media space were mostly men spelling out the arguments for a ‘forceful response’ and the very few voices I read calling for restraint were mostly those of women. Those who led the diplomatic effort and pronounced it successful (but still not successful enough to prevent war) were mostly men. Those soldiers who will die in the fighting between the two countries will mostly be men.

Those who were bereaved in Pahalgam were women. Those who are displaced or left behind by war are mostly women and children. Those who are rarely seen as experts or asked about what they think are these women who must live and rebuild their lives after men have decided.

Those who are invisible in all of this are sexual minorities and non-binary persons. They don’t even exist and therefore, need neither consideration nor voice nor protection.

***

On another note, in every ‘ordinary person’ interview on TV, that person has asked for peace and normalcy. Returning to the studio, this has strangely transformed into a rationale for calling for war. Anchors have pranced about exultantly and triumphantly telling us about how we have diminished our neighbour and frightened them and created anxiety.

***

It is in times of crisis that one must stop and breathe and wait. This is the advice one gets for one’s personal life. Don’t make big decisions in times of trauma. This should apply even more to nation-states because the stakes are so much higher. But it does not.

***

Air strikes have already happened and spin has already obfuscated fact. This writing is too little, too late and I know that hardly anyone will read it. But write, I must. When we are all dust and ashes, and perhaps, atomic waste, somewhere in the universe, someone will know—she did what she knew. 

The Re-Discovery of India

First, let me apologise: I am so much a product of Nehru’s India that I could not think of a more original title. But this is the most apt summary for what this day (May 23, 2019) has brought to me—a re-discovery of India, a world that I thought I knew, but clearly didn’t.

In recent weeks, I have wondered if such a re-discovery was about to happen, and I have waited, with dread, to find out. Well, it’s here and today I learned many things about Indians—my fellow-Indians—that I might have learned earlier if I had not ignored hints and remained in denial.

Today I learned that my fellow-Indians are people who don’t care much about other people. They do not care about those whose lives were destroyed in riots. They do not care about those who were lynched at random. They do not care about impunity for horrendous acts of sexual violence or those guilty for inciting communal riots or terror. They’re okay, and so all is well in the world. Today, I learned this about my fellow-Indians.

I learned that the misery caused by demonetization really did not matter to any of them. Today I learnt that flighty polemic is more real to my fellow-Indians than the real misery of those who depend on daily cash wages, those who lost their savings or those who were unable to access care because they could not access their cash. Even those who suffered were apparently okay with it.

Because my suffering pales when compared to the joy I get from endorsing violence against others. Today I learnt that my fellow-Indians live with a long list of ‘others’ that include virtually everyone else. People who speak other languages, follow other faiths, eat other food, are born into other castes and communities, don’t speak like us… the list is long and they are all ‘others,’ less worthy than we are. So, discrimination and violence against them do not matter, as long as we are alright. And as long as we can choose to believe in our strength and superiority.

Today I learned that my fellow-Indians have very weak faith, especially my fellow Hindus. We have a philosophical tradition that is millennia-old, steeped in dissent and diversity and home to one of the oldest examples of skeptical poetry, and our pantheon is infinite and ancient. But we do not believe our ideas or our gods can defend themselves. Now, I thought our genius and uniqueness was our ability to embrace new gods and engage with new ideas. That is what I learned from our puja shelf which housed images of Balaji, Ajmer Sharif and St. Jude. Today I learnt that the divine powers in the universe need puny human Parliamentarians or armed mobs to fight for them, or so my fellow-Indians believe.

Today I learned that while we Indians believe we are among the smartest people in the world, the adage that 'the more you know, the more you know you don't know' does not apply to us. We are experts on everything. And therefore, we are always right. We firmly close the door on learning better or learning otherwise. We remain as Alberuni found us, ignorant, confident and combative about our opinions. 

Today I learned that each Indian is argumentative and brilliant and opinionated and right, but no one else is, and therefore, I was wrong, freedom does not matter. You cannot differ because I am always right and therefore, you must be wrong and if you are wrong, you had better not speak. Freedom is the preserve of the strong and today, I learned that strength lies in shouting, in controlling, in silencing and in the ring of certainty that I find frightening. Freedom belongs to people who are always sure of themselves and who believe that the world falls in line with their utterances. Today I learned the folly of believing that democracy is freedom.

“Democracy belongs to the majority.” Today I learned that this is what my fellow-Indians believe. Now, I don’t know whether this means I am entitled to democracy or not because the lines between us keep shifting. I may be part of the majority or I may not. But just in case, I gather I should keep quiet. I cannot express doubt or ask questions. I am not entitled to clarification. I cannot disagree. Even if I were a part of the majority that is entitled, these speech acts would disqualify me.

Today I learned that my fellow-Indians actually have a huge inferiority complex. They need someone who sounds certain and confident and completely lacking in self-doubt. They need someone who can tell them what is good for them and how good they are. All the time. They crave a strong leader—a daddy figure—and while they are proud that they can do jugaad and break rules, they want someone who will punish others who do. Today I learned we do not really trust our ability to assess a situation and while we sit, starving, cowering and censoring ourselves, we are willing to believe someone who tells us we are wealthy, brilliant, valiant and free. As long as it is uttered with confidence, it must be true.

Today I learned that while our constitution enjoins us to "develop scientific temper," we've done better with "temper" than scientific on average, and "science" is a spectacle, not the habit of critical and analytical thinking. Never mind, I misunderstood that one.

Today I learned that while we boast about ahimsa and like to be seen attending Bhakti and Sufi music concerts, we actually do not value gentleness, compassion, honesty or humility in our politicians. We want them to sound like swashbuckling warriors ever-engaged in epic battles. We do not care for subtle reasoning or nuanced vision. It has to be all out there like the garish plaster-of-paris-meets-plastic baubles of television epic serials.

Today I learned many things about my fellow-Indians that I really did not want to know.

This is who we are—uncaring people who do not care about other people’s rights, freedom, culture or bodily integrity. The party in power ran a divisive and hateful campaign and we did not punish them for it. They lied to us about a thousand things and we did not care because it suited us not to challenge them. This is who we are, as deeply disillusioning as it is.

But what I was afraid of did not happen. The re-discovery of India—this India—did not devastate me. I see it, I acknowledge it and I am still standing. As are the hundreds of thousands of Indians who share my values, as I know they do.

My India—that beautiful, diverse, plural, inclusive, compassionate India—is still alive, even if it is now half-hidden under the crush of this brash India that celebrates the worst parts of our legacy—violence, hierarchy, discrimination and mutual disregard. In my India, there is room for everyone, no matter what discoveries we make about each other along the way. As the old school pledge went: "India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters." We are not identical, but this is our charm. Though charm can be toxic and nauseating, we cannot disown or abandon each other. We are one family, right? 

This is who we are. 

This is who we are and I am still here and I will still be when this moment passes, even if it takes years. And in that time, I will do everything I can to engage with my fellow-Indians, to challenge them, to remind them of the joys of inclusion and sharing and the gifts of compassion and empathy. 

In my first act of faith, I will bravely post this reflection. 

Written on May 23, 2019

Mea culpa: I too have eaten dinner with Pakistanis

For over a week now, my conscience has been pushing me to write this mea culpa, for I too, have eaten dinner with Pakistanis. Yes, those same Pakistanis that Indian social media insists can never be innocent or trustworthy. Alas, I too am anti-national.

I have not just had dinner with Pakistanis, I have had breakfast, lunch, mid-morning coffee, afternoon tea, anytimeisteatime chai and late night green tea with them. And also, ice cream. I won't apologise, but I do confess.

The first Pakistanis I got to know, although they then were too far away to share any meal, were my Pakistani brother and his family. I did not eat with them until 1985, but I did send the occasional rakhi across the border. In 1985, I visited my brother on his American campus, and stayed with his cousin sister who, as a very hospitable South Asian, fed me. I also ate with him and his many Pakistani friends--dal chaval and pizza, as I recall. But all that was in the US, so it may not count.

In the meanwhile, my uncle visited Ajmer Sharif and came to Bombay just to meet my parents. I was not there but I believe he did not eat anything at our home. This is a terrible thing in South Asian culture, as you know. He did not eat. But many years later, when I visited their home, I ate many meals--lunch, tea, dinner--all specially planned for the visiting vegetarian daughter. A treasured memory remains sitting at the dining table, enjoying delicious apples from Pakistani Kashmir. The apples were sweeter for the affection with which they were chosen for me.

Long before that, my only other South Asian classmate in my MA International Relations course was a Pakistani woman about ten years older than me. She and her husband were both lecturers in Political Science in Pakistan and had come to study in the US. They were shocked (him, especially) that my parents had sent me alone to the US at 20, and adopted me. I ate at their home regularly--yes, usually dinner--when my classmate would cook sabzi separately for me, and feed me dal, subzi and roti early with her two little kids. In her eyes, I think I was not much older! They would make sure I ate--and what did they have that they shared so generously, she was a student and he had a campus job, and they had a relative staying with them too--and then one of them would walk me to the bus stop and make sure I got back to my dorm. They were family. But I am told now, they could not be trusted. So maybe there was arsenic in the delicious firni I ate in their house that I miraculously survived?

You might say, these are 'ordinary' people but it is the security-diplomatic gang one should be leery of. Perhaps. Perhaps.

You see, I have eaten dinner with them as well. Many of the people whose op-eds you read and that you watch on hydra-headed TV discussions are people who were in non-official track, confidence-building programmes with me in the early 1990s. We stayed together for weeks, and ate together, and talked all night, and much more... and confidence was built. And friendships that will last a lifetime. Friendships between people who shared similar experiences, across borders, with sometimes contradictory perspectives--but friendships, anyway.

And the women peace activists I work with now, who have gone from strangers to friends to sisters, who know what sorts of bangles I like and that I want to have a blog about fabric and embroidery someday using photographs of their clothes. The alliances made when eyes meet over shared hurt--one complains, the other consoles, without words. And yes, I am so sorry, many meals have been shared with these terrific women--and a regional buffet of munchies fuels our meetings, where chilgoza meets murukku.

And many other meals all over the world with friends and professional colleagues from the Pakistani side of the border.

I forgot to tell you about the Pakistani fellow-intern from Karachi whose 1971 memories were a mirror-image of mine. But I don't think we ate dinner together, so it doesn't matter.

I meant to write a detailed, chapter and verse confession, but I realise there have been too many meals in over half a century to list here. Also, too many deep and too many silly conversations. Too many books and too many mixed tapes. Too much tea and too much laughter. Tears too, when I first moved to a city where I (still) have few friends, but I could call Islamabad on my cell-phone and share my transition travails with close friends. Too much silliness over international calls made just to get instructions on how to receive faxes on a home printer. Too much water under this friendship bridge.

Mea culpa, even though I do not understand how warmth, love and friendship can ever be anti-national.

Do you think that sharing salt and bread build mutual obligations that keep us from hurting each other? Isn't that a good thing? Isn't that why breaking bread together is a part of spiritual practice? Not eating together preserves the walls between us; Indians have used that as a way of maintaining caste difference over thousands of years.

Do you think that hearing each other's stories reminds us of how similar our struggles are, making it hard to demonise each other? Isn't that a good thing? Is it not a good thing that we get to know each other's frailties from a place of care than of enmity? That we can protect each other?

Isn't communication--over dinner or tea--especially important when you disagree? And a good friendship is not one in which you agree all the time or that you follow slavishly, but where there is enough honesty not to fake all that and enough respect to give each other space to be quite different--but not so much that a helping hand cannot reach.

All my life, I have thought these were good things, and that building the personal ties that keep us from mutually destructive policies was a fabulous idea. I still do. Mea culpa, for that too.

Let me close by sharing with you something a Bangladeshi diplomat said to me during an interview in 1985. I was being clever and asking how he defined South Asia. His brilliant reply: "South Asia stops when you go to someone's house, and the food no longer tastes like home." My South Asian home has many rooms, each quite self-sufficient and separate, but our dining tables merge under the force of that common civilisational instinct to stuff people's stomachs to the point of stupor--and food across the region tastes of spices and condiments we have traded across millennia. Wherever I move, across this table, whoever I break bread with, I am still eating at home and that is how it feels.

But have it your way--so, mea culpa.

A glimpse of MY India

My great-uncle, Padi Venkatrama Krishnamoorthy, was born and raised in Rangoon in a Tamilian family, teaching himself Rabindra Sangeet by listening to lessons offered on the radio. In his very musical family (also mine) genres run into each other like colours in a leheriya dupatta--you start a song in one mood and genre and the odd phrase takes you into another state of mind, language and musical world. All this before we learnt words like medley and mash-up. For three generations, we grew up singing everything we heard, making up our own words some of the time, but always faithful to the tune and the beat, and never forgetting the background music.

Krishnamoorthy Mama's All-India Radio (and later Doordarshan) career took him all over India, and his work facilitated his hanging out with the best musicians of the moment.

Today, he shared with us that AIR Kolkata's collection of 'Ramyo Geete' has three of his compositions. These are all songs we have grown up hearing, sung by him and by aunts, uncles and cousins over and over again. I honestly had little idea of who had sung the original recordings of "Mama's songs." In my universe, he has always loomed larger than those recording artists.

Trying to locate the CDs so I can buy a set, I found the songs on YouTube and heard the original recordings for the first time.

This medley of Kanchipuram-Padi-Rangoon-Kolkata-Cuttack-Delhi-and-any-other-cultural-element-you-want-to-add--this is the India I inherited.

Sanitation newswatch continues

How did I miss this one?

Yamini Aiyar, No toilets please, we’re Indian, Indian Express, November 20, 2007.

What's wrong with being a feminist?

In the last two or three days, I have met several people who want to reassure me that someone or the other is not a feminist. Since I AM a feminist, this puzzles me.

I have always been a feminist, before I knew the word, before I knew there was theory to go with it, before I knew much about women's movements. The marvelous definition that Cheris Kramerae and Paula Treichler came up with ("Feminism is the radical notion that women are people") resonates in any time and space (which really is most of them) that dehumanizes women.

In the US in the early 1990s, I learned that it had become very un-cool for young women to be feminists. I did not understand it, but as all international travellers learn to do at some point, figured, "It's their culture."

It is beginning to bother me now. When someone assures me that they or another person is not a feminist, I hear a justification for middle class male assertiveness and bullying. A couple of years ago, at a seminar in Chennai on violence against women, someone had the temerity to say: "I do not understand what women want. Young girls these days are not even willing to make tea!" Now, this gentleman was only saying aloud what many people think, I suspect. When I hear statements like that by Pratibha Patil's Government Law College classmate (which I cannot find to link here) that she is not a feminist, which we are told is not something he finds appealing (do I care?!), then I go back to that moment at the seminar. It's an experience like nails scratching a blackboard.

When a woman tells me that she or someone else is not a feminist, I hear a quiet pride that makes me want to cry for all those feminists that made it possible for her to stand up and say anything at all and for all those women and girls who still need her help. I hear the contemporary public space equivalent of young middle class Indian girls who are raised not just to sew, cook and clean for their future sasuraals but also to sing, dance, play instruments and paint--to never have any of those gifts encouraged again. I feel like the woman is trying to curry favour with some patriarchal standard that should not exist in the first place.

And how can feminism not be relevant still in an age when reporters trying for the human interest angle on this presidential nomination, are getting us certificates for Ms. Patil being a good wife, a good mother, a modest lady, traditional looking but of scientific temperament. What a relief! What a tragedy if our woman-President should be dignified, competent, brilliant and experienced but not any of these things! Would India survive?

I have a pretty decent memory and it is now more than thirty years since I started reading newspapers with comprehension. I am pretty sure I never learned the answer to these questions so I will ask them now:
1. Was S. Radhakrishnan a good father?
2. Did K.R. Narayanan worry about disruptions in schooling when he was a diplomat?
3. Was V.V. Giri a good husband?
4. Was Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy modest?
5. Was Rajendra Prasad traditional-looking but scientific?
6. Did Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed do a good job of juggling household responsibilities with a political career?
7. And this is very important: did Giani Zail Singh fast a few times every week?

And some feminist ones too: Did any of them beat their wives? How many gave or took dowries? How many of them tried like Insy Winsy spider to have sons? How many observed rituals that were demeaning to women in their lives? I am going to give in to temptation and ask, how many were fit to head a state with a declining number of women?

Now, I don't mean to malign our former Heads of State. I am simply trying to point out that now that a woman has been nominated (and everyone wants credit for this "progressive" gesture that makes me want to curtsey with Eliza Doolittle and sing, "How KIND of you to let me come!"), we are being given all sorts of information about her that has no bearing on her appropriateness for that office. And if it is appropriate, did anyone ask these questions of the men that went before her? What's sauce for the gander, is sauce for the goose too.

A feminist consciousness would allow us to respect and discuss our Presidents and Presidential nominees without making reference to their gender, their adherence to gender stereotypes and standards and based, as we like to say in India, on the merits of each case.

Once, in another lifetime, an Indian man (a friend, even teacher) said to me, half in jest, half as accusation, "You say all these (feminist) things, because you studied abroad." I said to him, "No, it is because I have been meeting Indian men all my life." Now, I assure you that some of my best friends are men, but I must say, that there is no better grounding for feminism than a large circle of male acquaintances. But I am not a feminist because I know obnoxious, abusive, annoying, pompous or tedious men.

I am a feminist because I am alive and I can see, hear, think, have empathy and feel. Being a feminist is not a grafted set of preferences but the natural outgrowth of seeing women treated as less than human in many settings, of being silenced, patronized, dismissed or elbowed out (or seeing others treated that way), of growing up around strong women and not knowing I had a place that I had to know. Being a feminist for me has been and remains being a woman who will exercise the right to think for herself, to have her own preferences on all matters across the board, to disregard limits and limitations placed on her and to act when moved to do so. It is the right to dream without a framework and the right to make my dreams come true. It is the right to speak my mind when something is wrong and to speak for something I feel is right. It is the right to be a person.

What's wrong with any of this? What's wrong with being a feminist?

High Office, High Status?

In the sixtieth year of the Indian Republic (which it is not), the nomination of Pratibha Patil is being greeted as a mark of Indian respect for women (which it is not).

Let me address why I do not think this is a mark of respect for women. The post of President in the Indian Republic is a symbolic and ceremonial one. If it seems important today, that is a function of the character and calibre of the incumbent. It has not always seemed like such a significant office, and while there was always some politicking that preceded it, the fuss this time is a first. It is because President Kalam brought his energy and enthusiasm that the office has begun to seem like it might matter. In sum, if the next President has a different temperament and energy, the Indian Presidency will be back to ceremony, symbolism and etiquette. And it really won’t matter except in a crisis who occupies Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Am I saying the Indian presidency doesn’t matter? Of course, not; of course, it does. But less in the ways that are suggested when someone says that a woman becoming President is a mark of respect for women. It has been hugely important to have a President whose integrity is unchallenged, whose imagination and openness to ideas were inspiring to many and whose energy and attention to detail made a difference in many places starting with the running of the presidential palace itself. The President, we have seen, can really be a role model—a youth icon, to use the language of MTV. But the Indian president wields very little power, and that is the acid test here.

Moreover, there is a difference of value between direct and indirect election. While the latter is sometimes more convenient, in a democracy, it never has the value of a direct endorsement by those who cared enough to vote. The Indian President is not directly elected (nor is the American, theoretically) and therefore, never has the independent mandate or power base that the American or French or Sri Lankan Presidents have.

The second reason why I don’t think this nomination is a mark of women’s progress is clear if you contrast the fact that Sonia Gandhi, who is undoubtedly one of the most powerful people in India, is never described as the woman president of the Indian National Congress. Ditto Jayalalithaa. When you qualify any office by gender or any other identity marker, it becomes clear that symbolism and tokenism are at play. If in fact, women had significant access to power at all levels, their ascension to high office would be routine. There would neither be a glass ceiling of the sort Hillary Clinton is trying so hard to shatter nor would there be a ‘coup by affirmative action,’ which is a nasty thing to say, I know, but quite likely an accurate description of the thinking that preceded Ms. Patil’s nomination.

The third and most important reason that President Pratibha Patil will not signify the progress of women is to be found in the homes and workplaces and streets of India. When women are safe in their homes from the men who claim in public to respect and worship them; when they can step down from those pedestals and altars long enough to earn a living and build a good life for themselves and those they care about; and, when they can consider careers in politics in the way that they do in engineering and medicine so that parties don’t have to make a conscious choice to nominate and appoint them, then women will have progressed in India.

Moreover, and this is my final reason for not over-reading this as a landmark for women, women in high office, or any office, do not necessarily make a difference in areas that concern women. It is an essentialist myth that a woman in power will address the needs and concerns of women. She might, or she might not. She might not care; she might care but lack clout; she might have other matters that seem more important to her. And then she might address these questions (like violence against women; access to livelihoods, credit and property rights; reproductive health issues) but do so in ways that are retrogressive. After all, all women are not feminists. And the rise to power makes its own demands. The track record of women in power working to empower is not as good as one would hope.

Having said all this, it still feels good to think of a woman occupying Rashtrapati Bhavan and one who has worked hard through her political career. I grew up with Madam Prime Minister and as I am fond of saying, did not know that you could associate male pronouns and adjectives with this office till I was in Junior College. I want small girls beginning to read newspapers today to feel the same way: that all symbolic and real offices of power are usually occupied by women and that therefore it is a perfectly natural and sensible thing to aspire to them. Careers in public service should have the appeal that careers in showbusiness do (after all, they are not that different in some ways!). I want young girls to see Sonia Gandhi and Pratibha Patil, the way they do Shabana Azmi and Jayalalithaa, Sunita Williams and Sania Mirza, and say, “When I grow up, I am going to be President of India.”

I delight in the fact that our wonderful handloom fabrics and textiles can be shown off by our Head of State, who may no longer be a dull male elder in grey or black bandh-gala or cream shervani (or a bright male elder dully dressed). I want the world to see, in the splendor of the Mughal gardens, the richness of Kanchi pattu in jewel colours and Banarasis in twilight pastels and Muga silks that reflect the light. Or the hardy vividness of the Puneri cotton saree, the delicate brightness of the Kota, the sombre white and gold of Kerala cottons and the thoughtful lightness of the Bengal. Ikat blouses, Khadi sarees, Himachal and Bandhni shawls and coats with Kashmiri embroidery.

And now a parochial confession: I was born and raised as a Tamilian in Maharashtra and now I am a displaced Maharashtrian in Tamil Nadu. That the outgoing President and the one likely to succeed him are from these two states does give me a cheap thrill. Yeah, yeah, we are all Indians and of course, I am. But in a polity where the people of the Gangetic plain garner all the main speaking parts from epoch to epoch, I am happy to have my own people there, centre-stage albeit in non-speaking parts.

(Post-script: No, the Indian Republic does not turn sixty this year; that will happen on January 26, 2010. This year, the independent Indian state turns sixty on August 15. Between August 15, 1947 and January 26, 1950, India was not a republic but an independent dominion.)

Home Thoughts from Abroad, Written at Home

(I have been updating my other blog far more regularly than this one. Now that I am back from my holiday, I am crossposting my last entries there into this blog as well: one and two.)

Home Thoughts from Abroad, Written at Home

I start this post on a sultry morning, wondering where all the words vanished that I composed so brilliantly as we drove around Holland. Let's see if their remains can reconstruct their essence.

Comparison is a way of thinking and seeing the world, we learn in comparative politics classes. Comparisons are odious, the world tells us. And I say, comparisons are instructive and even inspiring. We have had so many occasions to compare the Netherlands and India, particularly Chennai. The comparisons have favoured both sides in turn and I want to share them with you, starting with the ones in which India and Indians do really well.

Where India and Indians score

Of all the things you start to remember fondly about India and Indians, compassion in interpersonal interactions (I am not talking about inter-communal relations) and customer service stand out. The small attentions and acts of caring that Indians, total strangers, especially traveling strangers will perform for each other--offering medicine, water, food, a helping hand--stand out in sharp contrast to the more transactional style of other cultures. Especially when you fly a western airline. (Of course, there are wonderful, warm and compassionate people everywhere and Indians can be cruel, especially to less fortunate Indians, but still what I am saying will ring true to anyone who has traveled widely.)

It is hard to hold on to this rosy view, however, as you observe the crowd rushing towards airport gates as if the flight will leave without them on board. When the act of compassion is followed by questions about your family history, your lifestyle choices and gratuitous advice on all matters.

The glow returns as you walk through European stores where store staff treat you with an indiscriminate coldness that says: I don’t care if you are going to buy up all our stock, wipe your shoes, pick up after yourself and don’t talk to me. Suddenly the over-attentive girls in white coats in Chennai stores seem marginally less irritating. And one misses the shopkeeper in Bombay or Delhi who says: Look, look, what is the harm in looking? Or even the efficient Nalli or Kumaran floor supervisors who say, yes, what are you looking for, what is your budget and shepherd you to the right place.

One also notices the absence of those proto-relationships one has with service providers and vendors in India (and elsewhere in South Asia). That people do not remember each other in spite of repeated interaction over a long period of time just stuns me. To walk into stores where you have purchased things for many years, to recognize the sales staff but have them look at you (a rare South Asian in a European sea) as if they have never met you before… that actually happens most places outside this region. In South Asia, for the most part, like two points make a line, two interactions (or even one) are enough to form the skeleton of a relationship. This skeletal structure gives them permission to remember my purchasing habits or even that I have not come to the store in a saree, and it gives me permission to say, how are you today and over time, enquire about the family or the business. This is not true of course, of the new malls and department stores, but it still holds good for the family businesses and shops that still dominate retail. It is excellent business practice; I equate being remembered with being able to trust and it is repeat business for the store.

My sociologist friend tried to explain, and I will try and paraphrase from memory (please comment to correct or clarify): she said that Dutch society had never been feudal and like adjacent parts of France and England (across the channel), had always had nuclear families. Not being feudal meant that responsibility for a community and community affiliation clustered around church parishes. In spite of their maritime and commercial history, then, the Dutch did not reach out and did not learn to reach out to people beyond their community. She also said that self-sufficiency and the expectation of self-sufficiency followed from the fact that young people would leave home early to go to town to learn a trade and then build their families with themselve as the starting point. So each one helps themselves and expects that others can take care of themselves too.

My friend stressed the (non-feudal) egalitarian nature of Dutch society. When I asked her to compare it to non-hierarchical American society (and whether that stereotype holds true is another debate altogether), and she said something very interesting (also revealing a common perception of American society held outside that continent): The Dutch are blunt to the point of rudeness because they don’t think anyone will shoot them for it.

Let’s go Dutch!

The first thing that strikes you when you start driving out of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is how orderly everything seems. Even the trees grow, neatly spaced, in a straight line. That impression is reinforced by everything you encounter. Well, fair enough, one thinks, after all, much of Holland is reclaimed land, and planned construction allows one to impose a linear order on nature.

But what accounts for the people here? As far as one sees and hears and reads, it is the same mad human race that inhabits this space, the one that drives badly elsewhere; will not stand in queues; talks loudly and violates rules; spits, urinates and defecates in public spaces; and evades tax. What makes them so well-behaved here? (Rude, but well-behaved!) I don’t know, but it should be a wonder of the world.

We sat at the window everyday and watched Leiden file by, in perfect order. Traffic is orderly, trains are orderly, people are orderly. (You get the picture.)

And we remembered Ranganathan Street and its chaos. The mad traffic of humans, cows and cars at the entrance of Colaba market. The craziness of trying to get on or off a plane or train in India. Spitting at no-spitting signs. Sticking posters over do-not-stick warnings. Men urinating everywhere unless there is the picture of a god, goddess or saint (the origins of image worship?) before them. “Queues” pressed abreast a teller’s counter. And held our heads in our hands at the memory.

Why do we preen at our bad behaviour? Indeed, why do most humans defend really bad behaviour by using words like: spontaneous, free, open, natural… what is natural about lack of consideration or lack of civic sense? Sometimes we also romanticize it: this is how we are, the world marvels at our functioning chaos, our chaos is colourful, being in India is about experiencing heat, dust and dirt.

It makes me cringe. It makes me sad. It makes me want to step out and trying to change things.

One of the things I really want to change is the way we run our museums. The Dutch love their museums and why not, they are everywhere, you can enter free on certain days, they are well laid out and organized and you can actually learn something while having fun.

There are some very obvious problems with museums in India: lack of resources, lack of skilled workers, low priority status in the face of other issues and a public that will neither pay willingly nor take care of existing resources. I have visited the Colombo Museum twice, and it has been a few years now so it could have changed, but to get to the most amazing part of their collection—their bronzes—you had to walk far into the back, past some very dull exhibits of boats and bats. Contrast that to the Rijksmuseum that we visited a few weeks ago: it is undergoing huge repairs and renovation but instead of shunting a few works into a tent or basement, they have taken the trouble to renovate one wing and curate a smaller collection of masterpieces that they show with the same care and attention to detail as if it were their entire permanent collection. The result: a wonderful, learning experience for the hundreds who walk through everyday.

I have visited some amazing museums in South Asia and they deserve a mention here if only to show that we could do as well as anyone if we cared enough. In no particular order:

• Lok Virsa, Islamabad, showcases the folk cultures of Pakistan. It is user-friendly, entertaining and teaches without inducing sleep. The staff are very welcoming, especially if you are an Indian.
• Dakshina Chitra, Chennai, recreates the art, architecture and material culture of South India on a sprawling (and sadly still shade-less) campus. Each reconstructed house is furnished in traditional style, down to the line of family photographs. You become interested in spite of yourself and the heat.
• The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi is the first museum I visited that I really enjoyed walking through. This was seventeen years ago and there wasn’t enough text to explain the art, but it was still a good experience because the exhibited works were well-arranged and there was enough light to look at them everywhere.
• Chennai’s newly re-done bronze gallery is fabulous. Where the other sections are still like dressed up warehouses galleys, the bronze gallery shows what the Museum staff are capable of if someone cared enough to support them.
• Victoria Memorial, Calcutta, where I first noticed paintings with interest because they were so beautifully laid out that they looked even more beautiful.
• Dinkar Kelkar Museum, Pune, whose collection of everyday objects is exquisite. I learnt to notice beauty in small things by seeing how Dinkar Kelkar saw.
• New Delhi’s Railway Museum and Dolls’ Museum are also remarkable little treasures.

I want to stress that the problem is not with the exhibits. There are gorgeous and fascinating objects in the collections of the Delhi and in the Museum in Bombay (which has been recently redone, I hear). But when will we learn to enjoy them? And cherish them?

Who in their right mind would deny that India’s, South Asia’s civilization and arts are rare in their antiquity and their excellence? Not Indians, who are justifiably proud of this inheritance. When however, I see how the Dutch (and the Belgians) cherish and showcase every small aspect of their culture (art, musical instruments, chocolates, posters, stamps, trains, etc.), I am saddened and moved to act on our behalf.

We have so much to show and showcase, even conceding to cultural studies scholars that all showcasing is problematic. I want to be part of an effort to showcase well. And I want to be part of an effort to make us take a real interest in our own heritage. I worry that what we are getting left with is the stuff that was meant for the garbage dump—puberty and widowhood rituals played out over three to five days in all Sun TV serials, for instance. We are losing our appreciation of our own textiles, our understanding of our iconography and architecture, our taste for our own food and our embrace of our own inner diversity.

That is another striking comparison, by the way. Indians are constantly negotiating the politics of our diversity. It is interesting to watch how the Dutch, like other Europeans, are learning to see themselves as not culturally homogeneous. This is the beginning of an interesting journey for them, and one that is slightly further along in the US. From India’s point of view, their current politics is our ancient and continuing history. Stratification, hierarchy and ethnic diversity have been a part of every period in every South Asian region’s history.

The mirror shows you your face and when you point at someone, your fingers point back at you! That travel teaches you a lot, goes without saying. When you travel widely and spend time outside your home, you know that travel—like any other form of education—ultimately teaches you more about yourself than anything outside of you. From the vantage point of Leiden Centraal, the clearest view was the one closest to home for me—and maybe in some way, for you too?

DON'T celebrate Women's Day....

...unless you understand WHAT you are celebrating?

Several years ago, when my Russianist sister would describe the Soviet celebration of International Women's Day with flowers and cards, I laughed in scorn. Then, in the US, I saw the day turn into what Americans call a 'Hallmark Holiday.' Now living in India, the laugh's on me: movies starring leading actresses on TV, fatuous statements about mothers and wives, getting a break from cooking and cleaning... and sales! Now I have nothing against TV, movies, food and shopping, but what happened to the original reason we began to observe--not celebrate--this day?

International Women's Day is a marker in the worldwide struggle for women's rights and equality. It is a day where we remind ourselves of how much remains to be done in our quest to stop this very patronizing and trivializing way that society has of treating us and our struggles.

What have these struggles been? In India, I would say it has been and remains first and foremost, a struggle for survival. Some of the liberal struggles waged elsewhere--suffrage, for instance--have come more easily than the right to life and the right to livelihood.

The struggle for an equal right to life goes back to the campaign against sati, followed by the pioneering efforts of other nineteenth century reformers against child marriage, for widow remarriage (as opposed to sati or a long life in poverty and vulnerability in one of India's pilgrimage centres), and for the education of women. The nationalist movement mobilized women, both in its Gandhian and in its violent, revolutionary streams. From there to the granting of suffrage and equal rights was a small but insufficient step.

Insufficient, because the advent of a consumerist modernity has brought new travails to women's lives. The practice of demanding dowry has now spread throughout the country, and the killing or other abuse of young brides whose dowry is deemed inadequate is known around the country. This is true of female infanticide and its terrible new technology-enabled version, female foeticide (or sex-selective abortion, which sounds euphemistic to me sometimes). Women and girls face many other kinds of sexual abuse, from incestuous rape to sexual harrassment in the workplace to what we quaintly term 'eve-teasing'. All this, plus the residuary category of domestic violence (meaning the battery and torture of wives)--not much reason to celebrate, is there?

We are still splitting hairs over the right of women to participate in politics and be represented in numbers more closely approximating their presence in society. Scarily, even as we do so, the child sex ratio drops, and I wonder where that meeting point will be between equal access and the sex ratio: will the former rise to meet the latter as it is presently, or the latter fall to meet the former as it is presently.

I grew up a feminist because I did not know there was another way for an intelligent, spirited young woman to grow up. As Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender wrote, to me, feminism is the 'radical notion' that women are human. I did not learn feminism in women's studies classes (they did not exist when I was growing up). I learnt it from strong women and men in my family and from my gut response to inequities I witnessed around me. So much has changed in the last few decades, but so little of it for the lives of women--who may now buy washing machines, but not political access or security. So much remains to be done. Yes, I will look at the glass as half-empty because it prevents me from settling in a sanguine fashion into my own comfortable middle class life. It reminds me of how intertwined my fate is with those of other women.

Don't 'celebrate' Women's Day, observe it! If you cannot be part of our struggle with us and support it, ignore or challenge us, but do not reduce this life-and-death battle we wage to a greeting card or a posy or worse, discounts for the very things that shackle us to stereotypes and limits.

***********
An off-the-cuff, point of departure list for reading further:
Radha Kumar, The History of Doing, Kali for Women, 1993.
Sakuntala Narasimhan, Sati - Widow Burning in India, Anchor, 1992.
Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, University of California, 1998.
Raka Ray, Fields of Protest: Women's Movements in India, Minnesota, 1999.
Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime, OUP, 2002.
Mala Sen, Death by Fire: Sati, Dowry Death, and Female Infanticide in Modern India, Rutgers, 2002.
Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women's Rights in India, OUP, 2001.
Manushi remains, to my mind, an important resource. It may be accessed here and also here.
and if you will excuse a little self-promotion (hey, it's my blog and I'll write what I want to!):
Farah Faizal and Swarna Rajagopalan, Women, Security, South Asia: A Clearing in the Thicket, Sage, 2005.

Base-ic Concerns

This morning, the Indian Express reported the setting up of India’s base at Ayni in Tajikistan: India’s first footprint in strategic Central Asia, the reporter wrote. Bases leave more than one kind of footprint in the communities where they are located.


In her 1989 book, “Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics,” Cynthia Enloe describes the relationship between a military base and the local community. The base depends on the community’s acceptance which serves as camouflage and in turn, the community comes to depend on the base for jobs and a ready market. Writing primarily about American bases around the world, she identified the interaction between soldiers and local women as particularly controversial. During the Second World War, it was social interaction between Black American soldiers and white British women leading to interracial romance and marriage that provoked concern. Elsewhere however, it was a different equation that obtained between armies of occupation and women in occupied countries, most infamously, Japanese soldiers and Korean “comfort women” and after the war, American soldiers in Okinawa and Japanese women.

The relationship between soldiers and sex workers resembles a contractual or consensual arrangement; however, as Enloe shows in this book and again in “Maneuvers” (2000), they are deeply embedded in and enabled by an unequal power relationship. Enloe’s work provides examples from British policy regarding overseas cantonments, and asks whether we only see this in the context of settings where those stationed on the base are from a different race than local community members. AIDS has added an extra dimension to this multilayered issue; for instance, the part played by UN peacekeepers in spreading the infection in parts of Africa and the part played by US soldiers in doing the same in parts of Asia where there are US bases has been documented and protested.

There are all kinds of military bases; armies step outside their original homebase in a variety of contexts. The Indian base in Tajikistan, like US bases in so many parts of the world, will serve as an observer mission of sorts, also providing a rapid deployment facility if needed. There are bases set up by armies of occupation, a contentious term that is used to refer both to invading armies and armies fighting insurgencies over a long-term. The Indian army presence in Kashmir and northeastern India and the US army in Vietnam are examples, as is the advancing and retreating Sri Lankan army in northeastern Sri Lanka. Finally, there are peacekeeping forces, whether their presence is mandated by the UN Security Council or bilateral treaties like the Indian Army in Sri Lanka. Accusations of sexual violence are common to all these contexts, and until recently, it was possible to brush them aside as ‘the spoils of war’ which are to be expected when soldiers are stationed away from families for a long time. In 2001, the Sri Lankan army was even reported to have prescribed the impotence drug, Viagra, to injured soldiers to raise their morale.

In the last decade, feminist mobilization has resulted in the acceptance of the idea that rape is a weapon of war. Apologies have been made by the Japanese government for their wartime excesses in the first part of the twentieth century and Pakistani feminists apologized to Bangladeshi women for the actions of the Pakistani army in 1971.

Feminists, but also any other Indians who care that those who act in our name should act in a righteous fashion, must draw attention to these experiences and beyond challenging the rationale for establishing bases abroad, must advocate the adoption and strict implementation of behavioural codes that prevent soldiers from acting in an exploitative way. Human rights advocacy has done that, especially in Kashmir and northeastern India, but beyond redress, punishment of individual offenders and removal of particular laws, we need to press for a renewed appraisal of

(1) how we understand base-civilian relations;
(2) how the establishment defines, investigates and punishes sexual violence;
(3) the degree of transparency brought to such proceedings, and finally,
(4) our own willingness and ability to monitor base conduct in the interests of the community in which Indian bases are located.

***

Of related interest, a handful of links:

• Rubina Saigol, Militarisation, Nation and Gender:Women's Bodies as Arenas of Violent Conflict, South Asia Citizens' Web.
• Patricia Mukhim, Women and insurgency, The Telegraph, November 29, 2005.
• Jeanne Ward and Mendy Marsh, Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in War and Its Aftermath: Realities, Responses, and Required Resources, UNFPA, June 2006. See also here.
• A report on Cynthia Enloe's lecture, How Can You Tell If You're Becoming Militarized? Some Feminist Clues, WHRNet.org, March 29, 2006.
• Kalpana Sharma, Kashmir's steel magnolias, Hindu, September 8, 2002.
• UNAIDS, Peacekeepers. And in Laurie Garrett, HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links? Council on Foreign Relations, July 18, 2005.
• Michael Richardson, War Apology Likely to Ease Tension in Asia : Japan Vows to Pursue Conciliatory Course, International Herald Tribune, August 24, 1993.
• Suvendrini Kakuchi, 'Respect Women Before Setting Up Military Bases' IPS News, January 31, 2007.
• Chalmers Johnson, America's Empire of Bases, CommonDreams.org, January 15, 2004.