#nosgbv Who will protect us from our protectors?

 I am settling down to blog after having just watched a news video of an attack by men claiming to be from the Hindu Sena on the prison van carrying Aftab Poonawala who is now infamous for abusing and finally murdering and chopping his partner into bits. They said to the mediapersons around them that they would protect their sisters and mothers from such people. 

Somebody ask us, sisters and daughters and mothers, what we would like. 

Respect. Consideration. Kindness. Honesty. Not because we are delicate darlings. But because we are human. 

What does not translate into happiness for us are protection, patronage or possessiveness. So much abuse happens because men think they are protecting women, or being benevolent dictators/ benefactors, or showing their love by staking territorial claim on their bodies, their choices and their identities. Actually all of these are abuse. Patriarchy does such a good job indoctrinating its female victims that we lap up masterful heroes, and identify with heroines that swoon in someone's posessive grip, or buy tickets to watch films where male leads forcefully plant kisses on women turning them forever into devoted slaves. 

But in real life, protection is the rule that says you cannot go to college because there will be boys on the bus. It says that you cannot go out to earn a living because men will harrass you, and when they do, you will be blamed for stepping beyond that 'Lakshman Rekha.' Sita was not abducted because a king wanted to avenge his sister's humiliation at the hands of her husband and brother-in-law or even because two kings were fated to fight an epic battle and she was the pretext that fate had written into the script. She was abducted because she stepped past the Lakshman Rekha. 

Protection offers patriarchal politicians a quick fix to the questions we raise about gender equality. More women's buses. More lights on streets. More CCTV cameras. More police. Death penalty. No night shift for women workers. No girls in evening college. And so on. It makes them look like they are doing something. 

What they actually do is to hem women further and further in while those who abuse them roam freely. Rapists roam free while their victims shelter. I am not speaking of any one case here but a general reality. 

Can we please confront the beast? Is there someone in politics that has the courage to say that the problem is how men are raised and how we forgive them everything? That does not mean they must be hung or castrated but can we have realistic punishments for the small acts of bullying and misogyny that begin in childhood, can we model fairness and equality in our homes? Can someone in politics take a stand on the kind of vicious sexist speech that is rewarded by the deal-making in the men's toilet (sorry, locker room is too dignified for the horrible things male politicians say in India)? Can someone say that such people will not get tickets, no one will campaign for them? All these groups of men that will protect us from ourselves and others, who will protect us from them and the deathly cocktail of their prejudice, entitlement and unthinking vigilantism?

Too much work, and for what?

This morning, I had reason to reflect on how many factors conspire to keep women from professional success. A health crisis in the family has kept a colleague from the office for a few days now with no end in sight within the week. She is conscientious and no doubt this is adding to her stress.

All women work, whether at home for no pay or outside for pay, and that their workload never diminishes is even a saying ("A woman's work is never done"). But when women go out to work for money (because why else would she want to, right?), nothing shifts at home. She retains primary responsibility for the household, for care duties and for the family's social and ritual obligations. When I was young, I used to despair about women who took leave for 'nombu' or for someone's naming ceremony. I don't so it still irritates me when it comes up but now I realise that this is part of that double burden.

In the absence of the joint family, with families being scattered and more women remaining single, care duties are not shared. In an  crisis, there may be absolutely no one else that a caregiver can call on even to sit with a patient while she pays the bill or gets medicine. If she is a midcareer or senior person, it would take an extraordinary organisation to adjust its priorities to her emergency and even then, they may not always have a choice. The expectation is that women would perform their duties excellently at home and outside.

What a huge burden and source of stress for the woman! Already raised in a society where she is taught to be her last priority, in a crisis, she is alone. Having taken leave for the crisis, she may not have the choice of taking leave to take care of herself.

Why then would women take on work in the public sphere? Why would they volunteer? Why would they do political work? Why would they contest elections?

When men make those choices, they are lauded for their public spirit, and the waves (of family members and their expectations) part to make room for the social activist or political leader. By and large, while men in political life serve society, an army of domestic supporters serve them. But who takes over care duties from women? This is one reason that those who advocate the greater inclusion of women in politics are also advocates for care work support, either through allowing budgetary allocations for it or setting up social support systems.

In India, the government and NGOs set up Self-Help Groups (SHGs) everywhere and we have high expectations of women in these groups, especially those with leadership potential or those who get elected to leadership roles. But these are women who often live in localities where there is no infrastructure so getting water or getting to use a shared toilet take time and energy (not to mention planning). They go to work after that. They run their homes, trying to make sure that their children go to school, eat well, do their homework and stay out of trouble. On top of all this, which is already too much responsibility, they are expected to attend SHG meetings on time, carry out the activities and deliver results. We do this in the name of empowerment but really, how unrealistic and inconsiderate. There have to be kinder roads to empowerment. We must find them.

Since the morning, what I have really been thinking about is the way in which we think about work. At work and in politics, our traditional way of assessing work, achievement and success is predicated on patriarchal household arrangements. A man goes out to work, focuses on the work, gets stuff done, and returns to a domestic sphere where one or many women have taken care of maintenance and care work, and everything is set up to support his work outside. Of course, this is in return for his outside earnings that pay for household expenses. The point here is that it is this arrangement that determines how we expect people to work and deliver.

Unless women get the same level of support at home, this is completely unrealistic. And cruel.

Today, many HR firms specialise in helping women find work, even after a long break, and in mentoring their start-ups. But even here, I hear leaders speak about how women must (not as in do, but should) balance home and work responsibilities. A management school leader proudly told me that he plainly advises young women MBA students that they must prepare to balance both responsibilities. Others talk about how family support is important--but in the sense of permission and not shared household work. Women are ridiculously grateful to men for any little support they get and a good man is still one who does or who will 'allow' his wife to work outside or to study.

When will this change? Really, when? Until it does, women are going to carry an unfairly large burden--for themselves, for their families and for society.

The theft of Shakti

Yesterday, my friend took me to the "Jogini Peeth" outside Bhubaneswar. This is the archaeological site labeled "64 Yogini" in Hirapur. I had seen photographs of the site online, and as someone whose ishta-devata is Devi, it had drawn my attention and interest. But I did not want to go there alone. 

The idea of the shakti of 64 Yoginis focused on a small circular, semi-interior space was overpowering. I did not know how I would feel in such a space--either utterly empowered or totally intimidated. The thought of it thrilled me and frightened me at the same time. I wanted Asha to come along with me.
 
As you enter the ASI site grounds, you first encounter a modern, functional temple on the left with a small Shivalingam. It's very much a street-corner temple, the kind that nestles at the foot of a tree--nothing grander and certainly not fancier. It appears as if anyone can officiate; a village woman was performing the aarti as we entered.

We walked on to the 64 Yogini temple site, which is smaller than it looks in photographs. Something about the space reminds me of the Kailashanatha temple in Kanchipuram--an enclosed courtyard open to the sky. There are no meditation niches in the inner walls here, but 64 Yoginis occupy the inner wall of the structure. Outside, carved into niches on the exterior wall, nine Katyayinis (nava Durga?) stand guard. At the centre is a raised platform that looks like it may have been used for sacrifices or initiations. With that kind of energy, what a great place for deeksha! You circumambulate the structure and at the back there is the main icon--Mahamaya. Or rather, you are told it is Mahamaya.

My friend told me that on a visit right after the site was excavated a few decades ago, the temple was charged with energy--and in disuse.

Yesterday, the conversion of the temple to a village shrine was complete. There were coconuts and flowers placed befor each Yogini icon. And Mahamaya was shrouded in cloth screens. Two officious men were officiating. Water, probably coconut water, made the ground slick. A worshipper sat waiting for the ritual to end. When I walked in for a second look, one of the "priests" offered me kumkum and a flower and asked for baksheesh. The desecration of the Yoginis was complete in my view. I walked out and kept walking, irritated by being accosted, being asked for money and being chased to the entrance by one of them.

But that is normal for most temples in India, unfortunately.

What broke my heart yesterday was how pedestrian the experience felt. To my mind, a place that represented the channeling of the spiritual energy of 64 Yoginis should have been completely charged. Positive energy should have been bouncing off the walls. There should have been an electric wildness in that space, barely contained, channeled by great discipline. That's what the idea and images of the structure had evoked in me.

I found that spirit had been broken. It was domesticated by coconuts and everyday petitions. It was desecrated by the interference of priest-like individuals. It was defused by the normalising rituals of patriarchy. Free spirits had turned into deities and men were now mediating between feminine energy and the women who are its embodiment in the world.

Rather like the story of every bright, talented and energetic girl who is taught to conform and adjust.

What had we done to these independent, spirited and powerful creatures, the Yoginis? I grieved.

I left with one small hope. That the 64 Yoginis have escaped and found a safe space to hide from the machinations of patriarchal Hinduism in the tangles of this tree outside the complex. Or that they are submerged in the waters of this pond, biding their time, waiting to emerge and wash away all the things that limit our thought and agency.

I need to believe that so much shakti, such a concentration of feminine energy, this feminine/ feminist spirit cannot be so easily dissipated and destroyed.

My own spirit depends on it.

The tree-lined road to equality

Published here on October 11, 2013.

“X” built broad roads around the country, with large shady trees on either side.

• Thanks to “X” generosity, dharamshalas were built along the highways where travellers could rest for the night.
• In “X”’s kingdom, an old woman could walk on the road at midnight with a pot of gold on her head and be unharmed.

Who was “X”? The problem with this as a quiz question is that in the narrative of South Asian history, “X” was any king commonly considered exemplary—Sher Shah, Harsha, the Kings of Kandy in Sri Lanka, any good king. As a student, if you had a broad sense of the reputation of the king, these were elements of a safe exam answer. For us, as we ponder governance, these are indicators we have always considered available, accessible, usable and well-maintained infrastructure a measure of quality.

Good, broad, well-lit roads, with large, shady trees on either side immediately make you feel good and dispose you well towards the powers that be (especially if you don’t live in such a place). In India, sometimes driving from one constituency into another, you can feel the difference in the roads—and sense the difference in how much local representatives care about their voters. When you travel from a congested city with narrow, crowded roads to a modern planned city like Chandigarh or parts of New Delhi, that exclamation, “Great roads!” is always accompanied by a little envy, “Lucky people!” 

A good road and the ability to travel on it have always been important constituents of gender equality.

Although tradition and patriarchy (are they the same?) dictate that a woman’s place is at home, the fact is that home-related responsibilities always take women outside. Till date, women go out to collect water—from rivers, from wells, from tanks and from the local tap which gets water at midnight on alternate nights. Paths are made by feet walking up and down to collect water. Making potable water available to everyone in their homes is good governance, but making it possible and safe to go out to collect water is also important. So paving and lighting that path, building steps where necessary and creating transport options should be on the agenda of government.

Lighting the stove to boil the water to make it potable also requires a long hike for women in many communities, as they have to walk to the nearby forest area to gather firewood. Clean, easily available, renewable sources of fuel for cooking are also an appropriate governance priority.

Electricity, not something that Samudragupta and Sher Shah had to worry about, has become a necessity today. There are two important reasons why a steady supply of electricity is a gender issue. First, good lighting is critical for women’s safety. Well-lit roads, well-lit public bathrooms and roads to bathrooms, well-lit homes, well-lit compounds, parking lots, stairwells and landings—all make a huge difference to how safe women feel. The fear of what lurks in the dark is hard to shake off, and even if lighting will not stop a determined assailant, it does dissuade opportunists.

Second, given the number of women who run small and/or home-based enterprises, the kind of power shortages that states like Tamil Nadu have lived with, hit them hardest. When you cannot work or run your equipment for most hours of the day, and your income does not extend to spending on diesel for a generator, power shortages must force a decline in living standards, often to the brink of poverty. Also, it is harder for young girls to sit alone and study under a street lamp, so prolonged power cuts will at some point hit their access to education. And this brings us back to the question of well-lit roads—that allow girls to attend evening classes and night-school and early morning sports.

For some distances, roads are not enough. In Tamil Nadu, a few decades ago, teaching women to cycle and giving them bicycles was found to improve their mobility, their education and livelihood prospects, their sense of confidence and empowerment. Buses may be necessary, with either mixed or segregated seating, but always with well-lit and clean bus-stands that perhaps have a security monitor or an emergency phone. In large cities, rail-based transit systems make a difference; but they make a difference only if the subways to the stations, the station platforms themselves and the trains are safe. A government that is serious about women’s equality is a government that invests in public transportation that is reliable, safe and accessible. I grew up long ago in a Bombay that was safe for women; and one important piece of that was surely that the city had safe and reliable public transportation. Growing up in such a place gave me the confidence that I could do anything I wanted; no matter where life led, there would be a bus to take me there and back safely!

For women, public toilets are a vital element of infrastructural development—and not the kind whose location you can smell two kilometres away. Chennai, for instance, has only 714 public toilets for a city its size, a local research organization found, and most of these were in terrible shape. And Chennai is not unusual. In a country which is trying to get people to build toilets in their homes, clean and usable public toilets may be too much to ask. But that woman who sells coconut water all day near your office would have to do without a toilet all day. And the woman sales executive who sells detergent from door to door has no access to a toilet, so that must limit the number of days she can work. That men should have access to public toilets is also important to women who, in many areas, cannot walk down a road that is not lined by urinating men. (We have come such a long way in terms of what lines our roads.) Can you imagine what it is like for adolescent girls to walk past that sight on the way to school or back?

An easy conclusion for this article would be that governments should pay attention to infrastructure issues, but to my mind, each of these instances makes the case for infrastructure to be taken on more explicitly as a feminist issue. The women’s movement talks about access to public spaces in the context of safety. We also talk about it in the context of livelihoods. Some of us make the case that women are as entitled to enjoying public spaces as others are. But what we need to see and hear more of is feminists engaging in research and advocacy on infrastructural issues, town-planning and urban design. Women need to develop both technical expertise and advocacy skills in these areas. These women already exist, but we need to create high profile platforms for their work.

Equality in social and political relations depends on equality of access to educational, livelihood and other opportunity, and access depends largely on the quality of infrastructure. Being able to count on good infrastructure frees individuals up to lead creative and productive lives. Women, who are usually saddled with responsibility for water, food, fuel and other domestic support and supplies, bear the brunt of poor infrastructure, forever limited by its constraints and fearful of its consequences. A government’s lack of commitment to women’s rights may be obscured by its verbiage, but can clearly be read in the quality and quantity of its infrastructural investments. Which roads are being built; which facilities are being created and how accessible they are to women; whether public transportation systems are being imagined and how; whether public toilets are merely the subject of competitive polemics—are clear indicators of where female citizens stand. And so far, where we stand is nowhere.

Swarna Rajagopalan trained as a political scientist, works as an independent scholar and runs Prajnya.