A reflection we don't want to see

It's taken me a while to write this post. I admit it, I have been putting it off. This is a blog about life in Delhi, and in the past few weeks there has been one thing, and one thing only, that everyone has been associating with the city I currently live in. That thing is rape.

I hesitated for a lot of reasons. Because a young woman is dead. Because a family has lost a daughter, in horrific circumstances. Because a young man has lost a friend and been viciously beaten. Because I am a man. Because I am a foreigner. Because the depth of pain and outrage in this city makes this a scary place for any blogger to tread. But I couldn't in good conscience avoid writing about it, since of all the events that have happened in this city in my short time here, this is the most dreadful and perhaps the one that speaks loudest about the conflicts within today's India. And not just India. The assault and its aftermath shed light on disturbing aspects not just of Indian society, but of human nature and of attitudes to women that can be found pretty much anywhere.

In the days after the attack, when the victim was still fighting for her life, Delhi went pretty crazy. Massive demonstrations called for the death penalty. Young women who have lived with fear their whole lives took to the streets to protest; men accompanied them, often speaking of their concern for their wives, sisters, and daughters. The government's repressive response was shameful and is something that I anticipate they will greatly regret.

One of my colleagues attended several demos. She told me about this one day, not long after the attack occurred, before things got really out of hand. She would be marching, she told me, to demand that the rapists be hanged. She was quite surprised, I think, when I told her flatly that I disagreed with her standpoint.

I'm not going to use this post to argue about the death penalty. I am opposed to it - in all circumstances - but that's not the point. The point is that the people marching with placards demanding death to the rapists were spectacularly off the mark - not only that, they actively obscured the real issues. Hanging the rapists may bring a brief sense of satisfaction; a catharsis that perhaps only violent revenge can achieve. But it would do nothing to address the underlying reasons why sexual violence is so prevalent here. Nothing to help tackle the reasons why India has been ranked as the worst place to be a woman in the G20 - a group of countries that includes Saudi Arabia.

As the initial outrage died down into disgust and weariness, more reasoned voices began to emerge. There are, after all, people who are prepared to look deeper and ask: why did this happen? Why has it happened before? Why, in many cases, have those previous instances now been forgotten? Why does it happen so much? And why, above all, are so many women raped who never even manage to attract the attention of a police officer, let alone the world's media? (For a much deeper analysis of all these issues than I'm capable of producing, I recommend the recent blogs at The Life and Times of an Indian Homemaker).

It's not simply a case of the existence of mediaeval attitudes towards women in India, though they certainly exist. A few months ago, a former state governor argued that women should be married off younger in order to prevent rape. A few days later, a local politician said that eating Chow Mein was to blame for the rising number of rapes in his state. And, notoriously, a religious leader went on record saying that the victim in the latest case shared the blame equally, arguing that she should have begged her attackers to have mercy on her. Another said that rape was a problem in "India" but not in "Bharat" - that is, it occurs in the "Westernised" cities (essentially, code for "places where women wear more revealing clothes"). It's not just the men, either: before the news broke about the death in Singapore, the female leader of the BJP party expressed the view that the victim's life was "now worse than death" because of her lost "honour" - a staggering insult to rape survivors and a horrifying statement about the value of female life.

Where people of influence have such noxious views, it should not surprise us that misogynistic attitudes prevail. I think it's fair to say that these views tend to be particularly characteristic of certain parts of rural north India (such as Haryana, the source of both the "Chow Mein" and "teenage bride" views mentioned above). At least part of the problem is that these are the parts of the country from where a great deal of migration to the cities has occurred in the past decade or so. The clash of cultures should not be underestimated - in terms of education, culture and background, new arrivals in Delhi are often as far removed from the city's elite as a refugee in London is from a Sloane Square socialite. When the two come together, the lines of conflict will be many.

I am not saying that migrants are the problem. Migration creates many challenges, but migrants are also driving this city's growth; the right to live, work and settle where one wishes is also an important one. Besides, as this article forcefully argues, rape occurs where there is social support for it - and that means all of society, not just a sub-set. But we seem to be in collective denial about this. The protestors' denigration of the rapists, the demand for them to be removed from society in the most absolute way possible, reflects the desire to characterise them as something alien from society, an aberration, not a product of the milieu in which they live. But this is patently untrue. There were six men on that bus, who came together by chance. By the law of averages, these were not "aberrations", but fairly ordinary members of society. Acknowledge that, and you have to acknowledge that something is wrong with a society that produces instances like this not just once, but over and over again; and where, in the majority of cases, very little or nothing is done about it.

What particularly comes out of this - and this is where I think we should all take a hard look at our own societies - is how rape is simply the most extreme and vicious expression of the ways in which men seek to control women (I'm aware that men are also raped, and that hijras in particular are vulnerable to it in India, but I'm in danger of writing a dissertation with this post already). This captures it for me:

"We need to stress the continuum between people who rape, people who judge those who get raped, and people who try to protect the women in their lives from getting raped by imposing structures of control. The portrayals of the rape of women allow for those men who want to understand themselves as protectors or avengers to do so, they allow for patriarchal structures of control to strengthen themselves and, crucially, they create women as the ‘legitimate’ subjects of rape."

Quite. Demanding that women change or limit their behaviour to prevent rape simply perpetuates the idea that rape is a norm to which women must adapt by accepting male control. Those men who demand death to the rapists because "we too have sisters, wives and daughters" are really just participating in this structure of control. It shouldn't matter if a raped woman is your sister, your wife, or your neighbour's cousin's physiotherapist. You are not what's important. She is.

And maybe this is why so many rapes are ignored, both in India and elsewhere: because in so many instances, the woman is seen as legitimately subject to the man. Because she is his wife; because she is a sex worker; because she is of low caste; because she had consumed alcohol. For lesser sex crimes, the range of categories is even wider. A woman can be groped on public transport in Delhi without any real fear of retribution: it is seen as a natural part of life and trivialised with the awful moniker "eve teasing". All of this contributes to a culture that produces the horrific kind of incident that happened on that bus. To scream for vengeance against the perpetrators forgets this.

Some Indian commentators have discussed this as a uniquely Indian problem. Our mythology is misogynist, some have pointed out (and certainly the story of Ram and Sita is pretty squeamish in parts). The practice of dowry payment and tales of associated violence reflect deep-rooted hostility to women. We are deeply patriarchal. There is some truth to all of this, though as a foreign blogger it's difficult for me to say it. It's equally true to say that these are global issues as well as Indian ones, as this article points out. Sometimes it seems that Western commentary on the matter divides between those who rush to condemn India's misogyny, and those who equally rush to point out the plank in our own eyes.

It seems to me that, while it's completely wrong to speak as though the UK and other countries don't have huge problems with misogyny, sexism and violence against women (because we absolutely do), it serves no-one if we pretend that there are not some deeply ingrained problems that are particularly prevalent in India. What I think is needed, though, is the courage to look honestly at those factors that enable rape in any culture. In India, that means acknowledging the relationship with other lines of social divide. Caste and poverty are two. Another is the social stratification prevalent in the cities, with privileged elites living insulated from public spaces, and the consequent erosion of trust. And an ongoing social dialogue that characterises women as objects of control, even in benign ways, is another. (I found this award-winning ad against "eve-teasing" a real eye-opener. Notice how the woman doesn't even get to say anything - she has to be defended by a man. This really speaks volumes about how even messages against sexual violence can feed into a patriarchal approach). In the UK, similar discourses manifest themselves in different ways, particularly along the lines of social class, sexuality and race.

Let the courts decide what happens to the alleged rapists. Let women decide, as men do, what to wear and what (if any) self defence measures to take. What deserves our collective attention, in every country, is how everyday attitudes, everyday language, everyday occurrences towards which we turn a blind eye, contribute to a culture that culminates in horrific acts like the one that took place on that bus; and how a rainbow of prejudices - not just sexism - determine who is seen as a "victim" and who is dismissed. It's not a pretty picture. But we all have to look in the mirror.

Bracelets for brothers

Today is Raksha Bandhan, more popularly known as Rakhi, a festival observed across India that celebrates the relationship between brothers and sisters. Being primarily a family affair, this isn't a partying-in-the-street type of festival, but everywhere across Delhi today you could see the evidence of it - men and boys with a variety of threads tied around their wrists:

The basic idea is that sisters tie the threads  - which vary from simple friendship bracelet-type affairs to intricate beaded adornments - around their brother's wrist as a symbol of her love for him, and in return he vows to protect her. If you don't have sisters, don't worry - the ceremony can be extended to cousins and even unrelated men if there is a close platonic relationship between them.

I find this a really charming tradition and admirable. Sibling relationships are, after all, one of the most important that many of us have, and all other things being equal the chances are your brothers or sisters will know you for more of your life than anyone else. But in the UK we have no tradition of celebrating this relationship. That's a bit of a shame when you come to think of it.

My sisters are a little too far away to tie anything around my wrist. If you're reading this, ladies, I'd be more than happy to accept a deferred gift when I next see you, and naturally in return I will do my best to put myself between you and danger (though again, doing so from a different continent may be challenging).

Of course, my sisters would probably find the idea of their little brother, primarily known for nicking all the chocolate biscuits and being a constant irritant for the first two decades of their lives, as some kind of Protector figure rather amusing. The assumptions about gender relationships that underlie the tradition, as ever in India, may seem old-fashioned to Western eyes.

But I think we could do a lot worse than emulate the Indians here. Of course my sisters are very capable of taking care of themselves. But what brother wouldn't want to protect his sister? It must be nice to have a shared day dedicated to expressing what that very special bond means.

The Slut Walk comes to Delhi

You may have seen on the news that the Slut Walk reached Delhi today (if you don't know what the Slut Walk is, click here). I was intrigued at how this very Western phenomenon would take shape in India, so I dragged myself out of bed ridiculously early on a Sunday morning and took myself up to the centre of town.

The event has been given a second name here: the "Besharmi Morcha", which translates as "shame walk" rather than the more confrontational English name. This in itself is rather interesting. There are plenty of words in Hindi that would be a fairly accurate translation of the word "slut", but the organisers clearly felt that for one reason or another they would not be appropriate. I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this here, but there is a really interesting blog post by an Indian writer here, which connects this to the (undeniably true) assertion that the walk in India (as elsewhere) has made by far its biggest impact among the professional, educated elite rather than the poor and marginalised who are the biggest victims of sex-related crime.

Controversies about the event itself aside, there was no doubting the sincerity of the participants (around 300-400 showed up). Interestingly, there were at least as many men as women and I would estimate that the volunteers organising the walk were about three-fifths male. Unlike elsewhere, there was very little flesh on display: the participants wore mainly jeans and t-shirt or salwar kameez, or if they were really daring, shorts, while the organisers wore sober white t-shirts:

This was no surprise: Delhi remains far more conservative than the other cities where walks have taken place, and in any case any outrageously dressed walkers would have distracted from the more important messages about violence against women, a notoriously severe problem here. This point was emphasised when a rather statuesque German lady showed up wearing a sleeveless top with the word "slut" scrawled on her arm. She would have attracted no attention in London, but the Delhi photographers swarmed after her like wasps at a picnic.

Participants had clearly been encouraged to create their own slogans and make their own placards. There were some interesting results, from the pithy:

To the sincere, but maybe slightly wordy:

To the slightly surreal:

To some rather tortuous pop culture references:

While some of the chaps on the walk came over as a little confused...

There were also some very telling placards that highlighted the difference in issues faced by women in India to those in the countries where previous Slut Walks have taken place: I doubt London or Toronto saw any signs reading "Don't Side With Foeticide".

The media seemed unsure of what to make of it. Most of the interviews I saw taking place were with the various (mainly female) foreigners who had shown up, including the aforementioned Teutonic Goddess. One rather camp man with a floppy fringe got a lot of attention by becoming highly animated whenever he had a camera pointing at him. "I have a message for such men," I overheard him say at least three times, "Get some libido-suppressing pills!" I would have thought that local women would get more attention, but on the evidence of what I saw, they were not the priority.

The walk itself was over in about fifteen minutes, after which there was an energetic piece of street theatre (all in Hindi, but the message was pretty clear):

And that was it. Gradually the crowd dispersed, placards having been waved and slogans chanted.

I'm not sure what the event achieved in the end. There will be a fair amount of media coverage, but there was no direct engagement with any policy makers or other leaders. But I think the criticisms in the blog I linked to at the start of this post are more pertinent: the Delhi event may have had some important things to say, but in taking its inspiration from a movement that started in Canada and spread to the UK, the Netherlands and Australia it's questionable how relevant it is for the vast majority of Indian women, who face a different set of issues.

The position of women in India is complex. Certainly the notion that women can hold powerful positions is not unknown here. Indira Gandhi was one of the twentieth century's most powerful and longest-serving leaders of either gender; and the city of Delhi as well as the states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu (together accounting for about a third of the country's population) are led by women. The president, the speaker of the lower house, and the leader of the opposition are all female. And then of course there's Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress party and, according to Forbes magazine, the ninth most powerful person in the world.

But the world of politics is a rarefied one, and it often bears little resemblance to the daily lives of a country's citizens - particularly, it seems, in India. Whatever qualities they may have as individuals, it can't be denied that many female leaders here - including both the Mrs Gandhis - would be unlikely to have reached the positions they did were they not member of powerful ruling clans. This is not to downplay their achievements once in office, but it would be a mistake to think that the existence of these powerful women reflects a society in which opportunity is open to all regardless of gender.

Indian girls have it tough even before they are born. The most recent census indicates that the gender balance has swung alarmingly in favour of males in recent years: for every 1000 boys born here, there are now only 914 girls. In Haryana, it's just 861. Apart from the social problems India is setting up for itself by creating millions of future young men who are unable to find wives (already foreshadowed in the existence of people smuggling operations bringing in brides from Bangladesh and West Bengal), what's even more disturbing is the evidence that rising prosperity may actually be making things worse. As wealth and education rise one might think that an enlightened approach to gender relations might take root, but in practice it gives access to more sophisticated technologies to determine the sex of a foetus and to take action as a result (such practices are strictly illegal but still widespread).

If a girl manages to be born, she still faces a society where domestic violence, rape and abuse are all too common. Attitudes towards women are so ingrained that the perpetrators of such acts are significantly often themselves women, particularly when it comes to "dowry deaths" - when newlywed women are murdered by their husband's family for bringing insufficient cash and goodies with them when they enter into the marriage. (The practice of dowry really is repugnant, and reflects the degree to which women are devalued - it is essentially considered necessary to bribe a man's family to get him to take a woman as his wife.) Of course, as always with India, you have to beware of generalisations: things vary a great deal from state to state. But there's no denying that its treatment of its women is a stain on India.

Things are starting to change, albeit slowly. Two generations of Indian women have grown up under democracy, and those who have also had the benefit of an education are demanding a different world. I recently finished reading Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai, one of the angriest books I have ever read, which portrays the situation of women in Punjab through the tale of a young girl accused of a multiple murder and a social worker's efforts to uncover the truth. There's a heartbreaking scene that has the girl and her sister discover the skeletal hand of a baby buried in their backyard - their sister, murdered by a family that only wanted boys.

Books like these and events like the slut walk are part of a growing movement calling for change. The government, too, is doing its part: it has reserved 33 percent of seats in local democratic bodies for women, and is trying to do the same at the national level (I'm not a fan of quotas like these as I don't think they get to the root of the problem, but it is at least action), and it has invested in a public awareness campaign including posters like this one I spotted at a bus stop a couple of weeks ago:

This litany of challenging issues helps explain why the women on the Delhi walk dressed conservatively, and why the word "slut" was not translated: questions of what women can wear and what language is used may be important, but they are hardly the top of the agenda here. Ultimately, calling the event the "Slut Walk" seems really just to have been a way to get it more attention - it was really a protest against sexual violence in general, a related but different message to its forebears elsewhere in the world. Sadly, though, without the "slut walk" tag it would never have attracted as much publicity as it did - partly because of the controversial term and the (unfulfilled) prospect of scantily clad participants, and partly because the participants themselves were attracted to being part of a global, progressive movement as well as to making a statement about gender relations in India.

But you have to wonder if poor, marginalised and illiterate women in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar are going to have their lives changed by misnamed "slut walks" by privileged city dwellers, government posters and angry books. And how exactly does one go about changing the mindsets of over 600 million men who have been raised to believe they should be in charge of a wife - a wife they will find it increasingly hard to find?

How to flirt (with women) in Hindi

I've studied a few languages in my time and have encountered some fascinating and frustrating linguistic oddities (the harmless-looking Dutch word "er" stands out for its deceptive fiendishness). But I think this one from Hindi, which came up in my most recent lesson, has taken the cake. This, apparently, is language where a misplaced vowel could see you being accused of sexual harassment.

Let me explain. Hindi, like many other languages, is gendered, and as usual in such languages adjectives have to agree with the gender of the object they are describing (verbs do too, in complicated ways that I haven't quite got my head round yet). The linguistic gender of people, unsurprisingly, follows their biological gender.

However, whereas in Spanish one would naturally refer to a man as "alto" and a woman as "alta", for instance, in Hindi you can't do that if you happen to be a man. If you are talking to a woman - or even about a woman - and you use the feminine ending, this apparently implies that you are showing a sexual interest in her. Just by drawing attention to the fact that she is a woman, you're basically seen to be leering at her. Instead, you have to use the masculine plural ending.

For the (male) foreign student of Hindi this opens up a minefield of social perils. In the UK, you just have to make sure you respect personal space and watch how long you hold eye contact for, and you're unlikely to be seen to be crossing any lines. Here, say "i" instead of "e" and you're making unwanted advances (which in my case would be ironic as well as annoying).

I have to admit I find this rather hard to fathom. As one of my classmates put it, why go to all the bother of having gender in the language if you're then going to deny the fact when it comes to talking about people?

But of course languages aren't designed, they just evolve to reflect the society in which they are used - and Hindi is spoken in a culture where the sexuality of women is an enormous taboo. The fact that merely acknowledging a woman's femininity is seen as inappropriate behaviour is astonishing to me on one level, but entirely unsurprising on another - it comes from the same place as the rules that say men on the metro must give up their seats for women. There is an old-fashioned idea of chivalry here that is hard-wired into the mindset and even the language itself.

If that was all it was, it might be dismissed as interesting and harmless - a way to make sure that behaviour between the sexes remains appropriate. But actually, there is a much, much darker side to all this that I will write about another time - the "Slut Walk" is coming to Delhi next Sunday and that seems to be the day to talk about gender issues.

For now, I'll just concentrate on remembering that I have to talk about women as though they were a group of blokes - or risk acquiring an unlikely reputation as a ladies' man.

Reproduction again

I posted a while back on the initiative in Rajasthan to offer people cars and household goods in return for undergoing sterilisation. I didn't think much of the policy then and I don't now, but here's an interesting different take on the issue.

So is the policy sexist? Probably. The status of women in India is a complex issue, and at some point I will post something a bit longer dedicated to it.

But anyway, at least I'm not the only one to believe that the answer to India's problems of over-population does not lie in this policy or, as one of the comments on the article suggests, in aping China's one-child policy - or, indeed, in any coercive tactics at all.