Let’s swallow the bitter pill And then bite the bullet...

 

 

 

 

 

The first step towards healing is to acknowledge that something is wrong with you. The logical next step is to get a correct diagnosis – what hurts, where and why. Once these basic steps are taken then the journey towards cure begins and as one tastes ease, comfort and other benefits, one realises that healing has begun. All that is needed is a steady course of right doses of medicines. So let us first acknowledge that there is something ailing in our society. Something needs urgent diagnosis. What hurts and why? And then of course a steady course of treatment. Doses of medicines – may be bitter pills – to cure the disease. “We are fine,” many may argue. “Look at our growing wealth. We have better homes, better roads, better civic facilities. Oh, we are doing great,” they say. “Yes but is that all we want as a society – better homes, better roads, better civic facilities? If I am not wrong, once our goals were more like - strength of character, upholding truth and justice, spiritual progress etc, etc, etc.

 

What about the growing failures of ‘human’ society?” So, as a community are we ailing? No? Yes? -----??? A man has just killed his own daughter because she had aspirations – to build a life for herself and her family. For a daughter, such a wish is only natural. But in an ailing society, it is an anathema. Daughters don’t do it. Why? Our traditions don’t allow it. A father living on a daughter’s income! They are ‘…paraya dhan!’ Who can be such a daft as not to know that times have changed? Daughters are not only running households but running nations. World may have grown, we have not. We have tightly held the leash of tradition so that it can turn into a noose anytime for anybody. Why are we holding on to that leash? Because, we are sick. The ailment, some sociologists say, is a direct clash between patriarchal mindset and growing strength of the women force.

 

While the latter is a natural progression, a healthy growth, the former is a cancer which is refusing to die. Like all cancers, patriarchal mindset can remain latent for long before it projects itself in a most despicable manner. Before you realise it, generations get afflicted. Generations have gone by looking at the horrors that patriarchy has imposed on women and as a consequence on society. It has been an unequivocal fact that societies where women were respected and given their natural due, progressed at a greater pace, achieved greater goals and nurtured life better. But this has failed to change deep-rooted perspectives. Consequently, daughters continue to get slaughtered at the altar of father’s pride - be it honour killing or female foeticide. And when someone as dear, as trusted as a father thinks that a daughter is disposable, who else do you look at for strength, for courage, for love and for comfort? The urgent need is to diagnose this cancer. Who all are afflicted in society?

 

What are the symptoms? A patriarchal mindset places a man higher than a woman. It often operates on a sharp divide of the duality of sexes – strong, weak; powerful, powerless; worthy, unworthy and glorifies one while completely neglecting the other. Since time immemorial, Nature has demonstrated that it has never restricted itself to such a divide. It has also made women strong and men weak. In fact, most of the attributes that it has bestowed upon two sexes are very nuanced and these nuances are to be found everywhere and are often so visible that only a closed mind cannot see it. But societies after societies, generations after generations have failed to see it. Why? Because most of them relied heavily on this very skewed idea of might – physical and hence masculine. To this day, many societies are yet to come out of that idea and yet to come to terms with the obvious – that the feminine energy is a great force and given the right conditions, has the power to uplift generations, communities and societies. They are just scared…and like an illiterate idiot prefer to kill what they don’t understand. Unfortunately for them, the last few centuries have also been periods where the thinking, wise men have emerged and achieved greater strides by opening their minds to newer possibilities.

 

To them, equality of gender is not a modern construct but a natural phenomenon. To them, women’s liberation is not a gift of the modern times, but a return of a stolen attribute. As for the cancer that ails our society? It lies deep in the myth of masculine superiority. It has got itself embedded in a community mindset which says men are in control. The symptoms could be seen everywhere – in your names, in your homes, your drawing rooms, your kitchens, your cars, your financial accounts, in your everyday transactions; in people’s discomfort with lone women…in the driver’s seat…, in the street at night… in position of power. So deep-rooted is this myth of male superiority that it is so visible in women’s own actions too.

 

They revel in the fact that they serve their men so well, that they are obedient, that they adhere to the tradition of ‘pati parmeshwar.’ Even to them, women are an inferior species. Consequently, they bear their controlling men with habitual grace and expect other women to do so, little realising that the cancer will someday eat not just them, but their daughters too. Very unfortunately, women themselves do not know that this is an ailment. Not only do they weigh their own potential on the scale of being subservient but also weigh down other women on similar expectations. It is the women, therefore, who must consume the first bitter pill. To realise that those little actions of theirs which give men control are eroding their own self-respect. To nip this attitude to let men control from the bud – which is learn to say ‘no’ loud and clear. To realise that their potential growth is very closely linked to the growth of other women - so never run other women down but lift them up. If violence against women becomes an often-happening thing in our society, we are not progressing but going the other way. It is a cancer. It needs urgent treatment.