tThere must be no other community as diverse and as integrated as the one we experience in university days! Every single person comes from a different background and yet each of those different people are in classes together, working on projects together and waging the fight for better grades together.
It is that magical period of life where racism and other communal biases come to a temporary standstill; while it is not utopia, it is a wonderful respite from the world and many a graduate turns to post-graduate programmes in an attempt to remain in this utopia instead of facing the trials of a job and the working world in general. I know many students who choose to pursue further studies in almost any field, simply to stay on in school. The idea of not having a professor to run to, living without steady pocket money, and the knowledge that school fees will be paid (or else there is financial aid), is simply too scary a thought for them. To be fair however, the country is relatively well prepared for the influx of graduates every July and most employers are understanding enough to help ease the fresh graduates into the pace of work slowly.
College life and culture is reminiscent of hippie-life and culture, most sins are forgiven and there is acceptance of very liberal concepts of life. In the blink of an eye one can see a girl in little more than a bikini, talking and hugging a girl covered in a burqa. Male students dress in everything ranging from freshly ironed shirts and trousers to singlets and running shorts!
A short walk to the canteen will show a myriad of cuisines – everything ranging from Japanese to Vietnamese and middle-eastern to the normal chicken rice and yong-tau-foo. More amazing is the sight of locals experimenting with kebab rolls while the exchange students they are dining with are flushing red at the spice in the chicken curry of the Indian stall, and the ever conscious dieters dine on salads and tea without milk.
Classes must be the same everywhere, but the cacophony of different languages buzzing on the same topics never fails to make me smile. Wherever these students may be from and whatever their majors of study, departments and sub-departments, their worries differ little – deadlines, essays and of course, dating and gossip.
Not everyone has friends in every lecture and freshmen sitting alone are often pleasantly surprised when their neighbours include them in the general complaining about the university and the people in it. It is indeed an anomaly in the same country where people refuse to smile at each other in the MRT!
Considering that most polytechnic graduates start work about the same age that undergraduates start university, the massive difference in mindsets and behaviour must be acknowledged. University students get college life as an extra holiday from real life and are allowed to soak in the academic, yet fun and playful atmosphere of university. In my experience polytechnic students tend to be more pragmatic and hands-on, while the university graduates tend to be more focused on ‘thinking’ and analysing different patterns before working them out. This is a wonderful work structure, to have different people, equipped with different talents in a multi-ethnic and multi-talented nation.
Despite the ever looming deadlines of essays and presentations, the seemingly terrible number of lectures and tutorials to attend, as well as consultations and project meetings; university life is a period which most students come to see as the most golden period of their lives. Education is not just the best personal investment one can make but an investment by society as well.
All school fees (right up to university) are heavily subsidised in Singapore, so technically every taxpayer can be said to have paid for my education. What then does the tax payer get for this? Well, a graduate stores up the experiences of university and applies them to life. We live in a multicultural world and it is the experiences of mingling that one learns in educational institutions that allow many of us to attain success in the right places. As the HSBC advertisements strive to tell us, different cultures see things differently, body art may seem taboo to some, while it may be a sacred ritual for others. The myriad cultures intermingling in university provides an excellent entry point to the world.
The best thing about university life, from my experience thus far, is the fact that almost all students have finally realised that an education includes more than getting a piece of paper to frame on the wall. Hallways ring with laughter and flirtations, but there are snippets of conversations on human rights mingled with talk on the latest buy-over of some company and the newest medical technology.
This is not to say that students who are here merely to gain that wall decoration do not exist in the university; they most certainly do, but they are certainly rarer a species than the pseudo-academic.
University experience is indeed a wonderful experience and gives one the opportunity and the maturity to truly experience different cultures and ways of life, to fall in and out of love, to fall and pick oneself up, to learn and laugh and live, with few criticisms; because college education is simply, to complete one’s education.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
A comparison study of caste practices between North Indian Brahmins in Diasporic Societies, especially Singapore; and the homeland.
Introduction:
The current Indian Diaspora all over the world is made up of two main waves of immigration; one would be in the mid and late 19th century as part of the British policy of indentured labour; and the second would be in the mid 20th century, post-partition era where many professionals moved out of India to other more profitable areas, Singapore included.
In the first wave, the Indian indentured labourers were transplanted to areas such as Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, South America, Fiji, Surinam and Guyana. Many of these labourers were of North Indian Origin. Of these migrants, a significant number must have been of Brahmin origin . Other than the indentured labourers, there were a small number of immigrants who came to these states of their own free will, to set up businesses or provide professional expertise. This move across the dreaded “kala pani ” would have stripped them of all rights that their caste brought along with it, in fact stripping them of their high caste and rendering them ‘untouchable’.
However, these immigrants had little choice but to make the crossing as the need to feed and clothe their children was far more pressing. The economics of the situation outweighed any social stigmas that came along with it. However, upon reaching the new land, wherever it was, these Brahmins (yes, they still saw themselves as Brahmins), continued to fit in their caste practices and languages into their new lives. In fact, as this essay discusses, these immigrants hung onto their caste and cultural practices very strongly, relying upon them as an identity in a land where they were a tiny minority.
With time, India has moved on and matured as a society, discarding certain practices and modifying others; and these Diasporic groups, now labelled People of Indian Origin (PIOs) by the Indian government have become relics, left behind by the tides of time. It is rare to find now, in the motherland, a moustachioed, janeu-wearing, dhoti clad Brahmin man chatting away in Awadhi or Bhojpuri, or any one of a dozen Northern-Indian dialects, trying to find a good Brahmin match for his daughter. In fact, many Brahmins in India simply allow their daughters to work and find their own matches, the degree of freedom and gender equality in India is far greater than that afforded by Diasporic Indians to their female progeny.
The ‘fossilisation’ of certain practices has made these Diasporic groups outcastes all over again, both in India, which they have for so long revered and tried to be a part of by preserving the Indian culture of a hundred years back, as well as in their adopted lands, which they seldom, if ever, tried to become a part of.
This essay aims to examine the differences and similarities between North-Indian Brahmins in urban Indian societies and in the Diasporic group in Singapore. There is a significant void in current literature on the study of Brahmins in a modern society, especially in the context of the Indian Diaspora; as such the methodology of this paper will rely largely on interviews with Indians resident in India, through email and telephone; as well as interviews with local Brahmin leaders and Priests as well as local Brahmin laypeople. Yeo Chor Siang’s study of Singapore’s Bihari Dairymen provides a good guide for this paper; however due to space constraints, I will focus more on cultural practices of the Brahmins instead of their economic practices. This paper will examine the appearances of these two groups, as well as the languages and dialects they use and interact in, and their practices, social, cultural and religious.
Appearance:
“The home itself becomes, to an increasing degree, the only environment in which a traditional Hindu life can be maintained. ” In the Diasporic experience, there can be said to be a concentrated effort to maintain and retain the values which these migrants practiced in the homeland. In the Singapore Brahmin experience, we will analyse how the immigrants and their progeny differ from their counterparts in the homeland.
There are certain practices that Brahmins ought to maintain in order to be recognised as one; this section of this paper will examine and compare these traits across Singapore and India; especially the urban centres of the latter.
According to Pt. Ramji Shastri of Laxmi Narayan Mandir, the only North-Indian temple in Singapore, for males, these outward traits are the wearing of the sacred-thread (janeu), the maintaining of a little tail of uncut hair (churki), a mark of sandalwood paste on the forehead (chandan) and finally, the greeting of others with hands folded and a slight bending down (bandan). Finally, there has also developed a habit of not shaving the moustache of a male until the death of his father. With regards to female Brahmins, there are no outward appearances of their caste, but they are generally sheltered and have their head covered; this will be addressed under the section on practices and religion.
To begin with the moustache, my interaction with India-based Indians has revealed that the moustache is seldom maintained in urban centres today. It is perceived as being both messy and old-fashioned. In Singapore, the perceptions of the moustache are similar, but a casual glance around the male half of the prayer hall at Laxmi Narayan Mandir will show that many of them do maintain moustaches; including the younger generation. In fact, the need to preserve this outward mark of a socio-religious belief is so strong that many parents seek letters from the temple priests to certify that this is indeed a valid custom to present to school principals in a bid to exempt their sons from school rules regarding the prohibition of maintaining facial hair in schools.
The janeu has suffered similarly in the homeland context, where my respondents told me that is an embarrassment in intimate situations . There are two schools of thought with regards to the janeu, one being that it is better to skip it altogether than to wear it and desecrate it by not following the proper protocol attached to it . The other school believes in wearing it as a reminder of one’s identity, in the hope that the physical symbol will make it easier to maintain other, intangible, Brahmanic values. In Singapore and India, the ceremony where a young boy is made to wear the janeu is known as the yagyopaveet ceremony and this is celebrated with great pomp and splendour as this represents the “second birth” of the male concerned, this time as a proper Brahmin. The main difference in the two countries with regard to the janeu is the age at which the yagyopaveet is performed. In Singapore, the ceremony is usually performed when the male is grown-up enough to understand the meaning of the sacred thread and attempt to maintain the values attached to it; usually in the teenage years. In India however, this ceremony is often ignored until it is time for the male to marry . In India my respondents remarked that the janeu was usually ignored once the ceremony was over, worn only for religious rituals. In Singapore, the case is not radically different, but post-marriage, many Brahmin men do take to wearing the janeu daily, claiming that they then begin to lead a more ‘settled’ life and are thus not desecrating the janeu. This phenomenon is also noted in a discussion with Dr. Amit Mishra with regards to Brahmins in Mauritius and Fiji; the observation being that even among the Diasporic societies in those two states, the wearing of the sacred-thread is a common, every-day part of life.
With regards to the putting on of the chandan and performing bandan; both of these are usually practiced only in the temple; in both countries. However, the main difference between the two countries is that, in the Singaporean context, Indians are a minority and Brahmins a smaller minority within a minority; so performing bandan would be quite irrelevant in an everyday context, as the majority Chinese in Singapore would both be puzzled and would even treat the act as something beyond their comprehension. There is no such problem in the homeland, yet the fading out of this practice only goes to show that the ‘modernisation’ of Indian values has replaced the bandan with the handshake. The chandan shares the same experience, in Singapore it would be seen to be unprofessional and require extensive explanations, somewhat explaining its lack on weekdays; in India it is understood to be what it is, yet the homeland Brahmins choose to ignore it and classify these symbols as ‘backward’.
The churki is probably the most ‘invisible’ Brahmanic symbol; as often seen to be the most ‘backward’ of the lot. It is basically a little ‘tail’ of hair, which is not cut and usually tied up and camouflaged within the hair. It is seldom seen in either country now but it is still more prevalent in Singapore than in urban centres, among the older generation, it is however, common among the rural Brahmins in India. A simple explanation for this is that it can tend to look slightly messy and present an ‘unprofessional’ exterior for those working in big companies, a problem that the older generation in Singapore and the rural population of India do not face.
On the note on appearance, the traditional outfits of North India, the dhoti for men and the sari for grown women are both seldom seen in the urban centres of India and the business life of Singapore. However, on Sundays when most of the North-Indian community of Singapore gather at the temple, most married women turn up in saris and unmarried girls in salwaar-kameez. Although the men do not wear dhotis, most of them are armed with the knowledge of knowing how to wear one. My India-based informants told me that most of them did not know how to wear a dhoti or a sari properly; they were worn only on festival occasions and even then they were helped by their parents and family members.
The comparisons above go on to prove the thesis of this paper, that Brahmanic and ‘Indian’ symbols are far more common in Diasporic societies than they are in the homeland. A large part of this can be attributed to the love one develops for what one lacks in life. The Diasporic groups hang on to these physical signs of their culture and identity as they fear being merged into the mainstream group of Singapore Indians otherwise. Brahmin surnames are not known among the masses for being ‘Brahmin’, as such, the main feature of the Brahmin identity has already disappeared in Singapore, while most India-based Indians know the different caste-names, thus there is a less passionate need to maintain these other symbols of identity among homeland Brahmins. This is seen in the above comparisons but also in the importance that the head covering had to Diasporic women; it was difficult to get traditional Indian saris and salwaar-kameez in the early Diasporic settlements, as such they tended to wear the sarong-kebaya in Malaya and western dresses in the Caribbean islands; but they made it a point to keep their heads and thus their modesty covered. This is merely a custom among Brahmin women to protect them from the male gaze and not religious in nature, yet it remains an important part of their culture. These very same symbols are not so important to women in the urban areas of India, where they are merely viewed as cumbersome and a sign of backwardness and outdated caste-consciousness.
Practices:
Attire and appearances aside, the most important aspect of a study on any group of people would be their practices. It is a commonly acknowledged fact that in the life of a Hindu, there are 3 main events – birth, marriage and death. These three are celebrated on a grand scale and as previously mentioned, in the life of the Brahmin, in between the first two, there is also the yagyopaveet ceremony.
The marriage is definitely one of the most important ceremonies of a Hindu’s life, Brahmins notwithstanding. Marriage in the Brahmin community is a grand scale celebration. There is a lead up to the actual wedding with the search for the bride/groom, matching of horoscopes, picking of a date to exchange rings and finalise the match, discussions on issues like dowries and wedding locations, the engagement party, various pre-wedding ceremonies and finally the wedding itself.
The Brahman caste or class is divided into ten sections, all based upon geographical distribution, which differs in customs and standing and do not intermarry . The UP Brahmins can be divided into a further two groups, the Kanyakubj and Saryuparin Brahmins who are by caste-rules allowed to take daan , and the second group of Brahmins who are not. While caste and sub-castes are obviously important to Brahmins in relation to marriage, so are gotras. Gotra is the Sanskrit term for a much older system of tribal clans; it was initially used by the Vedic people for the identification of the lineages. Generally, these lineages refer to a line of patrilineal descent from the mythical sages or rishis among Brahmins; warriors and administrators among Kshatriyas ; and ancestors among Vaishyas
Within the Singapore community, we see a continuance of such practices and the importance of gotra and sub-castes in terms of marriage. In order to preserve this ‘purity’ of caste and sub-caste, there is a significant trend of ‘importing’ brides from rural villages of India, where the women are generally believed to be more unaware of worldly issues and rather more ‘untouched’. In the Singapore case, trends of dowry-giving and announcing the amount given during the wedding ceremony are not uncommon during Brahmin weddings. Age-old mindsets that good wives ought not work is another reason for the ‘importing’ of rural brides as these women are more amenable to working in the home and are generally not educationally qualified to join the Singaporean workforce.
In the urban sectors of India, marriage and its planning have changed drastically. A simple scan of Brahmin matches posted on any one of a dozen matrimonial sites will show that resident Indians are more open to inter sub-caste marriages than the Diasporic community. Inter sub-caste marriages are frowned upon in Diasporic communities until there is absolutely no choice in the matter, as one Saryuparin Brahmin respondent recounted that her parents agreed to her inter-sub caste marriage (to a Kanyakubj Brahmin) because there were no Saryuparin Brahmin boys of her educational qualifications single and available at the time when she was ready for marriage.
Family life is very highly valued in Diasporic societies and joint families and finances are more common than they are in resident Indian families. Yeo Chor Siang notes similar trends among Bihari Dairymen in her study on them . These trends have become ‘outdated’ in India as many couples marry and move away from the family home and set up nuclear families of their own. My resident Indian respondents noted that it was believed among their parents that nuclear families provided a more modern and cosmopolitan approach to life; whereas joint families were inherently political and held one back from moving forward in life.
In terms of the larger society, there are also various caste rules of purity that Brahmins are expected to follow; both within the home and outside. According to traditional rules of purity, a barber cuts their hair and nails, and is paid in cash for doing this polluting service, which traditional rules of purity do not allow caste Hindus to perform for themselves . This is practiced widely in the rural areas of India and among the older Diaspora in Singapore. The dearth of barbers willing to provide this service has ensured that most local Indians, as well as urban settled resident Indians go to hairdressers and modern barbers to get their hair trimmed. The cutting of nails has become a matter of personal hygiene as there are no more barbers willing to perform this service.
Caste rules also prohibit members of the ‘untouchable’ castes from entering the homes of Brahmins or temples where Brahmins attend functions for fear of polluting the space. In the early days of the Diaspora, both these rules were adhered to. Until the mid 1960s, there was no inter-dining and entrance into caste homes for non-caste Indians . In the south Indian Brahmin context, Mani comments:
It can be said that the caste situation was one in which the Indian social system was implanted with minor modifications. This system was kept revitalised by the constant journeys to… home villages after … [a] tour of duty in Singapore… [caste difference was further strengthened] by the fact that most caste-Hindus came [to Singapore] to earn a living as shopkeepers and itinerant labourers, whilst the Adi-drividas came largely to be employed as ‘coolies’ in the Municipality and the British installations .
The same situation applied to the North Indian, UP/Bihar community of Brahmins, a large number of Brahmins came as milkmen and traders under the free immigration laws whereas a large number of the non-caste Hindus came as watchmen and coolies. The situation has changed over time, one main reason being the move into HDB flats in Singapore. These flats are situated next to each other with no common space where a caste and non-caste Hindu can have a discussion , also the upward mobility allowed in Singapore placed members of many different castes on the same social strata, thus eradicating many of the traditional caste differences. As a result, in Laxmi Narayan temple today, you can see chamar women in the temple, sitting and worshipping with ladies of all castes. In this new ‘caste system’, there is respect for age and social station more so than for caste in Singapore; however, as mentioned above, respect while in its place, does not mean that intermarriage is encouraged. Similarly in the urban areas of India although rules governing entrance into temples are stricter and there are different non-caste temples built for the untouchable groups, a phenomenon impossible in tiny Singapore with such a small community of such people. Untouchability rules are however still prevalent in village setups and rural areas in India.
It is undeniable that ‘caste though changed, remains important to Indians ’. Mani comments that in the South Indian Diaspora, each caste “tried to insulate itself not by seeking ascendancy over others, but to help itself not to lose its identity. They ‘involuted’ by maintaining a strict endogamy, and they began to ‘compartmentalize’ their social norms with regard to each caste, other Tamils, and other Singaporeans ” The same situation applied to the UP/Bihar Brahmins who can be said to have compartmentalized their social norms and caste-rules, albeit with modifications, in order to maintain their identity.
Food habits:
A discussion of food habits of Brahmins between the homeland and the Diaspora is of the few areas where the resident Indian community will be seen to be maintaining stricter rules than the Diasporic communities; however, there is a very simple explanation for this, as well as a reversing trend.
Brahmins are by caste-rules strict vegetarians, abstaining even from ‘heaty and aphrodisiac’ foods such as garlic and onions. However in the early Diasporic communities is was very difficult to remain vegetarian given the limited food options, what more cutting out onion and garlic from food. Most of the local respondents have at some time in their lives been eating non-vegetarian food, especially in the families of the earlier settlers; i.e. those who came before partition in India. However, in their old age, many of these settlers and their families do revert back to vegetarianism. In India, it is much easier to preserve vegetarianism given the wider range of options available as well as the fact that there is a large family structure to fall back upon, with home-cooked food readily available. This latter option was not open to many of the early settlers who were either bachelors or men travelling alone, with their families left in India.
In current urban India, many Brahmins families are dual-income and lack the time to cook, while there is no dearth of vegetarian food options in India, fast-food and western non-vegetarian options are gaining popularity. On the other hand, in Diasporic communities, wider food options and more time for cooking are reversing the non-vegetarian trend and vegetarianism is making a comeback among the people.
Still on the discussion of food, Hinduism is a religion which is often practiced through a variety of fasts, Yeo Chor Siang notes in her study that over 40 fasts are widely known, while only about a quarter of these are practiced . The major Hindu festivals when fasts would be observed include MahaShivraatri and KrishnaJanamashtmi. These are two of the most major religious festivals of Hinduism and in both Diasporic and resident communities are celebrated on large scales. However, the small number of the Diasporic community could be one reason for the unity with which these are celebrated, with almost all members of the community turning up at the Laxmi Narayan temple to sing and celebrate together. Those members who are offering ‘Prasad ’ ensure that the forbidden foods are not included in the Prasad.
Other than these fasts, women maintain a certain repertoire of fasts unto themselves; these include the teej fast for their husbands, Saraswati Jayanti fast for their children and the chaath fast for their families. The teej is especially common in the UP/Bihar region and is widely practiced among the Singapore Diasporic community. Women fast without water and celebrate in the evenings with communal hymn singing in the temple and dressing up in new clothes and jewellery gifted by their husbands. Among the urban resident Indian community however, the teej fast is fast losing out to the more popular Karva Chauth fast; this fast has been popularised among the masses through television serials and Hollywood movies; thus making it seem more ‘upmarket and modern’ than the teej fast. These urban Indian women seldom practice the other ritual fasts also, the reasons for this are many, including the fact that many of them are working and find it difficult to abstain from food. On the same note, it must be noted that some of the Diasporic community women are also working wives, yet they make an effort to maintain their repertoire of fasts, as one respondent questioned, “if we don’t fast, what values and habits will we be passing on to our children”.
Women are also supposed to be deemed ‘impure’ while menstruating and ought not touch the prayer altar or enter the kitchen to maintain the purity of these places. This is slowly being phased out in resident Indian families settled in urban areas today; however it has long since been phased out among the Diaspora. This ritual is almost impossible to maintain due to nuclear families and the fact that there was only one woman in the household and if she were to abstain from cooking, the men and children of the household would have to forage for themselves. In most homes, only the altar on which the Gods are placed has remained true to the traditional rules of pollution and purity .
Religion:
“People seek contexts of religious activity in which they can communicate with religious specialists and other participants in their own language, and in which they have clear ideas of what to expect and what is expected of them. ” There has been a clear reduction in the amount of time available for ceremonial activity, with the result that religion becomes largely, an activity for weekday evenings and Sunday mornings. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that in the Laxmi Narayan temple, the largest turnouts are on Sunday mornings, followed by certain weekday evenings. The Tuesday afternoon hymn-singing sessions are attended only by retirees and housewives. The working hours and professionalism required by one in the Diasporic communities and urban areas in India has resulted in a subtle change in the ways one attends temple functions, work takes a priority to this outward expression of religiousness.
It has also changed the way that many religious festivals are celebrated in Singapore. “In recent times, only one widely-observed Hindu festival – Dipavali – has had the status of a public holiday. Other festivals unless they happen to fall on weekends, must inevitably compete with other obligations… The overall result is a situation in which many festivals must be celebrated in a reduced scale in the evenings. ” This situation is very different from that in the homeland where leeways are accorded for major religious festivals and holidays granted accordingly allowing these festivals to be celebrated as they ought to be, generally in the mornings.
The order of the Gods in the Hindu pantheon has also changed in the Diasporic communities, Henry’s study in UP shows that mother goddesses are usually worshipped by lower castes; although high castes still cannot escape the worship of mother goddess due to her malevolent nature if ignored . In the local context, more or less all castes perform mother goddess worship, but Brahmins were loath to sponsor private mother goddess prayers in the early years. However, in the current context, every Tuesday afternoon is dedicated to the worship of the mother goddess, by women of all castes in the UP/Bihar Diaspora community. One reason mentioned by my respondents for this phenomenon could be that the mother goddess is seen as a protector, which would be something that immigrants would have felt they needed in building their lives in a new land; thus her popularity among all castes, including Brahmins.
A similar explanation is available for the Hanuman Chalisa being sung by women in the aforementioned temple. The Hanuman Chalisa is a chant that is generally reserved for men as the monkey God is known to be worshipped for physical strength. He is also however, acknowledged as a protector. In the Diasporic communities, we often see a trend among the members of the community to be ‘as religious as possible’; possibly to steep themselves even deeper in their identity as Hindus, different from those around them. Also, women are always seen as the ‘religious’ symbols in families and since men in the Diaspora started out with demanding work hours, women took over the role of praying for them; thus one possible reason for the recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa by women in the Diaspora.
Religion is still something held very sacred even in urban Indian centres, although it is often ignored, it is still held sacred and resident Indians take pains to ensure that they do not listen to religious songs while lying down or performing impure acts. In the Diaspora these rules are relaxed and it is taken that as long as the heart is pure, the position one is sitting or lying in, is irrelevant to the worship of God.
There is also significantly less of a ‘temple culture’ in the Indian urban centres. The importance of the temple to Singapore is peculiar to Diasporic communities because the temple becomes a social institution as well, often the only North Indian Social institution in Diasporic settlements.
This oft-mentioned Laxmi Narayan temple in Singapore was set up in 1969 to cater to the religious needs of the Hindi-speaking community. Rather than a philosophical character, the form of Hinduism practiced in the temple veers more towards the folk-devotional . It was set up largely through donations from the community to instil a sense of cultural continuity in an environment very different from that they had left behind in India. Over time the religious institution has become a social and recreational centre, where the devotees meet to do more than just worship . It has become a form of social outing for the cloistered women of traditional Brahmin families and a chance to mingle and socialise, exchange news and gossip, and to catch up with friends and relatives . It is also an ideal place for families to get to know each other as well as new immigrants and as a result, has become the centre for the arrangement of marriages .
In the case of resident Indians, there is no need for such a strong temple culture, as there is no shortage of places to meet people of similar caste and backgrounds, as Indians are obviously a majority in that case, with social institutions already well woven into the social fabric. In the rural case, people are already well acquainted with each other and marriages and alliances are thus easier to arrange.
Conclusion:
In the words of Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the former minister of Human Resource Development in India; travelling great distances in the search for knowledge or for economic reasons are not new, however most who travel, do not maintain contact with those they leave behind .
“But, greater the distance and the difficulties in keeping in touch, more were the chances for displaced communities to hold together and retain their identity. Even when loss of identity is rewarded or forced by the rulers who commanded their economic activities these communities had their own mechanism to remain frozen to a time vis-à-vis their belief and practices, while their brethren back home has invented and/or undergone many changes.”
Dr. Joshi’s observations are completely apt to the case of Brahmins in the Diaspora, especially with relation to the case of Singapore, as this essay proves. There have been very significant changes in the caste practices among the Saryuparin and Kanyakubj Brahmins in the urban centres of India with relation to their appearance, practices in marriages et al, as well as their outward expressions of religion and the role it plays in their lives, there is also a significant trend toward change in issues like fasting and rituals, as well as general food habits.
Inversely, the Diasporic community in Singapore has struggled to hang on to the very same notions of ‘Brahmanism” that the resident Indians are striving to shed in favour of western beliefs of modernity. The very fact that coming to a foreign land had apparently made them outcastes made the Diaspora all the more determined to protect the symbols that they saw to be the definition of their identity.
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Sinha, Vineeta, Hinduism in Singapore: a sociological and ethnographic perspective. Thesis (M. Soc. Sci.)--Dept. of Sociology, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, 1988.
Walker, Anthony R (ed.), New place, old ways: essays on Indian society and culture in modern Singapore. Delhi: Hindustan Pub. Corp., 1994.
The current Indian Diaspora all over the world is made up of two main waves of immigration; one would be in the mid and late 19th century as part of the British policy of indentured labour; and the second would be in the mid 20th century, post-partition era where many professionals moved out of India to other more profitable areas, Singapore included.
In the first wave, the Indian indentured labourers were transplanted to areas such as Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, South America, Fiji, Surinam and Guyana. Many of these labourers were of North Indian Origin. Of these migrants, a significant number must have been of Brahmin origin . Other than the indentured labourers, there were a small number of immigrants who came to these states of their own free will, to set up businesses or provide professional expertise. This move across the dreaded “kala pani ” would have stripped them of all rights that their caste brought along with it, in fact stripping them of their high caste and rendering them ‘untouchable’.
However, these immigrants had little choice but to make the crossing as the need to feed and clothe their children was far more pressing. The economics of the situation outweighed any social stigmas that came along with it. However, upon reaching the new land, wherever it was, these Brahmins (yes, they still saw themselves as Brahmins), continued to fit in their caste practices and languages into their new lives. In fact, as this essay discusses, these immigrants hung onto their caste and cultural practices very strongly, relying upon them as an identity in a land where they were a tiny minority.
With time, India has moved on and matured as a society, discarding certain practices and modifying others; and these Diasporic groups, now labelled People of Indian Origin (PIOs) by the Indian government have become relics, left behind by the tides of time. It is rare to find now, in the motherland, a moustachioed, janeu-wearing, dhoti clad Brahmin man chatting away in Awadhi or Bhojpuri, or any one of a dozen Northern-Indian dialects, trying to find a good Brahmin match for his daughter. In fact, many Brahmins in India simply allow their daughters to work and find their own matches, the degree of freedom and gender equality in India is far greater than that afforded by Diasporic Indians to their female progeny.
The ‘fossilisation’ of certain practices has made these Diasporic groups outcastes all over again, both in India, which they have for so long revered and tried to be a part of by preserving the Indian culture of a hundred years back, as well as in their adopted lands, which they seldom, if ever, tried to become a part of.
This essay aims to examine the differences and similarities between North-Indian Brahmins in urban Indian societies and in the Diasporic group in Singapore. There is a significant void in current literature on the study of Brahmins in a modern society, especially in the context of the Indian Diaspora; as such the methodology of this paper will rely largely on interviews with Indians resident in India, through email and telephone; as well as interviews with local Brahmin leaders and Priests as well as local Brahmin laypeople. Yeo Chor Siang’s study of Singapore’s Bihari Dairymen provides a good guide for this paper; however due to space constraints, I will focus more on cultural practices of the Brahmins instead of their economic practices. This paper will examine the appearances of these two groups, as well as the languages and dialects they use and interact in, and their practices, social, cultural and religious.
Appearance:
“The home itself becomes, to an increasing degree, the only environment in which a traditional Hindu life can be maintained. ” In the Diasporic experience, there can be said to be a concentrated effort to maintain and retain the values which these migrants practiced in the homeland. In the Singapore Brahmin experience, we will analyse how the immigrants and their progeny differ from their counterparts in the homeland.
There are certain practices that Brahmins ought to maintain in order to be recognised as one; this section of this paper will examine and compare these traits across Singapore and India; especially the urban centres of the latter.
According to Pt. Ramji Shastri of Laxmi Narayan Mandir, the only North-Indian temple in Singapore, for males, these outward traits are the wearing of the sacred-thread (janeu), the maintaining of a little tail of uncut hair (churki), a mark of sandalwood paste on the forehead (chandan) and finally, the greeting of others with hands folded and a slight bending down (bandan). Finally, there has also developed a habit of not shaving the moustache of a male until the death of his father. With regards to female Brahmins, there are no outward appearances of their caste, but they are generally sheltered and have their head covered; this will be addressed under the section on practices and religion.
To begin with the moustache, my interaction with India-based Indians has revealed that the moustache is seldom maintained in urban centres today. It is perceived as being both messy and old-fashioned. In Singapore, the perceptions of the moustache are similar, but a casual glance around the male half of the prayer hall at Laxmi Narayan Mandir will show that many of them do maintain moustaches; including the younger generation. In fact, the need to preserve this outward mark of a socio-religious belief is so strong that many parents seek letters from the temple priests to certify that this is indeed a valid custom to present to school principals in a bid to exempt their sons from school rules regarding the prohibition of maintaining facial hair in schools.
The janeu has suffered similarly in the homeland context, where my respondents told me that is an embarrassment in intimate situations . There are two schools of thought with regards to the janeu, one being that it is better to skip it altogether than to wear it and desecrate it by not following the proper protocol attached to it . The other school believes in wearing it as a reminder of one’s identity, in the hope that the physical symbol will make it easier to maintain other, intangible, Brahmanic values. In Singapore and India, the ceremony where a young boy is made to wear the janeu is known as the yagyopaveet ceremony and this is celebrated with great pomp and splendour as this represents the “second birth” of the male concerned, this time as a proper Brahmin. The main difference in the two countries with regard to the janeu is the age at which the yagyopaveet is performed. In Singapore, the ceremony is usually performed when the male is grown-up enough to understand the meaning of the sacred thread and attempt to maintain the values attached to it; usually in the teenage years. In India however, this ceremony is often ignored until it is time for the male to marry . In India my respondents remarked that the janeu was usually ignored once the ceremony was over, worn only for religious rituals. In Singapore, the case is not radically different, but post-marriage, many Brahmin men do take to wearing the janeu daily, claiming that they then begin to lead a more ‘settled’ life and are thus not desecrating the janeu. This phenomenon is also noted in a discussion with Dr. Amit Mishra with regards to Brahmins in Mauritius and Fiji; the observation being that even among the Diasporic societies in those two states, the wearing of the sacred-thread is a common, every-day part of life.
With regards to the putting on of the chandan and performing bandan; both of these are usually practiced only in the temple; in both countries. However, the main difference between the two countries is that, in the Singaporean context, Indians are a minority and Brahmins a smaller minority within a minority; so performing bandan would be quite irrelevant in an everyday context, as the majority Chinese in Singapore would both be puzzled and would even treat the act as something beyond their comprehension. There is no such problem in the homeland, yet the fading out of this practice only goes to show that the ‘modernisation’ of Indian values has replaced the bandan with the handshake. The chandan shares the same experience, in Singapore it would be seen to be unprofessional and require extensive explanations, somewhat explaining its lack on weekdays; in India it is understood to be what it is, yet the homeland Brahmins choose to ignore it and classify these symbols as ‘backward’.
The churki is probably the most ‘invisible’ Brahmanic symbol; as often seen to be the most ‘backward’ of the lot. It is basically a little ‘tail’ of hair, which is not cut and usually tied up and camouflaged within the hair. It is seldom seen in either country now but it is still more prevalent in Singapore than in urban centres, among the older generation, it is however, common among the rural Brahmins in India. A simple explanation for this is that it can tend to look slightly messy and present an ‘unprofessional’ exterior for those working in big companies, a problem that the older generation in Singapore and the rural population of India do not face.
On the note on appearance, the traditional outfits of North India, the dhoti for men and the sari for grown women are both seldom seen in the urban centres of India and the business life of Singapore. However, on Sundays when most of the North-Indian community of Singapore gather at the temple, most married women turn up in saris and unmarried girls in salwaar-kameez. Although the men do not wear dhotis, most of them are armed with the knowledge of knowing how to wear one. My India-based informants told me that most of them did not know how to wear a dhoti or a sari properly; they were worn only on festival occasions and even then they were helped by their parents and family members.
The comparisons above go on to prove the thesis of this paper, that Brahmanic and ‘Indian’ symbols are far more common in Diasporic societies than they are in the homeland. A large part of this can be attributed to the love one develops for what one lacks in life. The Diasporic groups hang on to these physical signs of their culture and identity as they fear being merged into the mainstream group of Singapore Indians otherwise. Brahmin surnames are not known among the masses for being ‘Brahmin’, as such, the main feature of the Brahmin identity has already disappeared in Singapore, while most India-based Indians know the different caste-names, thus there is a less passionate need to maintain these other symbols of identity among homeland Brahmins. This is seen in the above comparisons but also in the importance that the head covering had to Diasporic women; it was difficult to get traditional Indian saris and salwaar-kameez in the early Diasporic settlements, as such they tended to wear the sarong-kebaya in Malaya and western dresses in the Caribbean islands; but they made it a point to keep their heads and thus their modesty covered. This is merely a custom among Brahmin women to protect them from the male gaze and not religious in nature, yet it remains an important part of their culture. These very same symbols are not so important to women in the urban areas of India, where they are merely viewed as cumbersome and a sign of backwardness and outdated caste-consciousness.
Practices:
Attire and appearances aside, the most important aspect of a study on any group of people would be their practices. It is a commonly acknowledged fact that in the life of a Hindu, there are 3 main events – birth, marriage and death. These three are celebrated on a grand scale and as previously mentioned, in the life of the Brahmin, in between the first two, there is also the yagyopaveet ceremony.
The marriage is definitely one of the most important ceremonies of a Hindu’s life, Brahmins notwithstanding. Marriage in the Brahmin community is a grand scale celebration. There is a lead up to the actual wedding with the search for the bride/groom, matching of horoscopes, picking of a date to exchange rings and finalise the match, discussions on issues like dowries and wedding locations, the engagement party, various pre-wedding ceremonies and finally the wedding itself.
The Brahman caste or class is divided into ten sections, all based upon geographical distribution, which differs in customs and standing and do not intermarry . The UP Brahmins can be divided into a further two groups, the Kanyakubj and Saryuparin Brahmins who are by caste-rules allowed to take daan , and the second group of Brahmins who are not. While caste and sub-castes are obviously important to Brahmins in relation to marriage, so are gotras. Gotra is the Sanskrit term for a much older system of tribal clans; it was initially used by the Vedic people for the identification of the lineages. Generally, these lineages refer to a line of patrilineal descent from the mythical sages or rishis among Brahmins; warriors and administrators among Kshatriyas ; and ancestors among Vaishyas
Within the Singapore community, we see a continuance of such practices and the importance of gotra and sub-castes in terms of marriage. In order to preserve this ‘purity’ of caste and sub-caste, there is a significant trend of ‘importing’ brides from rural villages of India, where the women are generally believed to be more unaware of worldly issues and rather more ‘untouched’. In the Singapore case, trends of dowry-giving and announcing the amount given during the wedding ceremony are not uncommon during Brahmin weddings. Age-old mindsets that good wives ought not work is another reason for the ‘importing’ of rural brides as these women are more amenable to working in the home and are generally not educationally qualified to join the Singaporean workforce.
In the urban sectors of India, marriage and its planning have changed drastically. A simple scan of Brahmin matches posted on any one of a dozen matrimonial sites will show that resident Indians are more open to inter sub-caste marriages than the Diasporic community. Inter sub-caste marriages are frowned upon in Diasporic communities until there is absolutely no choice in the matter, as one Saryuparin Brahmin respondent recounted that her parents agreed to her inter-sub caste marriage (to a Kanyakubj Brahmin) because there were no Saryuparin Brahmin boys of her educational qualifications single and available at the time when she was ready for marriage.
Family life is very highly valued in Diasporic societies and joint families and finances are more common than they are in resident Indian families. Yeo Chor Siang notes similar trends among Bihari Dairymen in her study on them . These trends have become ‘outdated’ in India as many couples marry and move away from the family home and set up nuclear families of their own. My resident Indian respondents noted that it was believed among their parents that nuclear families provided a more modern and cosmopolitan approach to life; whereas joint families were inherently political and held one back from moving forward in life.
In terms of the larger society, there are also various caste rules of purity that Brahmins are expected to follow; both within the home and outside. According to traditional rules of purity, a barber cuts their hair and nails, and is paid in cash for doing this polluting service, which traditional rules of purity do not allow caste Hindus to perform for themselves . This is practiced widely in the rural areas of India and among the older Diaspora in Singapore. The dearth of barbers willing to provide this service has ensured that most local Indians, as well as urban settled resident Indians go to hairdressers and modern barbers to get their hair trimmed. The cutting of nails has become a matter of personal hygiene as there are no more barbers willing to perform this service.
Caste rules also prohibit members of the ‘untouchable’ castes from entering the homes of Brahmins or temples where Brahmins attend functions for fear of polluting the space. In the early days of the Diaspora, both these rules were adhered to. Until the mid 1960s, there was no inter-dining and entrance into caste homes for non-caste Indians . In the south Indian Brahmin context, Mani comments:
It can be said that the caste situation was one in which the Indian social system was implanted with minor modifications. This system was kept revitalised by the constant journeys to… home villages after … [a] tour of duty in Singapore… [caste difference was further strengthened] by the fact that most caste-Hindus came [to Singapore] to earn a living as shopkeepers and itinerant labourers, whilst the Adi-drividas came largely to be employed as ‘coolies’ in the Municipality and the British installations .
The same situation applied to the North Indian, UP/Bihar community of Brahmins, a large number of Brahmins came as milkmen and traders under the free immigration laws whereas a large number of the non-caste Hindus came as watchmen and coolies. The situation has changed over time, one main reason being the move into HDB flats in Singapore. These flats are situated next to each other with no common space where a caste and non-caste Hindu can have a discussion , also the upward mobility allowed in Singapore placed members of many different castes on the same social strata, thus eradicating many of the traditional caste differences. As a result, in Laxmi Narayan temple today, you can see chamar women in the temple, sitting and worshipping with ladies of all castes. In this new ‘caste system’, there is respect for age and social station more so than for caste in Singapore; however, as mentioned above, respect while in its place, does not mean that intermarriage is encouraged. Similarly in the urban areas of India although rules governing entrance into temples are stricter and there are different non-caste temples built for the untouchable groups, a phenomenon impossible in tiny Singapore with such a small community of such people. Untouchability rules are however still prevalent in village setups and rural areas in India.
It is undeniable that ‘caste though changed, remains important to Indians ’. Mani comments that in the South Indian Diaspora, each caste “tried to insulate itself not by seeking ascendancy over others, but to help itself not to lose its identity. They ‘involuted’ by maintaining a strict endogamy, and they began to ‘compartmentalize’ their social norms with regard to each caste, other Tamils, and other Singaporeans ” The same situation applied to the UP/Bihar Brahmins who can be said to have compartmentalized their social norms and caste-rules, albeit with modifications, in order to maintain their identity.
Food habits:
A discussion of food habits of Brahmins between the homeland and the Diaspora is of the few areas where the resident Indian community will be seen to be maintaining stricter rules than the Diasporic communities; however, there is a very simple explanation for this, as well as a reversing trend.
Brahmins are by caste-rules strict vegetarians, abstaining even from ‘heaty and aphrodisiac’ foods such as garlic and onions. However in the early Diasporic communities is was very difficult to remain vegetarian given the limited food options, what more cutting out onion and garlic from food. Most of the local respondents have at some time in their lives been eating non-vegetarian food, especially in the families of the earlier settlers; i.e. those who came before partition in India. However, in their old age, many of these settlers and their families do revert back to vegetarianism. In India, it is much easier to preserve vegetarianism given the wider range of options available as well as the fact that there is a large family structure to fall back upon, with home-cooked food readily available. This latter option was not open to many of the early settlers who were either bachelors or men travelling alone, with their families left in India.
In current urban India, many Brahmins families are dual-income and lack the time to cook, while there is no dearth of vegetarian food options in India, fast-food and western non-vegetarian options are gaining popularity. On the other hand, in Diasporic communities, wider food options and more time for cooking are reversing the non-vegetarian trend and vegetarianism is making a comeback among the people.
Still on the discussion of food, Hinduism is a religion which is often practiced through a variety of fasts, Yeo Chor Siang notes in her study that over 40 fasts are widely known, while only about a quarter of these are practiced . The major Hindu festivals when fasts would be observed include MahaShivraatri and KrishnaJanamashtmi. These are two of the most major religious festivals of Hinduism and in both Diasporic and resident communities are celebrated on large scales. However, the small number of the Diasporic community could be one reason for the unity with which these are celebrated, with almost all members of the community turning up at the Laxmi Narayan temple to sing and celebrate together. Those members who are offering ‘Prasad ’ ensure that the forbidden foods are not included in the Prasad.
Other than these fasts, women maintain a certain repertoire of fasts unto themselves; these include the teej fast for their husbands, Saraswati Jayanti fast for their children and the chaath fast for their families. The teej is especially common in the UP/Bihar region and is widely practiced among the Singapore Diasporic community. Women fast without water and celebrate in the evenings with communal hymn singing in the temple and dressing up in new clothes and jewellery gifted by their husbands. Among the urban resident Indian community however, the teej fast is fast losing out to the more popular Karva Chauth fast; this fast has been popularised among the masses through television serials and Hollywood movies; thus making it seem more ‘upmarket and modern’ than the teej fast. These urban Indian women seldom practice the other ritual fasts also, the reasons for this are many, including the fact that many of them are working and find it difficult to abstain from food. On the same note, it must be noted that some of the Diasporic community women are also working wives, yet they make an effort to maintain their repertoire of fasts, as one respondent questioned, “if we don’t fast, what values and habits will we be passing on to our children”.
Women are also supposed to be deemed ‘impure’ while menstruating and ought not touch the prayer altar or enter the kitchen to maintain the purity of these places. This is slowly being phased out in resident Indian families settled in urban areas today; however it has long since been phased out among the Diaspora. This ritual is almost impossible to maintain due to nuclear families and the fact that there was only one woman in the household and if she were to abstain from cooking, the men and children of the household would have to forage for themselves. In most homes, only the altar on which the Gods are placed has remained true to the traditional rules of pollution and purity .
Religion:
“People seek contexts of religious activity in which they can communicate with religious specialists and other participants in their own language, and in which they have clear ideas of what to expect and what is expected of them. ” There has been a clear reduction in the amount of time available for ceremonial activity, with the result that religion becomes largely, an activity for weekday evenings and Sunday mornings. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that in the Laxmi Narayan temple, the largest turnouts are on Sunday mornings, followed by certain weekday evenings. The Tuesday afternoon hymn-singing sessions are attended only by retirees and housewives. The working hours and professionalism required by one in the Diasporic communities and urban areas in India has resulted in a subtle change in the ways one attends temple functions, work takes a priority to this outward expression of religiousness.
It has also changed the way that many religious festivals are celebrated in Singapore. “In recent times, only one widely-observed Hindu festival – Dipavali – has had the status of a public holiday. Other festivals unless they happen to fall on weekends, must inevitably compete with other obligations… The overall result is a situation in which many festivals must be celebrated in a reduced scale in the evenings. ” This situation is very different from that in the homeland where leeways are accorded for major religious festivals and holidays granted accordingly allowing these festivals to be celebrated as they ought to be, generally in the mornings.
The order of the Gods in the Hindu pantheon has also changed in the Diasporic communities, Henry’s study in UP shows that mother goddesses are usually worshipped by lower castes; although high castes still cannot escape the worship of mother goddess due to her malevolent nature if ignored . In the local context, more or less all castes perform mother goddess worship, but Brahmins were loath to sponsor private mother goddess prayers in the early years. However, in the current context, every Tuesday afternoon is dedicated to the worship of the mother goddess, by women of all castes in the UP/Bihar Diaspora community. One reason mentioned by my respondents for this phenomenon could be that the mother goddess is seen as a protector, which would be something that immigrants would have felt they needed in building their lives in a new land; thus her popularity among all castes, including Brahmins.
A similar explanation is available for the Hanuman Chalisa being sung by women in the aforementioned temple. The Hanuman Chalisa is a chant that is generally reserved for men as the monkey God is known to be worshipped for physical strength. He is also however, acknowledged as a protector. In the Diasporic communities, we often see a trend among the members of the community to be ‘as religious as possible’; possibly to steep themselves even deeper in their identity as Hindus, different from those around them. Also, women are always seen as the ‘religious’ symbols in families and since men in the Diaspora started out with demanding work hours, women took over the role of praying for them; thus one possible reason for the recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa by women in the Diaspora.
Religion is still something held very sacred even in urban Indian centres, although it is often ignored, it is still held sacred and resident Indians take pains to ensure that they do not listen to religious songs while lying down or performing impure acts. In the Diaspora these rules are relaxed and it is taken that as long as the heart is pure, the position one is sitting or lying in, is irrelevant to the worship of God.
There is also significantly less of a ‘temple culture’ in the Indian urban centres. The importance of the temple to Singapore is peculiar to Diasporic communities because the temple becomes a social institution as well, often the only North Indian Social institution in Diasporic settlements.
This oft-mentioned Laxmi Narayan temple in Singapore was set up in 1969 to cater to the religious needs of the Hindi-speaking community. Rather than a philosophical character, the form of Hinduism practiced in the temple veers more towards the folk-devotional . It was set up largely through donations from the community to instil a sense of cultural continuity in an environment very different from that they had left behind in India. Over time the religious institution has become a social and recreational centre, where the devotees meet to do more than just worship . It has become a form of social outing for the cloistered women of traditional Brahmin families and a chance to mingle and socialise, exchange news and gossip, and to catch up with friends and relatives . It is also an ideal place for families to get to know each other as well as new immigrants and as a result, has become the centre for the arrangement of marriages .
In the case of resident Indians, there is no need for such a strong temple culture, as there is no shortage of places to meet people of similar caste and backgrounds, as Indians are obviously a majority in that case, with social institutions already well woven into the social fabric. In the rural case, people are already well acquainted with each other and marriages and alliances are thus easier to arrange.
Conclusion:
In the words of Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the former minister of Human Resource Development in India; travelling great distances in the search for knowledge or for economic reasons are not new, however most who travel, do not maintain contact with those they leave behind .
“But, greater the distance and the difficulties in keeping in touch, more were the chances for displaced communities to hold together and retain their identity. Even when loss of identity is rewarded or forced by the rulers who commanded their economic activities these communities had their own mechanism to remain frozen to a time vis-à-vis their belief and practices, while their brethren back home has invented and/or undergone many changes.”
Dr. Joshi’s observations are completely apt to the case of Brahmins in the Diaspora, especially with relation to the case of Singapore, as this essay proves. There have been very significant changes in the caste practices among the Saryuparin and Kanyakubj Brahmins in the urban centres of India with relation to their appearance, practices in marriages et al, as well as their outward expressions of religion and the role it plays in their lives, there is also a significant trend toward change in issues like fasting and rituals, as well as general food habits.
Inversely, the Diasporic community in Singapore has struggled to hang on to the very same notions of ‘Brahmanism” that the resident Indians are striving to shed in favour of western beliefs of modernity. The very fact that coming to a foreign land had apparently made them outcastes made the Diaspora all the more determined to protect the symbols that they saw to be the definition of their identity.
Bibliography:
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Govindasamy, Deva Kumari., Social change and the caste system: intergenerational attitude towards caste practices of the Brahmin community of Singapore. Singapore: University of Singapore, 1975.
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Robb, David, “Brahmins from Abroad: English Expatriates and Spiritual Consciousness in Modern America” in Meckier, Jerome (ed.), Critical essays on Aldous Huxley. New York: G.K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, c1996.
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Sunday, June 18, 2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
“The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy and the pursuit of commercial interests are inherently contradictory." Do you agree?”
"The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy and the pursuit of commercial interests are inherently contradictory." Do you agree?”
Introduction:
The aim of this essay is to disprove the hypothesis in the question. I do not agree with the statement, and believe that the pursuit of commercial interests and the pursuit of human rights are far from contradictory and are in fact complementary. However, I do admit that in the context of world politics and international relations today, the manner in which human rights is being pursued, has resulted in it being contradictory to the pursuit of commercial interests. This essay aims to show the futility of keeping the two as contradictory and instead extols the virtues of trade as a means of furthering human rights pursuits and simultaneously furthering the states’ commercial interests.
Human Rights:
“Your right to swing your arm ends where the other person’s nose begins ”. This is a rather simple manner in which to describe our rights and their limitations. It is also often said, “one person’s right is another person’s duty ”. Bearing these in mind, for purposes of this essay, we define human rights as entitlements that we have by virtue of being human – against the state; and these rights are meant to “make life fulfilling… and are essential for keeping us alive” . In layman’s terms, these ‘human rights’ are certain claims that all human beings are entitled to, which cannot be taken away from us and are in fact something that the individual can stand up to the state for; if not awarded them.
There are many nations which do not practice human rights as set out in the International Bill of Human Rights; some examples would include Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, current day North Korea, Africa and arguably, even the United States .
One of the most common ways for other countries to urge these ‘rouge’ countries to toe human rights law is to impose economic sanctions on them, essentially restricting trade and withdrawing aid. However this results in economic losses for both nations and may in fact end up worsening the human rights situation in the sanctioned nation. Blocking free trade hurts consumers and the most economically vulnerable citizens and does little to improve general humanitarian conditions . Simple examples to prove this would be the current sanctions imposed by the European Union upon Nepal. In order to restrict the atrocities committed by the Nepali police upon protestors, the European Union has imposed sanctions upon the sale of arms to Nepal. However King Gyanendra of Nepal has showed no inclination to treat the protestors in a manner other than the one he has been using so far .
Another prime example of the failure of economic sanctions to further human rights can be seen in the case of Iraq. The United Nations imposed sanctions upon Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and imposed a “blanket ban on all imports and exports except for "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs. ” This severe sanction resulted in little more than the severe malnutrition in Iraq and great suffering among the people of the nation. This example just goes to show that imposing sanctions is usually a futile exercise and does little to stop human rights violations, instead worsening the situation for innocent citizens, already under a rule that does not respect human rights.
Trade furthering human rights:
China is a case in point of how trade can further human rights development. This goes to prove the thesis of this essay that the pursuit of human rights and the pursuit of commercial interests are not contradictory.
China has enjoyed Most Favoured Nation status with the United States, as have most other nations, even nations facing US sanctions at the same time. The US however, regularly threatens to withdraw this status. MFN is merely a misnomer for normal trade relations. MFN over the years can be one reason for increased economic growth in China. “Economic reforms in China have transformed daily life for hundreds of millions of people who now enjoy greater opportunity, freedom of movement, material abundance, and access to western ideas. ” Imposing trade sanctions upon China will do little to improve the human rights situation in China and as the failed embargo against Cuba went to prove, it will serve to only isolate the victims and under privileged which strengthening their persecutors by giving them another weapon to damn the West and its ideals. As Pope John Paul II said in relation to imposing economic sanctions, “It is always imperative to foresee the humanitarian consequences of sanctions, without failing to respect the just proportion that such measures should have in relation to the very evil which they are meant to remedy ”.
American – Chinese trade has ensured that American consumers have ready and affordable access to items, which it does not have a comparative advantage in producing itself. This allows America to focus on producing those items, which it is comparatively better at, such as financial services, computers and peripherals, vehicles, furniture and building supplies, to name some. These items are then available for export to China and supply Chinese people with items they would not have such easy access to otherwise .
Imposing trade sanctions on any one country serves to push up the prices of the goods that that country exports; thus punishing the sanctioning country as well as the sanctioned country. Further, article 25 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights states that every human “has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service”. By imposing sanctions on China, the United States would be violating both China’s and its own rights to free trade. Sanctions on China will drive up the price of nearly all goods required to maintain an adequate standard of living for Americans, cosmetics, shoes, toys and clothes, all are made in China, and increasing the cost of living for Americans is not a desirable consequence, especially if it has no impact on improving the human rights situation anyway.
In the words of Lee Teng Hui, “vigorous economic development leads to independent thinking. People hope to be able to fully satisfy their free will and see their rights fully protected. And then demand ensues for political reform… The model of our quiet revolution will eventually take hold of the Chinese mainland ”. In the manner of Taiwan, continued free trade and exchange of ideas with China will most probably result in an increasingly well-to-do society who will then demand their rights, as the Taiwanese did. As markets spread, people acquire greater wealth and thus have a much stronger interest in then participating in the political process of their nation in order to protect their property. As Michael Novak writes, “the capitalist preference for law and due process leads naturally enough to the… basic institutions of democracy: the rule of law, limited government, separated powers, and the protection of the rights of individuals and minorities ”. Maintaining free trade will put pressure on governments and policy makers to protect private property rights and to pursuer prudent monetary, fiscal and regulatory policies to avoid massive capital outflows. “Global market competition helps good government crowd out bad government ”.
Stop Aid, Not Trade:
The Norwegian foreign policy can be summarized in the phrase “stop aid, not trade”. By first admitting that economic sanctions are little more than a blunt instrument in combating human rights violations. In their first four years in office, we have seen the Bush regime imposing 68 sanctions on various countries, most non-western. Human rights and commercial interests have become contradictory as both countries only stand to suffer from these sanctions; which just goes to prove that the sanctions and human rights are contradictory and it is in fact commercial interests and human rights of a state that go hand in hand. The Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs espouses to its citizens who conduct business in countries where human rights are not given the same respect as they are in Norway to demonstrate social responsibility by setting an example to the people of the nation .
Norway tries to continue trade as far as possible and in extreme cases, the most it does is to limit the amount of aid that it offers the nation, rather than stopping aid or trade altogether. It tries to ‘identify the most crucial challenges… and also to propose measures, tools and mechanisms ” to improve “awareness of and respect for human rights within the context of economic involvement abroad ”.
The Norwegian policy seems to be the most effective of the lot, the simplest way of gauging this would be the general perspective globally of Norway being seen as a fair and just nation. Stopping or limiting aid rather than curtailing trade serves to continue to exchange of ideas which trade brings with it; as well as sending a message to the concerned authorities on how seriously it takes the flouting of human rights norms.
Conclusion:
In the words of no less than Adam Smith himself, the development of trade and commercial activities in Europe “gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals ”. On a more contemporary note, Harvard Economist Robert Barro’s study on free society finds that “improvements in the standard of living… substantially raise the probability that political institutions will become more democratic over time ”. He concludes his study with the assertion that “if economic freedom can be established in a poor country, then growth would be encouraged, and the country would tend eventually to become more democratic on its own ”.
With the example of failed sanctions from a number of countries, we have seen the futility of imposing sanctions on any nation in order to influence it to improve its human rights situation. The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy ought to follow the ‘stop aid, not trade’ method instead of penalizing their own citizens by imposing sanctions. By pursuing this policy, the pursuit of commercial interests and human rights will not be at all contradictory and instead be inherently complementary, and much more efficient than the method of imposing sanctions.
Of course, this is not to say that sanctions are never justified. If to say, the US were to stop the sale of arms to a nation with which it was at war, this would be seen as justified, for to continue that would be suicidal. Another example would be if the goods concerned were being made with slave labour or prison labour, or even child labour, in this case, to limit the trade of such goods (like child-made Pakistani carpets), would be justified as the bulk of the money does not go to the carpet-making children anyway. However, even in these cases, there ought not be a blanket ban on trade with the country but instead a restriction on only certain goods.
No country has the right to interfere with free trade for the purposes of promoting its style of governance or because of what it sees as a human rights violation. The freedom to trade is an individual’s right, not a right derived from any government. Human rights violations should indeed be condemned, vehemently at that; but it does not warrant imposing greater suffering upon innocent civilians by imposing sanctions on them. In the words of American President Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan, “the freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations ”.
Bibliography:
Barro, R.J. Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society. Cambridge: Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1996
Dorn, James A “Trade and Human Rights: The Case of China”, The CATO Journal, Vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 1996).
Duffy, Cristina Suarez and Harrold, Michael. FreedomWorks Issue Analysis 33A - Don't Break the China: “Why Continued MFN Status Helps Americans and Chinese”. June 13, 1997.
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=140 (Accessed on 01/10/05)
English and Stapleton, The Human Rights Handbook, Chapter 1 “What are human rights”, 1997
International Nepal Solidarity Network, “The case for sanctions and extension of restrictive measures: ACHR”. 5/10/05.
http://insn.org/?p=2014 (accessed on 29/10/05)
Journalists for human rights http://www.jhr.ca/countryprofiles.html (Accessed on 10/10/05). ©Copyrights 2002-2003 JHR Journalists for Human Rights JDH Journalistes pour les Droits Humains
Novak, Michael “Introduction”, in Messick, R. E. World Survery of Economic Freedom, 1995-1996. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, for Freedom House.
Reagan, Ronald “Remarks at a White House Meeting With Business and Trade Leaders”, September 23, 1985.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/92385a.htm (Accessed on 01/10/05)
Sirico, Robert - Trade Policy briefing paper no. 2“Free trade and human rights : the moral case for engagement”, 17/7/05. Paper based on remarks delivered at CATO Institute Policy Forum, 27/5/1998
Smith, Adam The Wealth of Nations, Edited by Edwin Cannan. New York: The Modern Library (Random House). ([1997] 1937)
Utenriksdepartementet: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Commercial Aspects of Human Rights Endeavours”
http://odin.dep.no/ud/english/doc/handbooks/032111-120003/hov003-bu.html (Accessed on 01/10/05)
Introduction:
The aim of this essay is to disprove the hypothesis in the question. I do not agree with the statement, and believe that the pursuit of commercial interests and the pursuit of human rights are far from contradictory and are in fact complementary. However, I do admit that in the context of world politics and international relations today, the manner in which human rights is being pursued, has resulted in it being contradictory to the pursuit of commercial interests. This essay aims to show the futility of keeping the two as contradictory and instead extols the virtues of trade as a means of furthering human rights pursuits and simultaneously furthering the states’ commercial interests.
Human Rights:
“Your right to swing your arm ends where the other person’s nose begins ”. This is a rather simple manner in which to describe our rights and their limitations. It is also often said, “one person’s right is another person’s duty ”. Bearing these in mind, for purposes of this essay, we define human rights as entitlements that we have by virtue of being human – against the state; and these rights are meant to “make life fulfilling… and are essential for keeping us alive” . In layman’s terms, these ‘human rights’ are certain claims that all human beings are entitled to, which cannot be taken away from us and are in fact something that the individual can stand up to the state for; if not awarded them.
There are many nations which do not practice human rights as set out in the International Bill of Human Rights; some examples would include Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, current day North Korea, Africa and arguably, even the United States .
One of the most common ways for other countries to urge these ‘rouge’ countries to toe human rights law is to impose economic sanctions on them, essentially restricting trade and withdrawing aid. However this results in economic losses for both nations and may in fact end up worsening the human rights situation in the sanctioned nation. Blocking free trade hurts consumers and the most economically vulnerable citizens and does little to improve general humanitarian conditions . Simple examples to prove this would be the current sanctions imposed by the European Union upon Nepal. In order to restrict the atrocities committed by the Nepali police upon protestors, the European Union has imposed sanctions upon the sale of arms to Nepal. However King Gyanendra of Nepal has showed no inclination to treat the protestors in a manner other than the one he has been using so far .
Another prime example of the failure of economic sanctions to further human rights can be seen in the case of Iraq. The United Nations imposed sanctions upon Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and imposed a “blanket ban on all imports and exports except for "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs. ” This severe sanction resulted in little more than the severe malnutrition in Iraq and great suffering among the people of the nation. This example just goes to show that imposing sanctions is usually a futile exercise and does little to stop human rights violations, instead worsening the situation for innocent citizens, already under a rule that does not respect human rights.
Trade furthering human rights:
China is a case in point of how trade can further human rights development. This goes to prove the thesis of this essay that the pursuit of human rights and the pursuit of commercial interests are not contradictory.
China has enjoyed Most Favoured Nation status with the United States, as have most other nations, even nations facing US sanctions at the same time. The US however, regularly threatens to withdraw this status. MFN is merely a misnomer for normal trade relations. MFN over the years can be one reason for increased economic growth in China. “Economic reforms in China have transformed daily life for hundreds of millions of people who now enjoy greater opportunity, freedom of movement, material abundance, and access to western ideas. ” Imposing trade sanctions upon China will do little to improve the human rights situation in China and as the failed embargo against Cuba went to prove, it will serve to only isolate the victims and under privileged which strengthening their persecutors by giving them another weapon to damn the West and its ideals. As Pope John Paul II said in relation to imposing economic sanctions, “It is always imperative to foresee the humanitarian consequences of sanctions, without failing to respect the just proportion that such measures should have in relation to the very evil which they are meant to remedy ”.
American – Chinese trade has ensured that American consumers have ready and affordable access to items, which it does not have a comparative advantage in producing itself. This allows America to focus on producing those items, which it is comparatively better at, such as financial services, computers and peripherals, vehicles, furniture and building supplies, to name some. These items are then available for export to China and supply Chinese people with items they would not have such easy access to otherwise .
Imposing trade sanctions on any one country serves to push up the prices of the goods that that country exports; thus punishing the sanctioning country as well as the sanctioned country. Further, article 25 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights states that every human “has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service”. By imposing sanctions on China, the United States would be violating both China’s and its own rights to free trade. Sanctions on China will drive up the price of nearly all goods required to maintain an adequate standard of living for Americans, cosmetics, shoes, toys and clothes, all are made in China, and increasing the cost of living for Americans is not a desirable consequence, especially if it has no impact on improving the human rights situation anyway.
In the words of Lee Teng Hui, “vigorous economic development leads to independent thinking. People hope to be able to fully satisfy their free will and see their rights fully protected. And then demand ensues for political reform… The model of our quiet revolution will eventually take hold of the Chinese mainland ”. In the manner of Taiwan, continued free trade and exchange of ideas with China will most probably result in an increasingly well-to-do society who will then demand their rights, as the Taiwanese did. As markets spread, people acquire greater wealth and thus have a much stronger interest in then participating in the political process of their nation in order to protect their property. As Michael Novak writes, “the capitalist preference for law and due process leads naturally enough to the… basic institutions of democracy: the rule of law, limited government, separated powers, and the protection of the rights of individuals and minorities ”. Maintaining free trade will put pressure on governments and policy makers to protect private property rights and to pursuer prudent monetary, fiscal and regulatory policies to avoid massive capital outflows. “Global market competition helps good government crowd out bad government ”.
Stop Aid, Not Trade:
The Norwegian foreign policy can be summarized in the phrase “stop aid, not trade”. By first admitting that economic sanctions are little more than a blunt instrument in combating human rights violations. In their first four years in office, we have seen the Bush regime imposing 68 sanctions on various countries, most non-western. Human rights and commercial interests have become contradictory as both countries only stand to suffer from these sanctions; which just goes to prove that the sanctions and human rights are contradictory and it is in fact commercial interests and human rights of a state that go hand in hand. The Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs espouses to its citizens who conduct business in countries where human rights are not given the same respect as they are in Norway to demonstrate social responsibility by setting an example to the people of the nation .
Norway tries to continue trade as far as possible and in extreme cases, the most it does is to limit the amount of aid that it offers the nation, rather than stopping aid or trade altogether. It tries to ‘identify the most crucial challenges… and also to propose measures, tools and mechanisms ” to improve “awareness of and respect for human rights within the context of economic involvement abroad ”.
The Norwegian policy seems to be the most effective of the lot, the simplest way of gauging this would be the general perspective globally of Norway being seen as a fair and just nation. Stopping or limiting aid rather than curtailing trade serves to continue to exchange of ideas which trade brings with it; as well as sending a message to the concerned authorities on how seriously it takes the flouting of human rights norms.
Conclusion:
In the words of no less than Adam Smith himself, the development of trade and commercial activities in Europe “gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals ”. On a more contemporary note, Harvard Economist Robert Barro’s study on free society finds that “improvements in the standard of living… substantially raise the probability that political institutions will become more democratic over time ”. He concludes his study with the assertion that “if economic freedom can be established in a poor country, then growth would be encouraged, and the country would tend eventually to become more democratic on its own ”.
With the example of failed sanctions from a number of countries, we have seen the futility of imposing sanctions on any nation in order to influence it to improve its human rights situation. The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy ought to follow the ‘stop aid, not trade’ method instead of penalizing their own citizens by imposing sanctions. By pursuing this policy, the pursuit of commercial interests and human rights will not be at all contradictory and instead be inherently complementary, and much more efficient than the method of imposing sanctions.
Of course, this is not to say that sanctions are never justified. If to say, the US were to stop the sale of arms to a nation with which it was at war, this would be seen as justified, for to continue that would be suicidal. Another example would be if the goods concerned were being made with slave labour or prison labour, or even child labour, in this case, to limit the trade of such goods (like child-made Pakistani carpets), would be justified as the bulk of the money does not go to the carpet-making children anyway. However, even in these cases, there ought not be a blanket ban on trade with the country but instead a restriction on only certain goods.
No country has the right to interfere with free trade for the purposes of promoting its style of governance or because of what it sees as a human rights violation. The freedom to trade is an individual’s right, not a right derived from any government. Human rights violations should indeed be condemned, vehemently at that; but it does not warrant imposing greater suffering upon innocent civilians by imposing sanctions on them. In the words of American President Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan, “the freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations ”.
Bibliography:
Barro, R.J. Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society. Cambridge: Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1996
Dorn, James A “Trade and Human Rights: The Case of China”, The CATO Journal, Vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 1996).
Duffy, Cristina Suarez and Harrold, Michael. FreedomWorks Issue Analysis 33A - Don't Break the China: “Why Continued MFN Status Helps Americans and Chinese”. June 13, 1997.
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=140 (Accessed on 01/10/05)
English and Stapleton, The Human Rights Handbook, Chapter 1 “What are human rights”, 1997
International Nepal Solidarity Network, “The case for sanctions and extension of restrictive measures: ACHR”. 5/10/05.
http://insn.org/?p=2014 (accessed on 29/10/05)
Journalists for human rights http://www.jhr.ca/countryprofiles.html (Accessed on 10/10/05). ©Copyrights 2002-2003 JHR Journalists for Human Rights JDH Journalistes pour les Droits Humains
Novak, Michael “Introduction”, in Messick, R. E. World Survery of Economic Freedom, 1995-1996. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, for Freedom House.
Reagan, Ronald “Remarks at a White House Meeting With Business and Trade Leaders”, September 23, 1985.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/92385a.htm (Accessed on 01/10/05)
Sirico, Robert - Trade Policy briefing paper no. 2“Free trade and human rights : the moral case for engagement”, 17/7/05. Paper based on remarks delivered at CATO Institute Policy Forum, 27/5/1998
Smith, Adam The Wealth of Nations, Edited by Edwin Cannan. New York: The Modern Library (Random House). ([1997] 1937)
Utenriksdepartementet: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Commercial Aspects of Human Rights Endeavours”
http://odin.dep.no/ud/english/doc/handbooks/032111-120003/hov003-bu.html (Accessed on 01/10/05)
Going beyond “Chick Lit”.
Title: Going beyond “Chick Lit”
A study of women being women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context, through the juxtaposition of fictional and non-fictional literary works.
Sections:
1. Introduction
2. Education
3. Working Prospects
4. Marriage
5. Conclusion
Introduction:
‘Chick Lit.’ has become a very popular genre of modern literature; and this is apparent throughout the world as more women are becoming educated and willing to spend money on these ‘frivolous’ books.
“What makes these books popular? A more realistic portrayal of the present day working women - the frustrations and insecurities that are very much a part of the independent lives they are leading. But it is all done in good humour without a hint of pathos.” (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)
In a South Asian context, this is also apparent. Often in these books, we see an increasing amount of text dedicated to female oppression. While this is a good thing in that it allows a larger mass of people to know what is happening in this region, the case often is one of exaggeration and misinterpretation.
Women are always the ‘victims’ in the situations, often being physically and verbally abused. However, these women are not willing to drag themselves out of their ‘situations’. While they are discontent, they are content to remain so and go so far as to impose the same strictures they grew up with, on the next generation of females. Thus, more and more of these female writers, often having grown up outside of South Asia, are trying to analyse the oppression faced by the foremothers. In this process, a clear strain of oppression has come through, it seems that women are women’s worse oppressors in a South Asian context.
This essay aims to explore the theme of ‘women being women’s oppressors’ in modern South Asian literary works. It chooses to conduct this exploration through a study of some fictional works because fiction, in this case at least, seems to personify reality, and very importantly, it also spreads a message to the masses, in and out of South Asia. These fictional works will be juxtaposed with non-fictional works to gauge their relevance to society and prove the depth of their ‘reality’. Familial relations, such as those between mother and daughter, sisters, mother-in-law and daughter-in law will be examined as well as those outside the family, such as doctor-patient relations or teacher-student relations as well as those between female friends.
These fictional works will be compared to autobiographies of certain women in similar environments as the protagonists in the works of fiction are. This will allow a benchmark to be set for the forms of oppression that will be uncovered. This comparison will also allow the reader to judge the extent to which fiction relates the truth of the matter; this especially being the case in post-feminist literature, otherwise known as ‘chick-lit’ (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)
In conjunction with the above theme, the efforts of men (fathers, brothers, husbands, family doctors, teachers, etc), to lift the women of their familial and social circles out of the quagmire they often choose to fall into due to a greater sense of comfort of the known, even if it is oppression, will be examined.
Education, household work and chores, commercial work and marriage will all be examined, as these are the main ‘worries’ of the modern South Asian woman. These women often want to ‘modernise’ themselves and improve themselves in terms of education and work experience, early and arranged marriage being a trade off. However, as seen in these books, fiction and non-fiction, the females often pressure them into sticking to ‘the norm’ whereas their male family members and friends often urge them to improve themselves.
This essay chooses to move away from the ‘norm’ of women seen as being oppressed by the other gender and chooses to study this theme through a juxtaposition of non-fiction in the form of autobiographies and fiction in the genre of ‘chick lit.’
Education:
Taslima Nasrin in her autobiography, ‘My Girlhood’, repeatedly depicts how her father insists upon her being sent to the best schools and her mother’s vehement objections. It is her mother who would rather she attend religious classes than go to a secular school, rather she be properly covered in a Burkha than wear dresses. Nasrin’s mother goes so far as to bring her daughter home from boarding school under the guise of a death in the family. It is her father who repeatedly forces her to attend school and pay attention to her lessons so as to make something of herself. This is radically different from the ‘norm’ that springs to mind when we think of women and education in India. A similar situation is seen in Nalinaksha Bhattacharya’s novel “Hem and football”. While Hem wants to continue with school and her hobbies, her mother insists that she leave all this and get married at the tender age of 14. In Uma Vasudev’s ‘Shreya of Sonagrah’, we see Father, Husband and Father-in-law, encouraging the protagonist in the novel, Shreya, to continue her education, but she refuses on the account that married life is not about continuing education. Before marriage, her excuse was that her role in life was to get married. We do not see any empathetic disputes between her and her mother on this issue. The mother seems quite content, if not proud, of her daughter’s views on Indian womanhood.
As such, it is apparent, that the male figures in the lives of these protagonists, in both fiction and non-fiction works of literature, would like ‘their women’ to improve themselves; it is the women who are content with their lot as it seems too ‘difficult’ (Nasrin, 2001).
The only difference is seen in times of conflict and strife, as during the period of the Indian freedom struggle. During this period, the seemingly ‘normal’ societal rules were relaxed and the first woman to attain a Masters’ degree did so during this time. Her relation to the “Father of Modern India” – Jawaharlal Nehru, meant that the rules were relaxed in terms of university entry to men’s’ colleges and courses (Sahgal, 1994). During the period of India’s freedom struggle and soon after the Partition of India, feminism in India reached its peak, as many women were part of the independence movement. Numerous women created ‘firsts’ by joining strikes and rioting, as well as being jailed. The fact that the police force treated men and women with equal brutality, gave the women a new respect in the eyes of the other sex. However, once South Asia settled down, the women were expected to cast away thoughts of equality and revert to customary social norms.
The question then would be, why is it women who impose these social norms on their progeny. Women are in a South Asian context the more ‘social’ of a traditional male-female couple, and as such, feel that they have something to ‘live up to’ in society’s views. To avoid gossip and awkward questions from members of their community as well as to maintain their standing in the community, they have to get their daughters married early and to reputable families, with no mention of falling in love or further education (Mazumdar, 1989).
Women have always been seen as the honour of their family (Adnan, 2005). As such, they feel it their duty to cast aside modern beliefs and live their lives, as well as dictate those of their daughters and nieces, in a way whereby society will be satisfied with them and there will not be any inflammatory gossip. Much the same rules apply for working prospects of these women,
Working prospects:
Without education it is near impossible to find any form of work anywhere in the world. However, in South Asia, gender discrimination in the work place aside, there is prevalent gender discrimination in the home with relation to work and being out of the house in general.
In “Hem and Football”, we see the protagonist’s mother not only trying to prevent Hem from playing football altogether but even when she does allow Hem to do so, imposes ridiculous restrictions upon her, which include lengthening the length of her shorts, even if they then get in the way of her playing, making sure she gets no bruises that may ruin her ‘marriage ability’, and imposes a number more restrictions along those lines. It seems to the casual reader here that the mother, another woman, instead of easing the stigma of being a woman in a patriarchal society is instead reinforcing it in her daughter. From the western-educated perspective of the casual reader, it seems preposterous for a mother to want to marry off her daughter at any cost to avoid her enjoying her life and playing football, as in Bhattacharya’s book.
A similar scene is available in Nasrin’s autobiography whereby we see that the only women who have jobs, in the village where Nasrin grew up, are either outcast women or mere servant-class women. No respectable woman has any form of income. When Nasrin’s father tries to encourage her to study hard in order to succeed him as a doctor, the mother demands of her husband whether he intends to make his own daughter a loose woman! Her ambitions for her daughter extend toward an early marriage for her, numerous children, preferably sons, and end there.
Nasrin’s experiences match that of the protagonist in Bhattacharya’s novel; thus again reinforcing the thesis of this essay, that at least in the context of South Asian ‘chick-lit”, reality does indeed mirror fiction. Mindsets towards an independent life and education are similar in both reality as seen in autobiographies and in fictional accounts.
Again, the exceptions come in during times of crisis. From Vasudev’s depiction of Shreya in her novel, we can see that upon the death of the protagonist’s mother in law, she was called upon to fill her shoes as a post-partition politician, and was thus thrown into politics with the same staff her mother in law had, with no thought for her personal comfort with these staff members. To protect the honour of the family, Shreya has to forgo her personal choices and preferences. We see in the novel, as in all the others, that female characters are not only restricted from making choices by other older female characters, but they are also called upon to replace these characters in times of death and loss, thus forcing them to fit themselves into the mould of these other women. This is one of the main reasons for women becoming women’s worst oppressors. In order to maintain the honour of the family name and to maintain discipline as it has been maintained for generations past, this ‘oppression’ in necessary. In fact, it is seen as oppression only in westernised viewpoints, in South Asia, this ‘oppression’ is merely a part of everyday existence.
As leading authors on human rights are finally beginning to realise, cultures differ from region to region; Asia has its own beliefs, many of which centre around the concept of “family before self”. Thus to many women in South Asia, if oppression of future generations means protecting family honour, then oppression is not a bad thing. This could also be why the male members of the family are sometimes more liberal. Usually being the breadwinners of the family, they are exposed to the outside world and its strictures; thus they see things in a different way. To these generally educated men, independence is essential for both sexes in this highly unstable world. While mothers would see love as being able to find the best man to take care of their daughter, love for a father in the modern South Asian world would be making sure his daughter can support herself, if the need arises; as we can see in Nasrin’s autobiography as well as Vasudev’s Shreya and even in “Daughters of the House” by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, where we see the uncle trying to convince his orphan niece to put her education to some use by working and getting a taste of the real world outside her sheltered existence. To these educated men, there is more to a woman’s life than mere marriage and child rearing.
Marriage:
In all the books examined, one common thread runs through them, and this is in relation to marriage. All women in books concerned seem to want their wards and younger women of their acquaintance to get married early. There are myriad reasons for this; including the same concept of honour mentioned above, if one were to delay marriage, it is entirely possible that the girl in question may have a romantic dalliance and ruin her own chances of making a good match. The concept of love before marriage does not feature in these novels, and love after marriage is merely a bonus, not something to be expected.
In Nasrin’s autobiography we expect her mother to pressure her into getting married, given the mother’s very conservative nature. However, even in Nehru’s family we see that the girls who were the first in India to achieve Masters’ degrees also have to settle down and succumb to arranged marriages at the insistence of their mothers. In Mazumdar’s memoirs, we have the most blatant example whereby the extended family and friends all began gossiping when Mazumdar is not yet married at age 10.
Once again mirroring reality, we see Hem’s mother pressuring her to get married and going so far as to marry her off to a mad boy simply because there was no one else around and it was imperative to marry Hem off to avoid gossip. Arranged marriages are often set up with no need for any form of consent from either side, especially the girl. In Vasudev’s Shreya, we again see how her father agreed to her marriage to his best-friend’s son and when he cursorily asked her if she agreed, she was not given the chance to answer before the two men had already started planning the wedding. This is a clear indication of the extent of men wanting to limit female oppression in South Asia, although they are willing to allow education and even some exposure to work and the outside world, marriage seems to be something where the girl has no say at all.
When this marriage does not work out, it is the fault of the woman, obviously. In “Shreya of Sonagarh”, when Shreya ultimately mentions to her mother the problems she is having in her marriage, her mother advises her to just bear with things, violence included. Similarly, when Hem leaves her mentally challenged husband and returns home, she is ostracized, mostly by her own mother. These women are seen to be unlucky as they have failed to maintain their marriage and society has no place for them, being neither single nor respectable widows.
In a South Asian context, it is the job of a mother to get her daughter married and the duty of close relatives and friends to not only help in looking for a groom but also to ensure that if the mother falters in her role, they are there to ensure the marriage goes through. This also applies in all other areas of upbringing. It is precisely to maintain the status quo of society that women end up oppressing other women.
Conclusion:
If the status quo was relaxed and women were allowed free reign to education and work, it would make the women who did not have these opportunities much more limited, in relation; their power would then be limited. Unlike the world of men, where each proves his worth economically, women have traditionally proved their worth through their family honour, and to change this, a change of mindset is required, for all of society.
However, as the thesis of this essay goes, women are women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context; it is indeed clear from the examination of a number of literary works, that this thesis is indeed true. It is also clear that in the case of South Asian chick lit, reality does indeed play a very significant role in this genre of literature. Be it in terms of education, work or marriage, male and female roles are very similar across fiction and non-fiction.
As Jean de La Bruyère said in 1668, “It is because of men that women dislike one another”. It is precisely for this reason that women gossip and play a perpetual game of one-upmanship with other women. In order to prove themselves to be the spitting image of Sita , they undermine women around them and try to prove their worth in that manner. Women try to mould themselves and their daughters to be like Sita, all the while condemning the other women of their acquaintance. The tool of gossip is very powerful in a woman’s domain as once again it is linked to not only her honour but that of both her natal and marital families.
Evelyn Cunnigham once mentioned that “women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors”. This is indeed true. Whether or not one sees women to be the worst oppressors of other women, it must nonetheless be admitted that they do play the most important part in the mindsets that other women form. Teachers, mothers, sisters and doctors, as well as women of the marital family are the most important people in a woman’s life and it is these people, these women, who cause her to think and act as she does, to avoid dishonouring her family.
Thus, the thesis of this essay still stands as, ‘women are women’s worst oppressors’ in a South Asian context as seen through the examination of literary sources, the only possible exception being in time of crisis.
Bibliography:
Adnan, Shapan. Lectures delivered for SN 2234 – Gender and Society in South Asia, LT 12, National University of Singapore; Semester I, AY 2005/6.
Aikath-Gyaltsen, Indrani, 1993. Daughters of the House. New York: Ballantine Books.
Ali, Monica, 2004. Brick Lane: a novel. New York: Scribner, 2004
Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1995. Hem and Maxine. London: Jonathan Cape.
Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1992. Hem and Football. London: Secker & Warburg.
Jean de La Bruyère, 1668. Caractères. Publisher not available. Published in France.
Mazumdar, Shudha, 1989. Memoirs of an Indian Woman. Edited with an introduction by Geraldine Forbes. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe
Nasrin, Taslima, 2001. My Girlhood. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Sahgal, Manmohini Zutshi, 1994. An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life. Edited by Geraldine Forbes; with a foreword by B.K. Nehru. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.
Vani, Mahesh, 2004. “Post-feminist, or more fondly, Chick-lit!” Bangalore: Deccan Herald (Sunday Herald). April 25, 2004: Articulations, Book Day Special.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr252004/artic2.asp
(Accessed 6th October, 2005)
Vasudev, Uma, 1993. Shreya of Sonagarh. New Delhi: UBS Publishers' Distributors.
A study of women being women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context, through the juxtaposition of fictional and non-fictional literary works.
Sections:
1. Introduction
2. Education
3. Working Prospects
4. Marriage
5. Conclusion
Introduction:
‘Chick Lit.’ has become a very popular genre of modern literature; and this is apparent throughout the world as more women are becoming educated and willing to spend money on these ‘frivolous’ books.
“What makes these books popular? A more realistic portrayal of the present day working women - the frustrations and insecurities that are very much a part of the independent lives they are leading. But it is all done in good humour without a hint of pathos.” (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)
In a South Asian context, this is also apparent. Often in these books, we see an increasing amount of text dedicated to female oppression. While this is a good thing in that it allows a larger mass of people to know what is happening in this region, the case often is one of exaggeration and misinterpretation.
Women are always the ‘victims’ in the situations, often being physically and verbally abused. However, these women are not willing to drag themselves out of their ‘situations’. While they are discontent, they are content to remain so and go so far as to impose the same strictures they grew up with, on the next generation of females. Thus, more and more of these female writers, often having grown up outside of South Asia, are trying to analyse the oppression faced by the foremothers. In this process, a clear strain of oppression has come through, it seems that women are women’s worse oppressors in a South Asian context.
This essay aims to explore the theme of ‘women being women’s oppressors’ in modern South Asian literary works. It chooses to conduct this exploration through a study of some fictional works because fiction, in this case at least, seems to personify reality, and very importantly, it also spreads a message to the masses, in and out of South Asia. These fictional works will be juxtaposed with non-fictional works to gauge their relevance to society and prove the depth of their ‘reality’. Familial relations, such as those between mother and daughter, sisters, mother-in-law and daughter-in law will be examined as well as those outside the family, such as doctor-patient relations or teacher-student relations as well as those between female friends.
These fictional works will be compared to autobiographies of certain women in similar environments as the protagonists in the works of fiction are. This will allow a benchmark to be set for the forms of oppression that will be uncovered. This comparison will also allow the reader to judge the extent to which fiction relates the truth of the matter; this especially being the case in post-feminist literature, otherwise known as ‘chick-lit’ (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)
In conjunction with the above theme, the efforts of men (fathers, brothers, husbands, family doctors, teachers, etc), to lift the women of their familial and social circles out of the quagmire they often choose to fall into due to a greater sense of comfort of the known, even if it is oppression, will be examined.
Education, household work and chores, commercial work and marriage will all be examined, as these are the main ‘worries’ of the modern South Asian woman. These women often want to ‘modernise’ themselves and improve themselves in terms of education and work experience, early and arranged marriage being a trade off. However, as seen in these books, fiction and non-fiction, the females often pressure them into sticking to ‘the norm’ whereas their male family members and friends often urge them to improve themselves.
This essay chooses to move away from the ‘norm’ of women seen as being oppressed by the other gender and chooses to study this theme through a juxtaposition of non-fiction in the form of autobiographies and fiction in the genre of ‘chick lit.’
Education:
Taslima Nasrin in her autobiography, ‘My Girlhood’, repeatedly depicts how her father insists upon her being sent to the best schools and her mother’s vehement objections. It is her mother who would rather she attend religious classes than go to a secular school, rather she be properly covered in a Burkha than wear dresses. Nasrin’s mother goes so far as to bring her daughter home from boarding school under the guise of a death in the family. It is her father who repeatedly forces her to attend school and pay attention to her lessons so as to make something of herself. This is radically different from the ‘norm’ that springs to mind when we think of women and education in India. A similar situation is seen in Nalinaksha Bhattacharya’s novel “Hem and football”. While Hem wants to continue with school and her hobbies, her mother insists that she leave all this and get married at the tender age of 14. In Uma Vasudev’s ‘Shreya of Sonagrah’, we see Father, Husband and Father-in-law, encouraging the protagonist in the novel, Shreya, to continue her education, but she refuses on the account that married life is not about continuing education. Before marriage, her excuse was that her role in life was to get married. We do not see any empathetic disputes between her and her mother on this issue. The mother seems quite content, if not proud, of her daughter’s views on Indian womanhood.
As such, it is apparent, that the male figures in the lives of these protagonists, in both fiction and non-fiction works of literature, would like ‘their women’ to improve themselves; it is the women who are content with their lot as it seems too ‘difficult’ (Nasrin, 2001).
The only difference is seen in times of conflict and strife, as during the period of the Indian freedom struggle. During this period, the seemingly ‘normal’ societal rules were relaxed and the first woman to attain a Masters’ degree did so during this time. Her relation to the “Father of Modern India” – Jawaharlal Nehru, meant that the rules were relaxed in terms of university entry to men’s’ colleges and courses (Sahgal, 1994). During the period of India’s freedom struggle and soon after the Partition of India, feminism in India reached its peak, as many women were part of the independence movement. Numerous women created ‘firsts’ by joining strikes and rioting, as well as being jailed. The fact that the police force treated men and women with equal brutality, gave the women a new respect in the eyes of the other sex. However, once South Asia settled down, the women were expected to cast away thoughts of equality and revert to customary social norms.
The question then would be, why is it women who impose these social norms on their progeny. Women are in a South Asian context the more ‘social’ of a traditional male-female couple, and as such, feel that they have something to ‘live up to’ in society’s views. To avoid gossip and awkward questions from members of their community as well as to maintain their standing in the community, they have to get their daughters married early and to reputable families, with no mention of falling in love or further education (Mazumdar, 1989).
Women have always been seen as the honour of their family (Adnan, 2005). As such, they feel it their duty to cast aside modern beliefs and live their lives, as well as dictate those of their daughters and nieces, in a way whereby society will be satisfied with them and there will not be any inflammatory gossip. Much the same rules apply for working prospects of these women,
Working prospects:
Without education it is near impossible to find any form of work anywhere in the world. However, in South Asia, gender discrimination in the work place aside, there is prevalent gender discrimination in the home with relation to work and being out of the house in general.
In “Hem and Football”, we see the protagonist’s mother not only trying to prevent Hem from playing football altogether but even when she does allow Hem to do so, imposes ridiculous restrictions upon her, which include lengthening the length of her shorts, even if they then get in the way of her playing, making sure she gets no bruises that may ruin her ‘marriage ability’, and imposes a number more restrictions along those lines. It seems to the casual reader here that the mother, another woman, instead of easing the stigma of being a woman in a patriarchal society is instead reinforcing it in her daughter. From the western-educated perspective of the casual reader, it seems preposterous for a mother to want to marry off her daughter at any cost to avoid her enjoying her life and playing football, as in Bhattacharya’s book.
A similar scene is available in Nasrin’s autobiography whereby we see that the only women who have jobs, in the village where Nasrin grew up, are either outcast women or mere servant-class women. No respectable woman has any form of income. When Nasrin’s father tries to encourage her to study hard in order to succeed him as a doctor, the mother demands of her husband whether he intends to make his own daughter a loose woman! Her ambitions for her daughter extend toward an early marriage for her, numerous children, preferably sons, and end there.
Nasrin’s experiences match that of the protagonist in Bhattacharya’s novel; thus again reinforcing the thesis of this essay, that at least in the context of South Asian ‘chick-lit”, reality does indeed mirror fiction. Mindsets towards an independent life and education are similar in both reality as seen in autobiographies and in fictional accounts.
Again, the exceptions come in during times of crisis. From Vasudev’s depiction of Shreya in her novel, we can see that upon the death of the protagonist’s mother in law, she was called upon to fill her shoes as a post-partition politician, and was thus thrown into politics with the same staff her mother in law had, with no thought for her personal comfort with these staff members. To protect the honour of the family, Shreya has to forgo her personal choices and preferences. We see in the novel, as in all the others, that female characters are not only restricted from making choices by other older female characters, but they are also called upon to replace these characters in times of death and loss, thus forcing them to fit themselves into the mould of these other women. This is one of the main reasons for women becoming women’s worst oppressors. In order to maintain the honour of the family name and to maintain discipline as it has been maintained for generations past, this ‘oppression’ in necessary. In fact, it is seen as oppression only in westernised viewpoints, in South Asia, this ‘oppression’ is merely a part of everyday existence.
As leading authors on human rights are finally beginning to realise, cultures differ from region to region; Asia has its own beliefs, many of which centre around the concept of “family before self”. Thus to many women in South Asia, if oppression of future generations means protecting family honour, then oppression is not a bad thing. This could also be why the male members of the family are sometimes more liberal. Usually being the breadwinners of the family, they are exposed to the outside world and its strictures; thus they see things in a different way. To these generally educated men, independence is essential for both sexes in this highly unstable world. While mothers would see love as being able to find the best man to take care of their daughter, love for a father in the modern South Asian world would be making sure his daughter can support herself, if the need arises; as we can see in Nasrin’s autobiography as well as Vasudev’s Shreya and even in “Daughters of the House” by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, where we see the uncle trying to convince his orphan niece to put her education to some use by working and getting a taste of the real world outside her sheltered existence. To these educated men, there is more to a woman’s life than mere marriage and child rearing.
Marriage:
In all the books examined, one common thread runs through them, and this is in relation to marriage. All women in books concerned seem to want their wards and younger women of their acquaintance to get married early. There are myriad reasons for this; including the same concept of honour mentioned above, if one were to delay marriage, it is entirely possible that the girl in question may have a romantic dalliance and ruin her own chances of making a good match. The concept of love before marriage does not feature in these novels, and love after marriage is merely a bonus, not something to be expected.
In Nasrin’s autobiography we expect her mother to pressure her into getting married, given the mother’s very conservative nature. However, even in Nehru’s family we see that the girls who were the first in India to achieve Masters’ degrees also have to settle down and succumb to arranged marriages at the insistence of their mothers. In Mazumdar’s memoirs, we have the most blatant example whereby the extended family and friends all began gossiping when Mazumdar is not yet married at age 10.
Once again mirroring reality, we see Hem’s mother pressuring her to get married and going so far as to marry her off to a mad boy simply because there was no one else around and it was imperative to marry Hem off to avoid gossip. Arranged marriages are often set up with no need for any form of consent from either side, especially the girl. In Vasudev’s Shreya, we again see how her father agreed to her marriage to his best-friend’s son and when he cursorily asked her if she agreed, she was not given the chance to answer before the two men had already started planning the wedding. This is a clear indication of the extent of men wanting to limit female oppression in South Asia, although they are willing to allow education and even some exposure to work and the outside world, marriage seems to be something where the girl has no say at all.
When this marriage does not work out, it is the fault of the woman, obviously. In “Shreya of Sonagarh”, when Shreya ultimately mentions to her mother the problems she is having in her marriage, her mother advises her to just bear with things, violence included. Similarly, when Hem leaves her mentally challenged husband and returns home, she is ostracized, mostly by her own mother. These women are seen to be unlucky as they have failed to maintain their marriage and society has no place for them, being neither single nor respectable widows.
In a South Asian context, it is the job of a mother to get her daughter married and the duty of close relatives and friends to not only help in looking for a groom but also to ensure that if the mother falters in her role, they are there to ensure the marriage goes through. This also applies in all other areas of upbringing. It is precisely to maintain the status quo of society that women end up oppressing other women.
Conclusion:
If the status quo was relaxed and women were allowed free reign to education and work, it would make the women who did not have these opportunities much more limited, in relation; their power would then be limited. Unlike the world of men, where each proves his worth economically, women have traditionally proved their worth through their family honour, and to change this, a change of mindset is required, for all of society.
However, as the thesis of this essay goes, women are women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context; it is indeed clear from the examination of a number of literary works, that this thesis is indeed true. It is also clear that in the case of South Asian chick lit, reality does indeed play a very significant role in this genre of literature. Be it in terms of education, work or marriage, male and female roles are very similar across fiction and non-fiction.
As Jean de La Bruyère said in 1668, “It is because of men that women dislike one another”. It is precisely for this reason that women gossip and play a perpetual game of one-upmanship with other women. In order to prove themselves to be the spitting image of Sita , they undermine women around them and try to prove their worth in that manner. Women try to mould themselves and their daughters to be like Sita, all the while condemning the other women of their acquaintance. The tool of gossip is very powerful in a woman’s domain as once again it is linked to not only her honour but that of both her natal and marital families.
Evelyn Cunnigham once mentioned that “women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors”. This is indeed true. Whether or not one sees women to be the worst oppressors of other women, it must nonetheless be admitted that they do play the most important part in the mindsets that other women form. Teachers, mothers, sisters and doctors, as well as women of the marital family are the most important people in a woman’s life and it is these people, these women, who cause her to think and act as she does, to avoid dishonouring her family.
Thus, the thesis of this essay still stands as, ‘women are women’s worst oppressors’ in a South Asian context as seen through the examination of literary sources, the only possible exception being in time of crisis.
Bibliography:
Adnan, Shapan. Lectures delivered for SN 2234 – Gender and Society in South Asia, LT 12, National University of Singapore; Semester I, AY 2005/6.
Aikath-Gyaltsen, Indrani, 1993. Daughters of the House. New York: Ballantine Books.
Ali, Monica, 2004. Brick Lane: a novel. New York: Scribner, 2004
Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1995. Hem and Maxine. London: Jonathan Cape.
Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1992. Hem and Football. London: Secker & Warburg.
Jean de La Bruyère, 1668. Caractères. Publisher not available. Published in France.
Mazumdar, Shudha, 1989. Memoirs of an Indian Woman. Edited with an introduction by Geraldine Forbes. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe
Nasrin, Taslima, 2001. My Girlhood. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Sahgal, Manmohini Zutshi, 1994. An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life. Edited by Geraldine Forbes; with a foreword by B.K. Nehru. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.
Vani, Mahesh, 2004. “Post-feminist, or more fondly, Chick-lit!” Bangalore: Deccan Herald (Sunday Herald). April 25, 2004: Articulations, Book Day Special.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr252004/artic2.asp
(Accessed 6th October, 2005)
Vasudev, Uma, 1993. Shreya of Sonagarh. New Delhi: UBS Publishers' Distributors.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
“Ma’am, Are You A Virgin”?
I’m an idealist; I want to be a teacher. That too, for little children, so that I can make a difference to as yet “uncorrupted” minds. Imagine my horror then at hearing an old friend (now a teacher) telling me that one little boy in her class raised his hand and asked her; “Ma’am, are you a virgin”.
This question has a hundred throwbacks, ranging from the importance of virginity in our society today to what our children are thinking about today! My baby brother (barely a teenager), watches Desperate Housewives with the air of one who has ‘been there and seen that’. In an innocent conversation during on e of the ads (I’m a Desperate Housewives Virgin), we began talking about the few minutes I had caught, where the son sued the mother for slapping him. My brother said that he and his compatriots agreed that it was too ‘liberal’ but Singapore should change; after all, the mother was sleeping around!
Where did this ‘blame generation’ spring from? Where did this generation of children get these thoughts from? I’m not all that old, still in the same generation really! After all this time and money spent on top schools, expensive vacations, computers, games, mobile phones and clothes, is it time to weigh the benefits that we are really getting?
While children are thinking out of the box, are they losing the essence of being ‘children’? Play grounds and bicycles have surrendered to Gameboys and Playstations. As mentioned above, Desperate Housewives has replaced Captain Planet and the Mickey Mouse Show is history.
From an idealist, I am becoming a questioner; I want to know if the benefits of these ‘newfangled’ pastimes are truly beneficial. I am 22 and have begun to realize that I will probably have children in the next 5 years and am thinking about what I want them to be like. The one thing flashing in my head is that I certainly don’t want my son’s teacher to be subjected to the question my friend was. I cannot ban him from the internet or articles which talk about sex; but I can pray that he’ll come to me with his questions and I want to make myself available for that.
Is that what kids today are missing - The chance to clear things with their parents? My friend later told me that another boy had later asked her what virgin meant, he had not known, but had participated in the laughter just the same. While the caretakers parents provide for their children are often the best they can get, there seems to be a lack somewhere. These (often) foreign domestics are not on the same level as parents and being young, are more interested in chatting about fashion and friends than teaching values and explaining things. Perhaps children are unwittingly picking up these topics of conversation and certain ‘interesting’ words and phrases and subjecting their teachers to them!
There could be a hundred more explanations but this is a likely one; especially as the boy involved was brought up by a domestic worker because his parents were away. He spent his time on the computer and television, had a girlfriend (even I feel left out, single at 22), and was living the life of a 22 year old before turning into a teenager even!
Is this what money has brought us- Children old before their time?
This question has a hundred throwbacks, ranging from the importance of virginity in our society today to what our children are thinking about today! My baby brother (barely a teenager), watches Desperate Housewives with the air of one who has ‘been there and seen that’. In an innocent conversation during on e of the ads (I’m a Desperate Housewives Virgin), we began talking about the few minutes I had caught, where the son sued the mother for slapping him. My brother said that he and his compatriots agreed that it was too ‘liberal’ but Singapore should change; after all, the mother was sleeping around!
Where did this ‘blame generation’ spring from? Where did this generation of children get these thoughts from? I’m not all that old, still in the same generation really! After all this time and money spent on top schools, expensive vacations, computers, games, mobile phones and clothes, is it time to weigh the benefits that we are really getting?
While children are thinking out of the box, are they losing the essence of being ‘children’? Play grounds and bicycles have surrendered to Gameboys and Playstations. As mentioned above, Desperate Housewives has replaced Captain Planet and the Mickey Mouse Show is history.
From an idealist, I am becoming a questioner; I want to know if the benefits of these ‘newfangled’ pastimes are truly beneficial. I am 22 and have begun to realize that I will probably have children in the next 5 years and am thinking about what I want them to be like. The one thing flashing in my head is that I certainly don’t want my son’s teacher to be subjected to the question my friend was. I cannot ban him from the internet or articles which talk about sex; but I can pray that he’ll come to me with his questions and I want to make myself available for that.
Is that what kids today are missing - The chance to clear things with their parents? My friend later told me that another boy had later asked her what virgin meant, he had not known, but had participated in the laughter just the same. While the caretakers parents provide for their children are often the best they can get, there seems to be a lack somewhere. These (often) foreign domestics are not on the same level as parents and being young, are more interested in chatting about fashion and friends than teaching values and explaining things. Perhaps children are unwittingly picking up these topics of conversation and certain ‘interesting’ words and phrases and subjecting their teachers to them!
There could be a hundred more explanations but this is a likely one; especially as the boy involved was brought up by a domestic worker because his parents were away. He spent his time on the computer and television, had a girlfriend (even I feel left out, single at 22), and was living the life of a 22 year old before turning into a teenager even!
Is this what money has brought us- Children old before their time?
It should be rape-even if he's your husband
The Electric New Paper :
It should be rape-even if he's your husband
IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.
By Ratna Tiwary
28 May 2006
IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.
I think most of us will agree on this.
What I don't understand is why the law in civilised Singapore protects men who force their wives into sexual intercourse?
Yes, there's no such thing as raping your own wife here.
The White Ribbon Campaign is an annual international drive organised by men to stop violence against women. It is marked on 25 Nov, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
In 2004, the campaign, run by the Association of Women for Action and Research, focused on sexual violence in the home. The following year, men took over the reins, and they undertook a personal pledge: 'Never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.'
While their work is more than admirable (and their advertisements and free postcards did depict very soul-stirring graphics), more needs to be done by the Government about laws (or the lack of) against marital rape.
A man who kills his wife is charged with murder. A man who steals from his wife is charged with theft. But a man who forces his wife to have sex with him or rapes her goes unpunished.
It questions what the priorities of our society are. Apparently money matters more than dignity and modesty because money is protected by the law.
Do concepts of modesty and consent no longer matter once the wedding ring is slipped on the finger? It reminds one of an old joke where marriage is said to require three rings: Engagement ring, wedding ring and suffeRING.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't seem to remember the Justices of the Peace mentioning in the marriage vows that sex is a given whenever the husband wants it.
In a well-developed, almost first-world nation, marital rape ought to be illegal.
Basic human rights including modesty and freedom of choice (on whether and when to have sex) do not get eliminated upon marriage.
Section 375 of the Penal Code states that 'sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 13 years of age, is not rape'.
The laws of many other countries such as India and Malaysia, have explicit exemptions for marital rape. Perhaps it's time we follow.
In her research, Dr Diana Russell, an activist against violence against women reported that 8 per cent of 900 randomly selected women in the US said they had been raped by their husbands.
A survey by the National Victim Center in the state of Virginia states that 10 per cent of all sexual assault cases reported by women involved either a husband or an ex-husband.
We hardly hear of cases of marital rape in Singapore. But that's not to say there are no victims. And what good will it do them to go running to the police when it's not a crime for a man to rape his wife?
At best, it can be construed as family violence if the wife was beaten during the forced sexual intercourse.
Granted, sexual abuse in marriages is a grey issue. For one, it's hard to prove a husband raped his wife. So enforcing any law on marital rape may have to be on a case-by-case basis.
But that doesn't mean sexual abuse in a marriage is acceptable.
So before the debate over oral sex and homosexuality can continue, perhaps our society should look at this pertinent issue before too many women continue to suffer in silence. Sex, whenever he wants it, is not a prerogative of marriage.
Men need to know this, as do women.
The writer is a third-year political science and South Asian Studies undergraduate at NUS
Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co. Regn. No. 198402868E. All rights reserved.
Privacy Statement and Conditions of Access
It should be rape-even if he's your husband
IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.
By Ratna Tiwary
28 May 2006
IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.
I think most of us will agree on this.
What I don't understand is why the law in civilised Singapore protects men who force their wives into sexual intercourse?
Yes, there's no such thing as raping your own wife here.
The White Ribbon Campaign is an annual international drive organised by men to stop violence against women. It is marked on 25 Nov, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
In 2004, the campaign, run by the Association of Women for Action and Research, focused on sexual violence in the home. The following year, men took over the reins, and they undertook a personal pledge: 'Never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.'
While their work is more than admirable (and their advertisements and free postcards did depict very soul-stirring graphics), more needs to be done by the Government about laws (or the lack of) against marital rape.
A man who kills his wife is charged with murder. A man who steals from his wife is charged with theft. But a man who forces his wife to have sex with him or rapes her goes unpunished.
It questions what the priorities of our society are. Apparently money matters more than dignity and modesty because money is protected by the law.
Do concepts of modesty and consent no longer matter once the wedding ring is slipped on the finger? It reminds one of an old joke where marriage is said to require three rings: Engagement ring, wedding ring and suffeRING.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't seem to remember the Justices of the Peace mentioning in the marriage vows that sex is a given whenever the husband wants it.
In a well-developed, almost first-world nation, marital rape ought to be illegal.
Basic human rights including modesty and freedom of choice (on whether and when to have sex) do not get eliminated upon marriage.
Section 375 of the Penal Code states that 'sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 13 years of age, is not rape'.
The laws of many other countries such as India and Malaysia, have explicit exemptions for marital rape. Perhaps it's time we follow.
In her research, Dr Diana Russell, an activist against violence against women reported that 8 per cent of 900 randomly selected women in the US said they had been raped by their husbands.
A survey by the National Victim Center in the state of Virginia states that 10 per cent of all sexual assault cases reported by women involved either a husband or an ex-husband.
We hardly hear of cases of marital rape in Singapore. But that's not to say there are no victims. And what good will it do them to go running to the police when it's not a crime for a man to rape his wife?
At best, it can be construed as family violence if the wife was beaten during the forced sexual intercourse.
Granted, sexual abuse in marriages is a grey issue. For one, it's hard to prove a husband raped his wife. So enforcing any law on marital rape may have to be on a case-by-case basis.
But that doesn't mean sexual abuse in a marriage is acceptable.
So before the debate over oral sex and homosexuality can continue, perhaps our society should look at this pertinent issue before too many women continue to suffer in silence. Sex, whenever he wants it, is not a prerogative of marriage.
Men need to know this, as do women.
The writer is a third-year political science and South Asian Studies undergraduate at NUS
Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co. Regn. No. 198402868E. All rights reserved.
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Liberation?
No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman. ~Frank O'Connor
Men and women have been discussing liberation and feminist theories since time immemorial, the question I think we ought to ask after all this time is that, what has all this discussion done? Where has it bought the whole issue?
On the one hand, it is undeniable that women have come a long way from being clubbed on the head by a prospective suitor and being dragged by her hair into his cave, but on the other hand, what have we lost to gain this "liberation”? It is a pretty legit argument that has often been espoused, that women have lost that intrinsic "femininity" in their quest for this so-called liberation
In this quest for some version of equality between the sexes, we seem to have almost merged both sexes into one. Radical feminists used to be a minority, but now we hear their rallying cry too often for my comfort at least, “Women can do everything men can”. Well, maybe we can, but do we really want to? I’m very happy to sit in the toilet and take time off for kids; both of which men don’t usually do.
At the risk of sounding like a woman who is a male chauvinist, let me clarify. I feel that gender differences were created for a reason, some form of specialization of labour, the minute either sex crosses the boundaries the carefully crafted balance falls apart. The current situation brings to my mind the old adage, “give an inch and he’ll take a mile”. Women should have a say in politics and definitely I thank the early suffragists for fighting for my right to vote (although I still didn’t get to); but when in the sixties they burnt the bra, did they burn femininity along with it?
Now you ask what this femininity I’m going on about is. Simple really, I would define it to include a little HEART-work, a little bit more concern and gentleness. The feminists want to stone me now, I sound like I’m from the Stone Age anyway; but stop and think a minute. Women are biologically smaller, more apt to emotional blitzes and generally softer (emotionally and physically; not mentally). This would make women fantastic in many job roles but instead of injecting better working conditions or living conditions; women at the top often try to outdo the men they have replaced!
India came closest to losing democracy at the hands of a woman; Pakistani women did not benefit in any great way from a female head of state and most female CEOs work long hours and expect more from their staff; maid abusers are often women given a chance to lord over someone else! It seems that we have left dark oppression only to become more oppressive.
Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
~Joan Baez, "Sexism Seen but not Heard," Los Angeles Times, 1974
Men and women have been discussing liberation and feminist theories since time immemorial, the question I think we ought to ask after all this time is that, what has all this discussion done? Where has it bought the whole issue?
On the one hand, it is undeniable that women have come a long way from being clubbed on the head by a prospective suitor and being dragged by her hair into his cave, but on the other hand, what have we lost to gain this "liberation”? It is a pretty legit argument that has often been espoused, that women have lost that intrinsic "femininity" in their quest for this so-called liberation
In this quest for some version of equality between the sexes, we seem to have almost merged both sexes into one. Radical feminists used to be a minority, but now we hear their rallying cry too often for my comfort at least, “Women can do everything men can”. Well, maybe we can, but do we really want to? I’m very happy to sit in the toilet and take time off for kids; both of which men don’t usually do.
At the risk of sounding like a woman who is a male chauvinist, let me clarify. I feel that gender differences were created for a reason, some form of specialization of labour, the minute either sex crosses the boundaries the carefully crafted balance falls apart. The current situation brings to my mind the old adage, “give an inch and he’ll take a mile”. Women should have a say in politics and definitely I thank the early suffragists for fighting for my right to vote (although I still didn’t get to); but when in the sixties they burnt the bra, did they burn femininity along with it?
Now you ask what this femininity I’m going on about is. Simple really, I would define it to include a little HEART-work, a little bit more concern and gentleness. The feminists want to stone me now, I sound like I’m from the Stone Age anyway; but stop and think a minute. Women are biologically smaller, more apt to emotional blitzes and generally softer (emotionally and physically; not mentally). This would make women fantastic in many job roles but instead of injecting better working conditions or living conditions; women at the top often try to outdo the men they have replaced!
India came closest to losing democracy at the hands of a woman; Pakistani women did not benefit in any great way from a female head of state and most female CEOs work long hours and expect more from their staff; maid abusers are often women given a chance to lord over someone else! It seems that we have left dark oppression only to become more oppressive.
Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
~Joan Baez, "Sexism Seen but not Heard," Los Angeles Times, 1974
Friday, April 07, 2006
WHIP!!
The entire concept of the whip being raised for some “opposition area” PAP members just sounds wrong, whither the double standards; is the desperation for a clean sweep at the polls so very strong? If a “potong pasir-ite” is to vote for PAP, I am sure it is because he wants PAP leadership in his area, not because he wants an MP who is going to go against PAP policies just because he can. The NCMP and NMP schemes have already given us ‘alternative’ voices in parliament but opposition constituencies still remain; a clear sign that the electorate wants ‘real’ and not simulated opposition; a view that political observer Seah Chiang Nee confers with.
We have enough trust in our leaders to know that they already asking relevant questions and will not vote for a policy that is radically “wrong” or one that they disapprove of. In 41 years of history, most policies have been apt and called for, those that were not, were soon amended.
The first such policy we learn about in Political Science Public Administration classes is the raising of taxi fares in the 1980s, a policy amended in merely 21 days due to the strong reaction of the taxi drivers. Despite being labelled ‘apathetic’ time and again, Singaporeans are sufficiently socially and politically conscious to realise that wrong policies ought to be changed and it is the role of the people to make their dissatisfaction heard. An opposition-type PAP member will make little difference to the larger scheme of things. One major effect it may have instead, would be to urge even more people to swing their crosses to the SPP or WP box in Potong Pasir and Hougand respectively since the SM himself is making opposiotion politicians ‘different’ from PAP ones in terms of the rights they are given to express the views of their constituents in parliament!
Mr Goh told an audience of about 500 at the Hougang Community Club: "If you vote for Eric Low, I can tell the Prime Minister to let him be the 'Opposition' in the Parliament. We can lift the Whip so that he can speak his mind. Then you can have the best of both worlds".
The very simple statement speaks volumes in terms of the “world” as it is now; where PAP ministers cannot “speak their mind”. The politics and logics of a party whip may not be immediately understandable to all and sundry, the SM’s statement serves to only create an image of PAP ministers as “yes-men”, undoing all the good that their education and excellent credentials do.
Threats that opposition wards will turn into ‘slums’ with no upgrading and such very radical promises with regards to party policies are creating a sense that the PAP is very desperate to win back opposition wards, an image that seem to portray them as almost ‘afraid’ of the opposition, not an image they would like to cultivate surely.
We have enough trust in our leaders to know that they already asking relevant questions and will not vote for a policy that is radically “wrong” or one that they disapprove of. In 41 years of history, most policies have been apt and called for, those that were not, were soon amended.
The first such policy we learn about in Political Science Public Administration classes is the raising of taxi fares in the 1980s, a policy amended in merely 21 days due to the strong reaction of the taxi drivers. Despite being labelled ‘apathetic’ time and again, Singaporeans are sufficiently socially and politically conscious to realise that wrong policies ought to be changed and it is the role of the people to make their dissatisfaction heard. An opposition-type PAP member will make little difference to the larger scheme of things. One major effect it may have instead, would be to urge even more people to swing their crosses to the SPP or WP box in Potong Pasir and Hougand respectively since the SM himself is making opposiotion politicians ‘different’ from PAP ones in terms of the rights they are given to express the views of their constituents in parliament!
Mr Goh told an audience of about 500 at the Hougang Community Club: "If you vote for Eric Low, I can tell the Prime Minister to let him be the 'Opposition' in the Parliament. We can lift the Whip so that he can speak his mind. Then you can have the best of both worlds".
The very simple statement speaks volumes in terms of the “world” as it is now; where PAP ministers cannot “speak their mind”. The politics and logics of a party whip may not be immediately understandable to all and sundry, the SM’s statement serves to only create an image of PAP ministers as “yes-men”, undoing all the good that their education and excellent credentials do.
Threats that opposition wards will turn into ‘slums’ with no upgrading and such very radical promises with regards to party policies are creating a sense that the PAP is very desperate to win back opposition wards, an image that seem to portray them as almost ‘afraid’ of the opposition, not an image they would like to cultivate surely.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
“From appreciation to a demand – The move from Streedhan to Dahej”
Introduction:
Colonialism is such a phenomena that it often ends in the misuse of certain symbols. One example of this statement would be the use of dowry before, during and after the period of British colonialisation in India. The culture of dowry giving is spreading even to communities, which had no such tradition a generation or two ago. This despite the fact that in the last two decades the anti dowry laws have been made very stringent and draconian. Many interpret the failure of these laws to lessen dowry giving as a sign of their poor implementation. However, these laws have so many inherent flaws that their honest implementation is well nigh impossible. In fact, these laws have created more problems than they have solved. You cannot combat a 'crime' which is as ill defined as the anti dowry laws of India.
This essay aims to examine using dowry as a symbol, the way that the British colonial rulers in India changed the way that certain traditional Indian symbols were seen and used. Also this essay hopes to examine how the current post-colonial mindset has again given these symbols a new face; thus causing these symbols to evolve and re-evolve, creating a very ‘gendered’ history. This can be examined in the sense of the “white man” attempting to protect the “brown woman”, thus causing the “brown man” to grow more fixated with the symbols that the British were fighting against and emphasizing their importance even more.
As per the Dowry Prohibition Act (originally passed in 1961 and amended twice in the 1980s), dowry is defined as 'any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly by one party to a marriage to the other party to the marriage or by the parents of either party to a marriage or by any other person, to either party to the marriage or to any other person at or before [or any other time after the marriage] in connection with the marriage of the said parties' .
Madhu Kishwar commented most aptly that “It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent. ” Through such comments, we can see how many undesirable faces of history have become attributed to women. Instead, an examination of colonial policies that were implemented by the British in India would be able to provide a more comprehensive reason for the dowry system and its exorbitant growth.
Colonial rule and Dowry:
Dowry requirements are merely another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by constantly citing of 'dowry abolition' as the most effective method to attain women's empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.
There is little mention of exorbitant dowries causing the ruin of families in the literature of pre-British India. Ruin due to exorbitant dowry payments became a major theme in nineteenth century literature because this period witnessed an unprecedented erosion of women's economic importance and inheritance rights due to the manner in which the colonial rulers carried out land settlement operations in India. In conformity with Victorian norms that were the norm in England, land entitlements were given to the male heads of the family, bypassing Indian customary laws that allowed various categories of entitlements to women; including the concept of Stridhana, where the bride takes land and money with her, in her name, to her marital family. This “bride wealth” is then inherited in a matrilineal line. This concentrated property in the hands of men in an unprecedented way and paved the way for the eventual complete disinheritance of women. In addition, the enormous land revenue demands imposed by the British drained large amounts of the economic surplus from the rural economy. It made the peasants extremely cash poor. The destruction of traditional crafts pushed large sections of impoverished artisan groups to fall back on their small landholdings and the consequent increasing pressure on land made land ownership bestow special power and status; which naturally men exploited from each other whenever possible, especially through marital alliances.
To again quote Madhu Kishwar, “Thus, our modem inheritance laws have increasingly moved in favour of men and against the interests of women. All those communities that practiced matrilineal inheritance, such as the Nairs in Kerala, have also been forced through legislation to move towards patrilineal inheritance. Systems that provided reasonable or adequate protection of women's economic rights have been steamrollered out of existence. ”
How dowry engendered colonial society:
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to dowry were all attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the problem and justify colonial paternalist domination.
Even female infanticide can be linked back to colonial policies instead of being seen as a high-caste Hindu problem. The growing preference for sons had a far greater correlation with colonial land and revenue policies and suppression of modern industry than with any cultural male-preference. A very strong correlation can be seen with the colonial construction of males as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the military. The simple fact the colonial rule completely sidelined Hindu women from the workforce served to reduce their importance and thus increased the perception that females were a burden. The colonial situation and even the present scenario in India bear little resemblance to pre-colonial traditions where men often worked alongside women in fields. So dowry by the 1850's went from being a way of showing the appreciation a family had for their daughter to becoming a demand. As the colonial economy was commoditized, women were as well, through the dowry demand. Systems of reciprocity, the fact that villages would come together to give a woman gifts, gave way to contractual systems leading to chronic indebtedness; and thus women were left without legal entitlements.
In opposition to the reigning mindset of the time that the private sphere was a realm of freedom and traditional practices, the British administration in India saw the private sphere in the colony instead as a space of "barbarism" that required change and ‘civilizing’. This produced the structure of the "scandal" as the mode through which the private sphere was made available to public scrutiny. Through law, patriarchy was imposed upon the private sphere. So criminalizing cultural or traditional practices was the way the colonial state was able to get out of its own proclaimed stance of non-interference.
The banning of dowry, child-marriages and sati however, served to do little else than intensify these practices as they came to be seen as ‘rebellion’ against the colonial powers. Dowry gradually became more and more exorbitant and in a vicious cycle, the more the grew, the more the colonial rulers and missionaries tried to stamp it out, serving only to again intensify it. In this war of culture and civilizations, women were increasingly disenfranchised and discriminated against; becoming mere chattels.
Dowry became such an issue at the time that even non-Hindus, for whom dowry was not part of tradition, came to take it as part of their belief system. It can be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry daughters to families of higher status and to the "sanskritisation" of India where communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices. The latter is clearly apparent in the adoption of the dowry system by Indian Christians and Muslims. For the Muslims, the concept of dowry was nonexistent, the groom instead paying the bride’s family a “bride price”. The adoption of a “Hindu” dowry culture has helped the other religious groups stand on a common ground with the Hindus and perhaps try to create a common “Indian” culture. The British also often favoured the Hindus in India, perhaps contributing to the ‘sanskritisation’ of India.
Conclusion:
Putting landed property exclusively in male hands, and holding the latter responsible for the payment of revenue had the effect of making the Indian male the dominant legal subject. The British further made the peasants pay revenue twice a year on a fixed date. Inability to pay would result in the land being auctioned off by the government. As a result, peasant were forced, during a bad year, to use their land as collateral to borrow from the moneylender, in order to pay taxes. The British resolve to rationalize and modernize the revenue was particularly hard on women. From being co-partners in pre-colonial landholding arrangement, they found themselves denied all access to economic resources, turning them into dependents. In the event they faced marital problems, they were left with no legal entitlements whatsoever.
The contemporary phenomenon of Indian dowry can be explained not in terms of scriptural and cultural concepts but more as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to the colonial monetization of the economy and then again to postcolonial globalization. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female feticide may be traced back in India to colonial policies. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women will tolerate abuse within marriage. In fact in the current situation, as Madhu Kishwar studied, it may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages because they know they will receive little else from their parents .
Traditional forms of social life were changed due to modern conceptions of agency, consent, and individuality. Dowry, which was once a practice that enabled women, has now been transformed into one that oppresses them.
Bibliography:
Basu, Srimati. She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety, 2001
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs159.htm (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)
Caleekal, Anuppa. Dowry Death: Its gruesome reality and future interface in a digital cultural revolution. 1997
http://www.digitalism.org/ (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)
Kishwar, Madhu. Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kishwar, Madhu Purnima. Destined to fail in Manushi, Issue 148
(published July 2005 in India Together)
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Interview in Times of India, Mumbai as appeared on 31/1/03.
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_essay_page.asp?cat_name=why&cid=1030&sid=168 (Accessed 26th March, 2006)
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime; Oxford University Press, 2003
THE DOWRY PROHIBITION ACT, 1961, (No. 28 of 1961)
http://socialwelfare.delhigovt.nic.in/dowryact.htm (Accessed on 28th March, 2006)
Colonialism is such a phenomena that it often ends in the misuse of certain symbols. One example of this statement would be the use of dowry before, during and after the period of British colonialisation in India. The culture of dowry giving is spreading even to communities, which had no such tradition a generation or two ago. This despite the fact that in the last two decades the anti dowry laws have been made very stringent and draconian. Many interpret the failure of these laws to lessen dowry giving as a sign of their poor implementation. However, these laws have so many inherent flaws that their honest implementation is well nigh impossible. In fact, these laws have created more problems than they have solved. You cannot combat a 'crime' which is as ill defined as the anti dowry laws of India.
This essay aims to examine using dowry as a symbol, the way that the British colonial rulers in India changed the way that certain traditional Indian symbols were seen and used. Also this essay hopes to examine how the current post-colonial mindset has again given these symbols a new face; thus causing these symbols to evolve and re-evolve, creating a very ‘gendered’ history. This can be examined in the sense of the “white man” attempting to protect the “brown woman”, thus causing the “brown man” to grow more fixated with the symbols that the British were fighting against and emphasizing their importance even more.
As per the Dowry Prohibition Act (originally passed in 1961 and amended twice in the 1980s), dowry is defined as 'any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly by one party to a marriage to the other party to the marriage or by the parents of either party to a marriage or by any other person, to either party to the marriage or to any other person at or before [or any other time after the marriage] in connection with the marriage of the said parties' .
Madhu Kishwar commented most aptly that “It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent. ” Through such comments, we can see how many undesirable faces of history have become attributed to women. Instead, an examination of colonial policies that were implemented by the British in India would be able to provide a more comprehensive reason for the dowry system and its exorbitant growth.
Colonial rule and Dowry:
Dowry requirements are merely another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by constantly citing of 'dowry abolition' as the most effective method to attain women's empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.
There is little mention of exorbitant dowries causing the ruin of families in the literature of pre-British India. Ruin due to exorbitant dowry payments became a major theme in nineteenth century literature because this period witnessed an unprecedented erosion of women's economic importance and inheritance rights due to the manner in which the colonial rulers carried out land settlement operations in India. In conformity with Victorian norms that were the norm in England, land entitlements were given to the male heads of the family, bypassing Indian customary laws that allowed various categories of entitlements to women; including the concept of Stridhana, where the bride takes land and money with her, in her name, to her marital family. This “bride wealth” is then inherited in a matrilineal line. This concentrated property in the hands of men in an unprecedented way and paved the way for the eventual complete disinheritance of women. In addition, the enormous land revenue demands imposed by the British drained large amounts of the economic surplus from the rural economy. It made the peasants extremely cash poor. The destruction of traditional crafts pushed large sections of impoverished artisan groups to fall back on their small landholdings and the consequent increasing pressure on land made land ownership bestow special power and status; which naturally men exploited from each other whenever possible, especially through marital alliances.
To again quote Madhu Kishwar, “Thus, our modem inheritance laws have increasingly moved in favour of men and against the interests of women. All those communities that practiced matrilineal inheritance, such as the Nairs in Kerala, have also been forced through legislation to move towards patrilineal inheritance. Systems that provided reasonable or adequate protection of women's economic rights have been steamrollered out of existence. ”
How dowry engendered colonial society:
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to dowry were all attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the problem and justify colonial paternalist domination.
Even female infanticide can be linked back to colonial policies instead of being seen as a high-caste Hindu problem. The growing preference for sons had a far greater correlation with colonial land and revenue policies and suppression of modern industry than with any cultural male-preference. A very strong correlation can be seen with the colonial construction of males as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the military. The simple fact the colonial rule completely sidelined Hindu women from the workforce served to reduce their importance and thus increased the perception that females were a burden. The colonial situation and even the present scenario in India bear little resemblance to pre-colonial traditions where men often worked alongside women in fields. So dowry by the 1850's went from being a way of showing the appreciation a family had for their daughter to becoming a demand. As the colonial economy was commoditized, women were as well, through the dowry demand. Systems of reciprocity, the fact that villages would come together to give a woman gifts, gave way to contractual systems leading to chronic indebtedness; and thus women were left without legal entitlements.
In opposition to the reigning mindset of the time that the private sphere was a realm of freedom and traditional practices, the British administration in India saw the private sphere in the colony instead as a space of "barbarism" that required change and ‘civilizing’. This produced the structure of the "scandal" as the mode through which the private sphere was made available to public scrutiny. Through law, patriarchy was imposed upon the private sphere. So criminalizing cultural or traditional practices was the way the colonial state was able to get out of its own proclaimed stance of non-interference.
The banning of dowry, child-marriages and sati however, served to do little else than intensify these practices as they came to be seen as ‘rebellion’ against the colonial powers. Dowry gradually became more and more exorbitant and in a vicious cycle, the more the grew, the more the colonial rulers and missionaries tried to stamp it out, serving only to again intensify it. In this war of culture and civilizations, women were increasingly disenfranchised and discriminated against; becoming mere chattels.
Dowry became such an issue at the time that even non-Hindus, for whom dowry was not part of tradition, came to take it as part of their belief system. It can be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry daughters to families of higher status and to the "sanskritisation" of India where communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices. The latter is clearly apparent in the adoption of the dowry system by Indian Christians and Muslims. For the Muslims, the concept of dowry was nonexistent, the groom instead paying the bride’s family a “bride price”. The adoption of a “Hindu” dowry culture has helped the other religious groups stand on a common ground with the Hindus and perhaps try to create a common “Indian” culture. The British also often favoured the Hindus in India, perhaps contributing to the ‘sanskritisation’ of India.
Conclusion:
Putting landed property exclusively in male hands, and holding the latter responsible for the payment of revenue had the effect of making the Indian male the dominant legal subject. The British further made the peasants pay revenue twice a year on a fixed date. Inability to pay would result in the land being auctioned off by the government. As a result, peasant were forced, during a bad year, to use their land as collateral to borrow from the moneylender, in order to pay taxes. The British resolve to rationalize and modernize the revenue was particularly hard on women. From being co-partners in pre-colonial landholding arrangement, they found themselves denied all access to economic resources, turning them into dependents. In the event they faced marital problems, they were left with no legal entitlements whatsoever.
The contemporary phenomenon of Indian dowry can be explained not in terms of scriptural and cultural concepts but more as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to the colonial monetization of the economy and then again to postcolonial globalization. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female feticide may be traced back in India to colonial policies. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women will tolerate abuse within marriage. In fact in the current situation, as Madhu Kishwar studied, it may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages because they know they will receive little else from their parents .
Traditional forms of social life were changed due to modern conceptions of agency, consent, and individuality. Dowry, which was once a practice that enabled women, has now been transformed into one that oppresses them.
Bibliography:
Basu, Srimati. She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety, 2001
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs159.htm (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)
Caleekal, Anuppa. Dowry Death: Its gruesome reality and future interface in a digital cultural revolution. 1997
http://www.digitalism.org/ (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)
Kishwar, Madhu. Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kishwar, Madhu Purnima. Destined to fail in Manushi, Issue 148
(published July 2005 in India Together)
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Interview in Times of India, Mumbai as appeared on 31/1/03.
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_essay_page.asp?cat_name=why&cid=1030&sid=168 (Accessed 26th March, 2006)
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime; Oxford University Press, 2003
THE DOWRY PROHIBITION ACT, 1961, (No. 28 of 1961)
http://socialwelfare.delhigovt.nic.in/dowryact.htm (Accessed on 28th March, 2006)
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
The Impact of the Mass Media on Indian Culture and forms of Communication
Introduction:
The impact of mass media in India is very significant and this is clearly apparent through the rising number of advertisers who are capitalizing on these media channels to spread their messages. Rural or urban, regardless of caste and religious boundaries, Indians are glued to television and radio serials. The question this essay aims to examine is the intangible cost involved in this burgeoning mass media culture.
“Films are seen once or twice while ad films are seen over and over. Yet the advertising for many of these iconic brands doesn't seem to drive social change in behaviour and values as strongly as some of the heroes and heroines do through their portrayals in films and serials. ”
It is the people and their characters that the masses of India seem to identify with. With regards to their dressing and personifications of themselves, mass media has affected the lives of people in many ways. As village politician Chandraprakash Dwivedi said “Now village girls want to dress like Rani Mukherjee in Bunty aur Babli -- this within four weeks of the release of the film. ” Men want a hairstyle like “Radhe Bhayya ” in hit movie Tere Naam. Bindis, blouses, and bangles define the concept of beauty for girls in small towns - influenced by the looks of the saas-bahus in the umpteen TV serials beaming into their drawing rooms on various satellite channels.
In Kirk Johnson’s study of a small town two hours away from Mumbai city where television had just reached, he noted how television upset existing social structures and created new ones. This essay aims to answer the question it has put forth above through the examination of the differences in social structures in India from the past to the present; as well as the differences in forms of communication and entertainment.
Folk Music, television and cinema will be examined under the category of communication and entertainment. Communication in India often took on a musical tone, especially in the communication of religious works or literature. Poetry and religious texts were often sung. The advent of television however has made this rather obsolete. Similarly, village theatre and dance (nautanki) has been replaced by cinema and television serials.
Social structures in India have also changed with respect to the caste system as Johnson’s work shall demonstrate. Owning forms of media and communication (televisions) has becomes more a more important symbol of class than caste. Similarly; village story-telling and word-of-mouth has lost its following and has thus changed the social structure of things as well.
“Traditional forms of communication and entertainment”
The culture of India is one of the oldest cultures in the world and yet it is so diverse as to be impossible to pin down and define. The South, North, and Northeast have their own distinct cultures and almost every state has carved out its own cultural niche. In spite of the diversity, it's bound by a common thread as one civilization perhaps because of its shared history of colonialisation and the following struggle for independence from the British.
Culture and its preservation matters a great deal to Indians, at least in rhectoric. The Government of India has even formulated a “Cultural Policy” which lays out three major objectives as preserving the cultural heritage of India, inculcating Indian art consciousness amongst Indians and promoting high standards in creative and performing arts. Unfortunately, it seems the advent of mass media has made the cultural policy redundant as performing arts seem to have virtually disappeared for the masses of India.
In the past, Indian drama and theatre were a significant part of “Indian culture” and some of the oldest plays in the world originated from India. The tradition of folk theatre was also alive in nearly all the linguistic regions of the country. In addition, there is a rich tradition of puppet theatre in rural India. There were many theatre groups that used to travel from village to village putting up small skits and these served as entertainment and also as a means of communications between different villages as information travelled through word of mouth. These nautanki goups have since been replaced by Bollywood cinema and the tv-serial market.
Similarly, the earliest Indian literary traditions were first orally spread and only later transcribed. Most of these spring from Hindu tradition and are represented by sacred works like the Vedas, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. These works were narrated with an accompanying discourse by learned speakers or visiting sanskrit scholars and Brahmins.
Finally, the music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, pop and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects, as a result, folk music plays an essential role in uniting people of the same dialect group who may be far apart geographically. An example is the folk music of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Bhojpuri music. It serves as a means of communication as the lyrics of the songs often cover recent cultural changes and events; as well as religious content. Bhojpuri music is spread through visiting singers as well as everyday singing by laypeople. The songs are not static and their lyrics are often played around and substituted by the singers. This allows for communication between gepgraphically disparate groups. Later in this essay, the loss of such a means of communication will be examined with regard to the invention of casette tapes and television.
Changes in forms of Media and Communiation:
Music, drama and literature have all changed with time and are now digitally enahnced are available to a wider base of people. The television and print revolutions have granted access to these forms of media to the masses across india. Villages often have their own newspapers and access to television is readily available to the majority. Bollywood cinema is not restricted to the urban community and is in fact highly popular with the rural masses.
The ease of making casette tapes and now compact discs has allowed for a very widespread distribution of music; negating the need for traditional folk singers and concerts. Bhojpuri folk music is an example of a dying genre of music that is now regaining some following due to overseas diaspora groups desperate to maintain their links to their dialect. As Ajeet Praimsingh, leader of the bhojpuri singing group D’Bhuyaa Saaj said, “we don’t speak Bhojpuri any more, so all that we sing is by the ear. But we love this form of music and we perform quite often”.
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium, the portable cassette player, caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.
Television has had a more or less similar impact due to its widespread reach. It is nearly impossible to establish the precise number of people with access to a television set in “the poor world ”, as James Murdoch, chief executive of STAR TV Group told a cable conference in India; due to the fact that individual cable subscribers sometimes pass on the service illegally to an entire neighborhood. “Moreover, in parts of the developing world, large numbers of people often crowd into one house or cafe to watch television, a factor that is hard to quantify ”.
In the case of India, media empires have had to adjust their strategies to suit the Indian context. STAR TV realized that its mainly American oriented programming was only reaching a tiny, although wealthy, urban audience. It therefore started adding Hindi subtitles to Hollywood films broadcast on its 24-hour channel and dubbing popular U.S. soaps into Hindi. In October 1996, STAR Plus began telecasting programs in English and Hindi. In 1999, it claimed 19 million viewers in India.
Another example of this cultural hybridity is Zee TV, India’s first private Hindi-language satellite channel. Zee was launched in October 1992 and depended initially on recycled programming. It then broke television taboos by broadcasting programs about sex, relationships, and horoscopes. The channel thrives on a mixture of Hindi film, serials, musical countdowns, and quiz contests. Zee’s innovative programming includes news in “Hinglish.” Despite the influence of the English language in India, the biggest media growth is in regional languages. Even U.S. series like “Friends” (known as “Hello Friends” in India) have been hybridized, although the latter has not been as successful as expected—the lifestyle of the Hyderabadi versions of the New Yorker originals did not settle in the Indian imagination.
Such television shows are the prime example of how American culture has become more popular in India than Indian culture. Even Indian soap operas, set in traditional households often portray traditionally dressed women who behave and dress in a completely Western manner out of the house. Television serials, both Indian and western oriented ones have deemphasized traditional dress. As a Bengali fieldworker commented, in the cities it is difficult to tell men and women apart by their dress. Movies and television have created a new fashion that is being emulated all over the country, rural and urban.
Changes in Social Structure:
The people of India belong to thousands of castes and caste like groups--hierarchically ordered, named groups into which members are born. Caste members are expected to marry within the group and follow caste rules pertaining to diet, avoidance of ritual pollution, and many other aspects of life.
With the advent of mass media and channels of communication and information, the Brahmins who have traditionally been at the top of the caste system have been replaced by those with colour television sets in their homes reports Kirk Johnson in his study. The next level seems now to be those with access to colour TV, followed by black and white TV owners and then those with access to black and white TVs.
Caste lines have been blurred in the quest to gain access to information; which in itself is not a bad thing. Television watching, especially in the rural areas has become a communal event and it is not uncommon for TV owners to position their television sets such that they are facing the open door; allowing members of other caste groups to sit outside the home and enjoy the shows . Similarly, in villages where there is one common, government-provided television set, members of the village gather around to watch communally. This is especially the case for religious programs as well as those related to agriculture.
However, such interaction means that traditional social structures have been destroyed and more people are flocking to the cities that they see on television in the hopes of achieving the material goods that are telecast. This has resulted indirectly in an increasing number of unemployed in the cities as well as a growing number of slums, as these internal migrants are often lowly skilled and unable to find suitable jobs in the city.
Other than changing the social structure and norm, the media revolution has also contributed to the disintegration of so-called 'Indian norms'. Movies such as "Monsoon Wedding" are an ideal demonstration of the culture shock faced by many young Indians today. There is a chasm between traditional values of chastity and dressing conservatively and the TV values of stylish and often skimpy dressing and more liberal values, including dating before marriage and other 'western norms'.
Although information and communication links that television, cinema, radio and newspapers have brought about are immense; it is undeniable that they have had a very strong and not altogether beneficial impact upon the masses who watch them. Culture and social structures have suffered, as have traditional art forms and methods of communication.
Conclusion:
Other than dress; many other aspects of culture have been sacrificed in favour of western influences. Folk music and travelling singers have given way to cassettes and compact discs; nautanki shows have dissolved under the pressure and competition brought forth by television and cinema. The traditions of story telling has also taken a back seat due to casette playbacks of discourses and the ease with which printed material is cheaply available.
Just as traditions have gone ‘out of fashion’, it seems that many beliefs have done so as well. Television has reached a stage where even religious discourse is broadcast, negating the need for temple visits and religious-social gatherings. Infrastructure and the mass media influenences that it has brought with it have created a culture where person to person interaction has nearly stopped. Information is relayed to us through media channels, radio, television, books and newspapers.
It seems almost as if we have entered an era of ‘cognitive imperialism ’ where as Carolyn Martin famously commented, “Western civilization was the center of the stage play for which the rest of the world was an awestruck audience ." The interaction between the media and the people it impacts is ever changing and evolving; the Indian-themed but Hollywood made movie, “Monsoon Wedding,” demonstrates how globalization and the media reveal striking features in cultural contexts. Societies like India’s are being affected by globalization and the western influences that are a large part of it, but their interest also plays an active role in fostering it.
Bibliography:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Monsoon Wedding” Demonstrates Cultural Impact of Globalization on Many Levels, 27/02/2003.
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=44
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)
Chatterji, Shoma. Information as Empowerment in India Together, 24th March, 2006.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/mar/med-navodayam.htm
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)
Culture of India. Culture of India, Mumbai, 2004.
http://www.cultureofindia.net/
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)
Iyer, Venkatesh R. Culture Cops in India Together, July 2004
http://indiatogether.org/2004/jul/med-copmedia.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)
Hartmann, Paul. The mass media and village life : an Indian study. New Delhi ; Newbury Park : Sage Publications, 1989.
Johnson, Kirk. Television and social change in rural India. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2000.
Lahiri, Nisha Chutney makes the music, in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) 25/2/05
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050225/asp/calcutta/story_4419987.asp (Accessed on 24/3/06)
Lal, Vinay, Associate Professor of History, UCLA. Culture, December 12, 2002.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/culture.html
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)
Manuel, Peter Lamarche. Cassette culture: popular music and technology in north India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, 1988.
Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India : The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. University Of Chicago Press; 1990.
Richards, Michael and French, David. From Global Development to Global Culture in Contemporary television: eastern perspectives. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, 1996
Rao, Bhaskara N. Media needs a new outlook and approach. 7th October, 2005
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050710/edit.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)
Sabnavis, Madhukar, Can ads impact popular culture, July 1, 2005 on Rediff.com
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jul/01guest2.htm
(Accessed 23rd March)
Thomas, Bella. What the World's Poor Watch on TV. From the March 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 3) http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/947.cfm#down (Accessed on 20th march 2006)
The impact of mass media in India is very significant and this is clearly apparent through the rising number of advertisers who are capitalizing on these media channels to spread their messages. Rural or urban, regardless of caste and religious boundaries, Indians are glued to television and radio serials. The question this essay aims to examine is the intangible cost involved in this burgeoning mass media culture.
“Films are seen once or twice while ad films are seen over and over. Yet the advertising for many of these iconic brands doesn't seem to drive social change in behaviour and values as strongly as some of the heroes and heroines do through their portrayals in films and serials. ”
It is the people and their characters that the masses of India seem to identify with. With regards to their dressing and personifications of themselves, mass media has affected the lives of people in many ways. As village politician Chandraprakash Dwivedi said “Now village girls want to dress like Rani Mukherjee in Bunty aur Babli -- this within four weeks of the release of the film. ” Men want a hairstyle like “Radhe Bhayya ” in hit movie Tere Naam. Bindis, blouses, and bangles define the concept of beauty for girls in small towns - influenced by the looks of the saas-bahus in the umpteen TV serials beaming into their drawing rooms on various satellite channels.
In Kirk Johnson’s study of a small town two hours away from Mumbai city where television had just reached, he noted how television upset existing social structures and created new ones. This essay aims to answer the question it has put forth above through the examination of the differences in social structures in India from the past to the present; as well as the differences in forms of communication and entertainment.
Folk Music, television and cinema will be examined under the category of communication and entertainment. Communication in India often took on a musical tone, especially in the communication of religious works or literature. Poetry and religious texts were often sung. The advent of television however has made this rather obsolete. Similarly, village theatre and dance (nautanki) has been replaced by cinema and television serials.
Social structures in India have also changed with respect to the caste system as Johnson’s work shall demonstrate. Owning forms of media and communication (televisions) has becomes more a more important symbol of class than caste. Similarly; village story-telling and word-of-mouth has lost its following and has thus changed the social structure of things as well.
“Traditional forms of communication and entertainment”
The culture of India is one of the oldest cultures in the world and yet it is so diverse as to be impossible to pin down and define. The South, North, and Northeast have their own distinct cultures and almost every state has carved out its own cultural niche. In spite of the diversity, it's bound by a common thread as one civilization perhaps because of its shared history of colonialisation and the following struggle for independence from the British.
Culture and its preservation matters a great deal to Indians, at least in rhectoric. The Government of India has even formulated a “Cultural Policy” which lays out three major objectives as preserving the cultural heritage of India, inculcating Indian art consciousness amongst Indians and promoting high standards in creative and performing arts. Unfortunately, it seems the advent of mass media has made the cultural policy redundant as performing arts seem to have virtually disappeared for the masses of India.
In the past, Indian drama and theatre were a significant part of “Indian culture” and some of the oldest plays in the world originated from India. The tradition of folk theatre was also alive in nearly all the linguistic regions of the country. In addition, there is a rich tradition of puppet theatre in rural India. There were many theatre groups that used to travel from village to village putting up small skits and these served as entertainment and also as a means of communications between different villages as information travelled through word of mouth. These nautanki goups have since been replaced by Bollywood cinema and the tv-serial market.
Similarly, the earliest Indian literary traditions were first orally spread and only later transcribed. Most of these spring from Hindu tradition and are represented by sacred works like the Vedas, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. These works were narrated with an accompanying discourse by learned speakers or visiting sanskrit scholars and Brahmins.
Finally, the music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, pop and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects, as a result, folk music plays an essential role in uniting people of the same dialect group who may be far apart geographically. An example is the folk music of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Bhojpuri music. It serves as a means of communication as the lyrics of the songs often cover recent cultural changes and events; as well as religious content. Bhojpuri music is spread through visiting singers as well as everyday singing by laypeople. The songs are not static and their lyrics are often played around and substituted by the singers. This allows for communication between gepgraphically disparate groups. Later in this essay, the loss of such a means of communication will be examined with regard to the invention of casette tapes and television.
Changes in forms of Media and Communiation:
Music, drama and literature have all changed with time and are now digitally enahnced are available to a wider base of people. The television and print revolutions have granted access to these forms of media to the masses across india. Villages often have their own newspapers and access to television is readily available to the majority. Bollywood cinema is not restricted to the urban community and is in fact highly popular with the rural masses.
The ease of making casette tapes and now compact discs has allowed for a very widespread distribution of music; negating the need for traditional folk singers and concerts. Bhojpuri folk music is an example of a dying genre of music that is now regaining some following due to overseas diaspora groups desperate to maintain their links to their dialect. As Ajeet Praimsingh, leader of the bhojpuri singing group D’Bhuyaa Saaj said, “we don’t speak Bhojpuri any more, so all that we sing is by the ear. But we love this form of music and we perform quite often”.
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium, the portable cassette player, caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.
Television has had a more or less similar impact due to its widespread reach. It is nearly impossible to establish the precise number of people with access to a television set in “the poor world ”, as James Murdoch, chief executive of STAR TV Group told a cable conference in India; due to the fact that individual cable subscribers sometimes pass on the service illegally to an entire neighborhood. “Moreover, in parts of the developing world, large numbers of people often crowd into one house or cafe to watch television, a factor that is hard to quantify ”.
In the case of India, media empires have had to adjust their strategies to suit the Indian context. STAR TV realized that its mainly American oriented programming was only reaching a tiny, although wealthy, urban audience. It therefore started adding Hindi subtitles to Hollywood films broadcast on its 24-hour channel and dubbing popular U.S. soaps into Hindi. In October 1996, STAR Plus began telecasting programs in English and Hindi. In 1999, it claimed 19 million viewers in India.
Another example of this cultural hybridity is Zee TV, India’s first private Hindi-language satellite channel. Zee was launched in October 1992 and depended initially on recycled programming. It then broke television taboos by broadcasting programs about sex, relationships, and horoscopes. The channel thrives on a mixture of Hindi film, serials, musical countdowns, and quiz contests. Zee’s innovative programming includes news in “Hinglish.” Despite the influence of the English language in India, the biggest media growth is in regional languages. Even U.S. series like “Friends” (known as “Hello Friends” in India) have been hybridized, although the latter has not been as successful as expected—the lifestyle of the Hyderabadi versions of the New Yorker originals did not settle in the Indian imagination.
Such television shows are the prime example of how American culture has become more popular in India than Indian culture. Even Indian soap operas, set in traditional households often portray traditionally dressed women who behave and dress in a completely Western manner out of the house. Television serials, both Indian and western oriented ones have deemphasized traditional dress. As a Bengali fieldworker commented, in the cities it is difficult to tell men and women apart by their dress. Movies and television have created a new fashion that is being emulated all over the country, rural and urban.
Changes in Social Structure:
The people of India belong to thousands of castes and caste like groups--hierarchically ordered, named groups into which members are born. Caste members are expected to marry within the group and follow caste rules pertaining to diet, avoidance of ritual pollution, and many other aspects of life.
With the advent of mass media and channels of communication and information, the Brahmins who have traditionally been at the top of the caste system have been replaced by those with colour television sets in their homes reports Kirk Johnson in his study. The next level seems now to be those with access to colour TV, followed by black and white TV owners and then those with access to black and white TVs.
Caste lines have been blurred in the quest to gain access to information; which in itself is not a bad thing. Television watching, especially in the rural areas has become a communal event and it is not uncommon for TV owners to position their television sets such that they are facing the open door; allowing members of other caste groups to sit outside the home and enjoy the shows . Similarly, in villages where there is one common, government-provided television set, members of the village gather around to watch communally. This is especially the case for religious programs as well as those related to agriculture.
However, such interaction means that traditional social structures have been destroyed and more people are flocking to the cities that they see on television in the hopes of achieving the material goods that are telecast. This has resulted indirectly in an increasing number of unemployed in the cities as well as a growing number of slums, as these internal migrants are often lowly skilled and unable to find suitable jobs in the city.
Other than changing the social structure and norm, the media revolution has also contributed to the disintegration of so-called 'Indian norms'. Movies such as "Monsoon Wedding" are an ideal demonstration of the culture shock faced by many young Indians today. There is a chasm between traditional values of chastity and dressing conservatively and the TV values of stylish and often skimpy dressing and more liberal values, including dating before marriage and other 'western norms'.
Although information and communication links that television, cinema, radio and newspapers have brought about are immense; it is undeniable that they have had a very strong and not altogether beneficial impact upon the masses who watch them. Culture and social structures have suffered, as have traditional art forms and methods of communication.
Conclusion:
Other than dress; many other aspects of culture have been sacrificed in favour of western influences. Folk music and travelling singers have given way to cassettes and compact discs; nautanki shows have dissolved under the pressure and competition brought forth by television and cinema. The traditions of story telling has also taken a back seat due to casette playbacks of discourses and the ease with which printed material is cheaply available.
Just as traditions have gone ‘out of fashion’, it seems that many beliefs have done so as well. Television has reached a stage where even religious discourse is broadcast, negating the need for temple visits and religious-social gatherings. Infrastructure and the mass media influenences that it has brought with it have created a culture where person to person interaction has nearly stopped. Information is relayed to us through media channels, radio, television, books and newspapers.
It seems almost as if we have entered an era of ‘cognitive imperialism ’ where as Carolyn Martin famously commented, “Western civilization was the center of the stage play for which the rest of the world was an awestruck audience ." The interaction between the media and the people it impacts is ever changing and evolving; the Indian-themed but Hollywood made movie, “Monsoon Wedding,” demonstrates how globalization and the media reveal striking features in cultural contexts. Societies like India’s are being affected by globalization and the western influences that are a large part of it, but their interest also plays an active role in fostering it.
Bibliography:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Monsoon Wedding” Demonstrates Cultural Impact of Globalization on Many Levels, 27/02/2003.
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=44
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)
Chatterji, Shoma. Information as Empowerment in India Together, 24th March, 2006.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/mar/med-navodayam.htm
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)
Culture of India. Culture of India, Mumbai, 2004.
http://www.cultureofindia.net/
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)
Iyer, Venkatesh R. Culture Cops in India Together, July 2004
http://indiatogether.org/2004/jul/med-copmedia.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)
Hartmann, Paul. The mass media and village life : an Indian study. New Delhi ; Newbury Park : Sage Publications, 1989.
Johnson, Kirk. Television and social change in rural India. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2000.
Lahiri, Nisha Chutney makes the music, in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) 25/2/05
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050225/asp/calcutta/story_4419987.asp (Accessed on 24/3/06)
Lal, Vinay, Associate Professor of History, UCLA. Culture, December 12, 2002.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/culture.html
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)
Manuel, Peter Lamarche. Cassette culture: popular music and technology in north India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, 1988.
Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India : The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. University Of Chicago Press; 1990.
Richards, Michael and French, David. From Global Development to Global Culture in Contemporary television: eastern perspectives. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, 1996
Rao, Bhaskara N. Media needs a new outlook and approach. 7th October, 2005
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050710/edit.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)
Sabnavis, Madhukar, Can ads impact popular culture, July 1, 2005 on Rediff.com
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jul/01guest2.htm
(Accessed 23rd March)
Thomas, Bella. What the World's Poor Watch on TV. From the March 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 3) http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/947.cfm#down (Accessed on 20th march 2006)
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