The Turmoil of Change

The recent spat in BHU campus in Banaras highlights an underlying pattern. The birth of new ideas is never easy; the change from the league always faces much turmoil and resistance. The old mentalities take centuries to change and this change has started, albeit late, in the very ‘Hindu’ campus of BHU. If we look closely, any religion or ideology, if applied upon the masses in rather its ‘pure’ form, tends to decay. The traditional ‘Hindu’ ideology which has always vociferously opposed the Muslim one, tagging it as ‘barbaric’ and ‘misogynist’ has put its foot in mouth by asking girl students to ignore lurid remarks and to stay indoors post evening. Similarly, nations where a comparatively ‘pure’ Muslim ideology rules, horrendous condition of women has attracted international flak. Even the elite and powerful snooty Great Britain that has ruled almost every country and looks down upon Hinduism and Islam, the ‘Georgian’ as well as the ‘Victorian’ periods of pure ‘Christianity’ have been atrocious for women. Jane Austen’s novels describe how women suffered, for they had absolutely no rights and were dependent upon the males for everything. From being forced to study at home to developing coquetry skills, women in Britain were raised with a single goal- to find a suitable husband. Austen’s another famous novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’ makes this point far more clear.

So, the pattern is that any religion if given a free reign in application of its core ideology on subjects tends to restrict the liberty of its women folk first. Clerics all around the world have been insecure of women and their education. In her seminal work ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf reveals that women were not given entry inside the Oxford University library and also that the university allowed a separate girls college only after much protest. So, be it any religion, core ideology is always polar to women and their rights, even most fundamental ones. The society has always been male dominated and as usual, in BHU also, girls were asked to ‘ignore’ the molesters and ‘shut up’. What can be more unfortunate than to encourage dirty psychopaths?

Surprisingly, the interior areas of Mongolia, tribes of Africa and Jews (hated even in the poems of ancient Greek poet Homer and Shakespeare; the Song of the Witches’ in Macbeth has these lines about Jews- ‘Liver of blaspheming Jew; Gall of goat; and slips of yew’) can boast of a high gender equality. People we cast off as ‘wild’ and ‘uncultured’ can teach us a lesson or two on respecting women.

The change never stops; it arrives gradually and like birth, like a plant it has to claw its way up, break the seed and then ground to come out and survive. Anything that is forced in its unaltered form tends to suppress the weakest parts of the population first. Hence, any religion or ideology must be flexible and must be altered with time, and most importantly, must not be forced. After all, gender equality is the foremost sign of a culture that keeps up with change and adjusts well with its flexible framework.

Ironically, all this is happening during the Navratri festival. By the way, fresh sprouts are appearing on the rusted saffron ground in Banaras and from all of my heart I want them to survive and grow.