by Nair, Anita
I reached the house, opened the gate and went in. I opened the front door, entered and closed it. I had no reason to think that anything out of the ordinary had happened upstairs. But I must mention one thing—my mind was full of a strange sadness for no reason whatsoever. I wanted to weep. I can laugh easily. But I find it difficult to weep. No tear, not even a drop usually comes out of my eyes. When I wanted to weep I would feel a strange sense of divinity. I felt it then.
I went up the stairs in that frame of mind. And then … an unusual sight met my eyes. My subconscious recorded it. This is what had happened. When I had closed the door and left, the lamp had gone out completely for want of oil. The room had been dark. After that it had rained for a while. About three hours had passed. But now there was light inside the room. It could be seen through the chinks in the door … This was the light my eyes had seen and my subconscious had registered. But this, this mystery, was not recognized by my conscious self.
As usual I took out my key. Then I focused my torchlight on the padlock. The lock gleamed like silver … or is it more correct to say that the lock smiled in the light?
I opened the door and went in; then I saw everything. That is to say, my entire being realized with a start what was happening. I did not tremble in fear. I stood there stunned. I felt a kind of warmth go through me and I sweated.
The entire room and its white walls were illuminated with a blue light. The light came from the lamp … two inches of blue flame … I stood there struck with amazement.
Who had lit the lamp which had gone out for want of kerosene? Where did this blue light come from?
—Translated from the Malayalam by V Abdulla
Dinesh Khanna
Fool’s Paradise?
Ammu Joseph
‘Myths about our matrilineal society need to be broken,’ said a journalist participating in a workshop in Shillong in September 2001. I sat up. Was I in Meghalaya or Kerala?
This was only my second visit to the northeastern region of India, which is about as far as you can get, within the borders, from Kerala on the southwestern coast. During my brief encounter with Assam two years earlier I had been struck by the unexpected similarities in climate, vegetation, food and clothes between states situated at diametrically opposite ends of the subcontinent. This time, too, on the drive up to Shillong from Guwahati, I was strangely reminded of my imaginary homeland.
On both occasions I was vaguely aware of other possible parallels between these farflung corners of the country, among them the matrilineal tradition associated with some local communities. And now here I was in the idyllic setting of a northeastern hilltop, listening to a conversation that could just as well have been taking place on a southwestern seafront.
The animated discussion sparked off by a question about the position of women in the northeastern states, posed by a journalist from Kolkata, was reminiscent of many a past exchange between Malayalis and non-Malayalis on the position of women in Kerala. I listened with a sense of déjà vu as the northeasterners attempted to clarify that only a few tribes in the region were matrilineal and that even among the Khasis of Meghalaya, the largest and most prominent of these communities, the system did not necessarily vest power—even over inherited property—in the hands of women.
They highlighted the fact that public life in the region continued to be male-dominated. Even among the Khasis, they said, women were not allowed to participate in traditional institutions of local governance, such as community-based darbars or village authorities. The legislative assemblies of all the seven states were predominantly male, with women’s participation in electoral politics continuing to be very low across the region. Speaking as they were in a forum of journalists, they also called attention to the negligible presence of women in the embattled northeast-based media.
I listened with a growing sense of been-there-heard-that as local journalists acknowledged that women in most communities of the northeast customarily enjoyed a degree of physical and social mobility unknown in many other parts of the country and did not suffer some of the gross forms of gender-based oppression and discrimination that are commonplace elsewhere. However, they pointed out, this reality could not be used to generalize about gender equality and the empowerment of women in the northeastern states. As a young journalist from Shillong put it, ‘Freedom and empowerment are different things.’
It was all such familiar ground. Listening to women journalists from different parts of the northeast, I could hear echoes from my conversations with girls and women in Kerala, including women journalists, at various points during the 1990s. Just a few years earlier, a young journalist in Thiruvananthapuram had told me quite emphatically: ‘Equality and freedom are elusive for women in Kerala.’
It is obvious, of course, that there are a number of significant differences in the situation of women in the northeastern states, on the one hand, and Kerala, on the other.
One is the question of mobility. Women in the northeast, especially those who belong to tribal communities, generally acknowledge their relative freedom of movement and association (including with the opposite sex). But for women in Kerala mobility remains a major problem, despite the fact that Malayali women, especially nurses, can be found working all over the country and, indeed, the world. This apparent contradiction is, in fact, an integral part of the complex reality of the lives of women from the state.
It is only natural, I suppose, that the most vociferous complaints about the absence of freedom and mobility are voiced by young women. For instance, a group of adolescent girls in Kochi who spoke to me in 1996 conceded that girls in Kerala were allowed and even encouraged to go to school and extra tutorial classes. But, they pointed out, they were expected to return straight home after classes. They claimed that there was little question of their being allowed to go anywhere else except in the company of other family members, whereas their brothers were free to roam about whenever and wherever they pleased.
The girls were clearly unhappy about their lack of swaathanthriam (freedom). They were irked by the fact that ‘boys have more adhikaaram (authority) and more avakaasham (rights).’ According to one teenager, boys were not only more mobile than girls of their own age but they were actually more free to come and go than adult women of her community, who usually required permission from male family members—sometimes even their own sons—to go beyond the neighbourhood.
The issue of mobility was also raised during a workshop for women writers in Malayalam that took place in Vizhinjam, near Kovalam, in 1999. Talking about the ‘domesticity’ associated with much creative writing by women, which sometimes resulted in their work being unfairly dismissed as ‘kitchen literature,’ several well-known poets, short story writers and novelists pointed out that the world they wrote about was the world they inhabited. According to them, societal restrictions on women’s mobility could not but circumscribe their exposure to the wider world and thereby, their experience of life outside their immediate environment. A critic suggested that women’s lack of mobility could be said to constitute an invisible but influential form of censorship, impinging as it often did on what they were able to write about.
The surprisingly few women in journalism in Kerala also reported difficulties arising from restrictions on their movement. In the first place, they said, the timings associated with media jobs made journalism an unpopular career choice for women in the eyes of families and communities, at least within the state. They pointed out that it was not easy for women journalists in Kerala to participate fully and freely in the profession when most parents and other family decision-makers preferred to have them home before nightfall. According to them, they faced similar attitudes at the workplace, with editors and managements generally assigning them to work that did not involve late hours or much moving about.
Closely tied up with mobility is the question of ‘character’ and ‘reputation,’ which clearly continues to dog women in the state. The manifestly strict segregation of the sexes tha
t persists in much of Kerala society even today is another area where customs in the hilly northeast and the coastal southwest of the country appear to diverge.
Young women in Kerala are obviously aware that the restrictions they are routinely subjected to are meant primarily to safeguard their apparently all-important reputations. They suggest that as far as society is concerned the most valued attribute in a girl is what is known as ‘good character,’ best demonstrated by socially acceptable behaviour (swabhaavam). According to a group of high school students in Kochi, the bane of their lives was gossip, the threat of which made their otherwise sensible and reasonable parents keep an uncomfortably tight rein on them. They chafed at the resulting curbs on their mobility, as well as the austere dress code to which they were expected to conform.
The writers, too, spoke of the pressure to safeguard their reputations, especially in a social context where, as one of them put it, ‘People look for personal elements in whatever women write.’ A number of them pointed out that women writers were accepted and even feted as long as their writing conformed to socially accepted norms. According to a critic, gender-based double standards were rife in Malayalam literature. ‘Writing by women which reinforces or is, at least, uncritical of prevailing societal norms is praised, while works by women that critique patriarchal values and promote the concept of women’s identity as individuals provoke censure,’ she said. ‘Men who write differently are honoured, but women who dare to do so are isolated—either by ignoring them or by singling them out for negative criticism.’
The writers also talked about the difficulties of writing about certain subjects, given the predominantly conservative social environment in the state. According to one writer, if a few women writers in Malayalam had managed to achieve a certain measure of freedom as writers, they had invariably done so by opting to lead relatively reclusive lives, avoiding the public sphere and choosing not to participate even in literary fora. Few of the writers refuted the allegation that the literary establishment had a tendency to brand women who conveyed unconventional ideas on sensitive subjects, such as the human body and bodily functions, sex and sexuality, and male-female relationships. According to them, both critics and publishers commonly upheld what they considered ‘decent’ writing while resisting writing that questioned or otherwise threatened traditional—read patriarchal—‘family values’.
The journalists I interviewed also spoke at length about the professional hurdles placed in their path by the social conservatism that still characterises Kerala society. Many pointed out that they faced difficulties in cultivating sources of news and information who, by and large, remained male since men continued to occupy positions of authority in most fields of activity. They said the problem was exacerbated by the fact that social interaction between the sexes continued to be limited and constrained despite the spread of education and progress in other aspects of development.
A number of them also complained about having to contend with unnecessary gossip and innuendo in the course of their working lives. According to them, even the most innocuous behaviour—such as chatting with male colleagues, accompanying them to the canteen or accepting a ride from one of them—was likely to generate gossip that was liable to travel up to ‘higher authorities.’ A young journalist was indignant about the fuss that was kicked up in her media organization just because she stayed late in the office to complete a story. She alleged that rumours about her abounded after she once interviewed a literary figure in a hotel. ‘I was just doing my job,’ she said, ‘but I had to deal with all kinds of speculation about why I had met him there.’
If freedom of movement and association is too nebulous a concept for its absence to be counted as a serious problem, the hard reality of dowry is surely not. The dowry system, which persists unabated and unchallenged in the state, despite women’s access to education and employment, is widely viewed and condoned as an inevitable and inescapable reality in most local communities (however educated). While it is occasionally recognized as a source of financial strain, if not ruin, for families, it is rarely accepted as evidence of the devaluation of women in Kerala society. Nor is it acknowledged as a major source of psychological stress for young women.
Yet, according to adolescent girls in Kerala, the pernicious practice was one of the main reasons why they often wished they had not been born female. It is only too clear that the custom has an adverse effect on girls’ image of themselves, their sense of self-worth and the attitudes and behaviour of others (including family members) towards them. With the sums involved spiralling out of control with little reference to family resources, there have even been media reports of girls committing suicide in despair over their parents’ inability to drum up their dowries. It is a well-known fact that many of the apparently independent and intrepid young Malayali women working in different parts of the country and the world are busy saving towards their own dowries or those of their younger sisters.
Violence against women is, again, an issue that certainly cannot be dismissed as a trifling matter. It can no doubt be safely assumed that the experiences of women in the northeast and the southwest (as well as everywhere in between) converge with respect to this virtually universal aspect of human life. In any case, there is growing evidence that women in Kerala are no strangers to gender-based violence, both within and outside the home.
For example, the preliminary report of a recent, multi-site household survey on domestic violence in India has revealed that the prevalence of physical family violence against women in Thiruvananthapuram could be as high as 43 per cent. Pegging the prevalence of psychological violence against women within the home at 61 per cent in the state capital, the report suggested that this exceptionally high figure could be due, at least in part, to the relatively high reported rate of husband infidelity—higher, apparently, than in any of the other urban sites included in the survey.
Issues relating to gender-based roles and expectations within the family, sexual control, and dowry (in that order) were among the precipitating factors leading to domestic violence identified by the researchers, in Kerala as elsewhere. Significantly, some of the highest rates of dowry dissatisfaction and fresh demands for dowry were recorded in Thiruvananthapuram.
It is possible, as has been suggested, that the Thiruvananthapuram-based part of the multi-site study yielded unexpectedly high figures at least partly because of the superior methodology adopted by the project team in Kerala. Nevertheless, the fact remains that domestic violence is very much a part of the landscape in this part of the country.
Gender-based violence obviously abounds outside the home as well. The infamous Suryanelli case is among the best-known examples of what has apparently come to be known within the state as ‘relay rape’. This particular instance involved the entrapment, confinement and multiple rape of a teenaged schoolgirl during a 40-day period in 1996, when she was held captive in different locations and raped over 100 times by at least 42 men, many of them well-known and influential members of society.
But the Suryanelli case, in which 3 5 of the accused were found guilty by a special court in September 2000 (only to be granted bail within a week by the high court), was reportedly only the tip of the iceberg: a number of similar so-called sex scandals came to light in its wake. Among them were the Kozhikode case, involving a powerful politician, in which a number of girls were trapped and sexually exploited in a racket revolving around an ice-cream parlour; the Pandalam case in which five college lecturers were accused of harassing a female student for over two months; and the Vithura case, in which a minor girl was repeatedly raped and a famous film actor was implicated.
Two notorious cases of sexual harassment also hit the headlines in Kerala at the turn of the millennium. The former state cabinet minister accused of sexual harassment by a senior Indian Administrative Staff (IAS) officer had reportedly harassed another female government employee, a member of the Indian Forest Service, a year earlier. An employee of Kozhikode University was
not only sexually harassed by a stranger in a public transport bus but experienced further harassment and humiliation by policemen when she tried to lodge a complaint and, subsequently, by a university colleague who allegedly spread rumours that called her character into question. Both women suffered the consequences of daring to complain, while justice continued to elude them long after they decided to go public.
Sexual harassment on the streets (euphemistically known as ‘eve-teasing’) is also an ever-present reality in Kerala, as elsewhere. Virtually every adolescent girl I queried about this said she had experienced some form of sexual harassment in the public sphere. The problem was obviously so widespread that they had come to regard it as an inevitable aspect of their daily lives.
None of this is meant to suggest that Kerala is as bad as, or worse than, any other state in the country in this regard. Simplistic comparisons are particularly odious. The theme of my old and hitherto somewhat unpopular song is, rather, that the traditional portrayal of Kerala as a rare paradise for the female sex in an otherwise bleak subcontinental landscape presents only half the picture. And that the whole picture is far more complex, intriguing and indeed, enlightening.
There is clearly no denying the fact that Kerala’s many commendable achievements in human and social development have had a beneficial impact on the women of the state in several important respects—most famously but not exclusively in terms of education.
But just as it would be absurd to conclude that women in the northeast are liberated because most of them get to choose their own husbands, it would be foolish to assume that women in Kerala are emancipated because nearly 88 per cent of them can read and write.
If the state’s female literacy rate is a source of pride, especially when seen in relation to the national average of 54 per cent, its record in women’s political participation (above the panchayat level) is not, with women members constituting just a little more than five per cent of the legislative assembly. If Kerala continues to be well ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the overall population sex ratio (1058 females per 1000 males), which corresponds to figures for the so-called developed world, it is certainly a matter of comfort and joy. But the dip in the sex ratio of the 0-6 age group revealed by the Census of India 2001, which is evident even in Kerala (963:1000), is plainly a matter for concern and inquiry.