The Angry Indian Feminist Manifesto

Source: Robbie Porter

(Note: This post was first published by Feminism In India on January 20, 2016)

Opponents of gender equality often label women with strong opinions as ‘aggressive’ and ‘crazy’. Feminists often find themselves pushed on the back foot by the tone-police that is quick to label us ‘feminazis’ for simply demanding an equal voice. The analogy is absurd and outdated. As John Marcotte pointed out,

“Don’t allow men who hate women to define feminism as women who hate men.”

Here’s what people keep forgetting: Feminism is a social justice movement; social justice movements spark out of prevailing inequalities; social justice movements exist to correct imbalances. They do not exist to comfort bruised egos; they do not exist for your viewing pleasure. Anger is the most natural and healthy response that should colour these movements.

Proponents of gender equality need to redefine that anger and own it. Take pride in the ‘flag’ that our families and friends claim we carry. Revel in the fact that our struggle makes power holders nervous and grapple for names to call us. Remember that the terms ‘feminism’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘sexism’, ‘gender equality’ and ‘affirmative action’ are explained and studied in the social sciences, and not “femi-nazism.”

Be proud and unapologetic.

For every time they whine about the six seats and three coaches reserved for women in buses and trains, remind them that it does not stop women from getting groped, the moment they step onto the platform. For every time they cry ‘inequality’ when women get a few free drinks, remind them of every woman’s drink that got spiked by a sexual predator, and every rape survivor blamed for ‘drinking too much’.

A patriarchal world is a messed up world and our anger is absolutely called for. We will welcome solidarity and we will accept zero nonsense.

All attempts at subverting our struggle will be met with graphene resistance. Slowly but surely, power structures will corrode and hegemony, destroyed.

For every Dalit or tribal girl abused in silence, there will be a Bhanwari Devi that will shake the very foundations of your patriarchal and Brahmanical institutions. For every menstruating girl prohibited from entering the temple, there will be a free-bleeding marathon runner – her pants covered in red. For every women’s hostel that will trade-off our freedom for our “security”, there will be a woman strolling by the sea at midnight, reading Why Loiter?.

For every ‘Yo-Yo’ policing a girl’s ‘dope-shope’, ‘short dress’ and ’47 weight’, there will be a spoken word poet tearing his bullshit to shreds. Your double-standards of sexual purity will be swallowed whole by every ‘slut’ who ‘scored’ with dozens of men. And every time you sexualise two women in love, there will be a lesbian couple laughing at the thought of your genitals.

The struggle will be ugly, and the struggle will be pretty.

But it will always be magnificent – all without your permission.

Do not expect us to feed ourselves with the crumbs of complacency from your table. Every sorry attempt to derail with ‘#NotAllMen’ will be shot down by every man who stands up for feminism.

When you spill your patriarchal ideas of ‘decency’, ‘beauty’, ‘purity’ and ‘dignity’, your gender will cease to be relevant. You will be a mere element of a patriarchal system, to be corrected through education, or to perish – survival of the fittest.

You will either stand up against injustice, or you will be a part of it. We will be respected as individuals and we will accept no compromise.

For every patriarchal son that dared to brutalise Jyoti Singh, there will be an army of women and men ready to fight and die for thousands like her.

For every Thangjam Manorama at the mercy of monsters in uniform, there will be an Irom Sharmila fighting for peace – beyond race and language.

We will be open to dialogue with facts and reason. Misogyny and sexism will not qualify as logic.

We will scoff at your retorts of ‘ugly’ and ‘fat’. How sexy you find us, means nothing, I hope you know that.

We will not be obligated to respond with a smile. Our lives and bodily autonomy are more valuable than your hurt feelings.

In the age of information, ignorance will be assumed a choice. And as India’s Daughter, Angry Indian Goddesses and Queen taught us – this revolution WILL be televised.

Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Anatomy of a Liberal’ is the autopsy of logic

 

(Source: Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

 

(Note: This post was originally published on India Resists on November 5, 2015. An edited version was published on HuffPost India on November 16, 2015)

“Just because you can (write) doesn’t mean you should.”
― Pearls of wisdom for Chetan Bhagat

In the cacophony of political debate in India, the right-wing holds an untainted record of presenting disinformation in the loudest voices. Besides a swarm of flag-waving swayamsevaks and jingoistic andh-bhakts, Modi is also backed by a fat chunk of upper-middle class, what some might call, “English-educated” Indians and class-A industrialists & capitalists.

The band of Modi supporters also has its share of public figures. And Chetan Bhagat, in his latest column “Anatomy of a Liberal,” has proven yet again, why he is by far the worst thing to have happened to the world of writing.

Let’s begin by acknowledging Bhagat’s talent of spinning fairytale into “fact” with a huge courage of conviction. Bhagat presents his myopic view with a deluded sense of self-righteousness that immunises the right-wing against any criticism. Essentially, he says: the middle-lower middle classes make the ‘nationalists,’ and therefore, represent “real India,” while the liberals are a bunch of tea-in-china-cup elites, their lives devoid of struggle, and are therefore clueless as to what India needs.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ironically, Bhagat has probably alienated the ultra-rich capitalist class from his own camp; the Tatas, Ambanis and Adanis who accompany Modi on all his globe-trotting adventures, with all and sundry who pumped crores of rupees into BJP’s election campaign. As Praful Bidwai, professor at the Council for Social Development in Delhi, writes in DNA, “Big Business loves the “Gujarat Model” because it gives huge tax write-offs (eg, over 60% on the Tatas’ Nano project). Business adores Modi for his ruthless decisiveness in granting super-fast industrial approvals.”

Or as The Economist pointed out in 2013, “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone in a suit and with a pulse in the private sector wants Narendra Modi to become prime minister.”

The dichotomy of a Bhakt is this imaginary idea of representing “real India,” while consciously ignoring and often suppressing class, caste and gender struggles. In true BJP-fashion, Bhagat gives zero mentions to ‘caste’ in his heaven-knows-how-many words of rubbish. In his spare time, he likes to keep the patriarchy alive by promoting sexism, misogyny and rape culture…

A typical man-child who whines about the “friend-zone”

On other days, he is seen shouting “Izlahm also!!11” when liberals point out the patriarchal vices of Hindu tradition. A classic logical fallacy: “two wrongs make a right.”

The gender-bias in Islamic societies, which, by the way, has its fair share of critics – Mona Altahawy, Sherry Rahman and Tabassum Adnan, to name a few.

Bhagat’s “real India” is such a poorly imagined fairytale, you could swear it’s a chapter from one of his infantile novels. His theory defines us as a middle-lower middle class Hindu nation that will magically rise to glory under the Modi Raj. And it is precisely this kind of homogenisation that jeopardises the plural culture of India – one of mutual respect and healthy debate.

And while the right-wing has consistently shown poor faculty to understand something called ‘democratic dissent,’ Bhagat’s logic-soup comparing legal documents to awards, was particularly cringeworthy…

Just Bhagat things

It must require truckloads of self-admiration to be so uninformed, so publically.

Bhagat goes on to vomit the word “privilege” with such ease, you would hope he realises at least some of his own. Unsurprisingly, he ignores the upper-caste male camaraderie that has largely defined India – from politics to popular culture.

Sections of liberals have begun to realise the different levels of privilege embedded in Indian society – that of gender, caste, race, class and language. The right-wing, however, has remained largely the same – suspicious of and paranoid about upward mobility of lower castes and women. And understandably so; their status quo at the top is finally beginning to shake with Dalit and women’s struggles, and support for sexual and gender minorities. No wonder the Hindutva movement is also gaining ground. So much so that poor Mr. Bhagat is unable to distinguish between religiosity and terrorism.

The butts of the privileged are plump with the fruits of blissful ignorance.

Bhagat obviously isn’t keeping up with liberal opinions when he laments the apparent lack of “real liberals and intellectuals in our country.”

Or perhaps he’s too busy berating historians and other intellectuals just for laughs…

Once upon a dark time in Indian history

“Modi is more of an “economic growth reduces poverty on its own” kind of guy; which is not true in a country like India, where there are millions of poor people,” says Udaiveer A., a financial management expert and MSc in Economics. “Until we are able to create many more millions of manufacturing jobs to absorb people in rural areas who have very little means to survive, the problem of urban and rural poverty won’t go away.”

Liberals are a largely heterogeneous group that has its share of atheists, leftists, believers, anarchists and others, and covers the spectrum of classes and religions, right from the peon who believes that Hindus and Muslims must live in harmony, to the director of a financial management firm, who believes that Modi’s economic policies have bypassed poverty reduction altogether.

Zubin Madon, an engineer and atheist, has a simple suggestion, “Govt should be secular in a very literal sense of the word. Religion shouldn’t be “tolerated” in the public sphere. Ban loudspeakers outside mosques as well as ganpati mandals. Plough down shrines on the footpaths. That sort of secularism.”

And finally, as a moderate feminist and devout Hindu, I often find myself debating and discussing ideas with people from diverse social, religious and political backgrounds.

That’s one benefit of belonging to the liberal camp. You can choose to be an anti-national, liberal, leftist, commie, sickular, congressi, aaptard, etc.
__

Here, Mr. Bhagat, have some scalding hot tea – in a china cup, or kulhad, if you prefer.
We promise to not let your class affect your right to debate.

When Not to Defend

Social Media & Digital Consumerism

Observations from a year off of social media 

Credit: bandt.com.au

It’s June in the high year 2015 and I write today after having consumed my latest piece of internet “news” lambasting an indie musician for her attempted initiative in raising LGBTQ awareness.
(by crowd funding a questionable amount of money, nonetheless)

2015 is a strange time to be alive.

We are ‘empowered’ somehow – with access to news and opinions at a stray scroll through our Facebook or Twitter feeds.

Sadly however, ‘news’ is limited to Buzzfeed, ‘opinion’ is limited to Arnab Goswami, and ‘development’ is limited to some fancy factory on a forest land.

“Truth” as we have come to see through social media, can only be either black or white. ‘Grey’ is a mere synonym for a failed sexual fetish.
The space for nuance and curious enquiry is steadily reducing.

This is an opportune time for me to share some takeaways from a largely beneficial absence of social media from my life.

Note: This is Part 1 of a god-knows-how-many-parts series, at the end of which I plan to suggest alternative methods of social media use. Read the prequel here.

PART I: Social Media as the New Television

The television has been a time-tested favourite to brainwash viewers into embracing consumerism.
Whether it is propaganda during national disturbances (Read: Vietnam War, Second Gulf War, etc); or the enforcement of ridiculous standards of morality for women (variants of ‘K’ soaps on Indian TV); or the harrowing parade of consumer goods advertising – the television has been a go-to for disempowering the masses.

One of my favourite artists Priyesh Trivedi (better known as the creator of Adarsh Balak) has done a couple of really cool artworks on the subject.

Social media activity therefore provides a seemingly healthy ‘alternative’ to the TV. It seems ‘cleaner’ (better content), ‘customisable’ (selecting content), ‘participative’ (liking and commenting), and makes us feel more relevant (knowing the most irrelevant news byte before everyone else).

But is it really what we think it is?

• Content Quality

On my occasional Facebook re-activation (to shamelessly pimp out my work), I often find a feed full of literal crap.

Not because my friend list isn’t quality (shout-out to all the amazing people I take great pride in knowing), but because the content on my feed is severely lacking in usefulness.
Try this: take a closer look at your feed. Most can be grouped into some basic categories:

• Status message outraging about latest “important” development
• Status message about latest film, TV show
• Change of job / city announcements (Life Events)
• Food Pictures
• Selfies/Vacation/Misc. Pictures
• Wishes and condolences
• A shady looking article with a click bait title
• Videos: furry animals that soothe the eyes
• Videos: that spread misinformation about important social issues in a desperation for views

Now: Try to remember your life before Facebook. Yes, you had one!

And you functioned reasonably well.

To seek information, for example, you were more likely to do your own research on the internet or through the library and refer to more than a single source, than get your ‘fix’ from an opinion posted as a status message.

You were more likely to get a call from a friend or cousin about them changing jobs or cities. Heck, you were more likely to call someone to wish them a happy birthday.

So this “connectivity” that we take great pride in, is largely an illusion. (more on this later)

Content quality can only be observed from a distance.

When I stay on Facebook for more than an hour – all the content starts to feel necessary or at least, important. In that, Facebook is verifiably hypnotic.

It is only when I log on after weeks – that I see an array of unnecessary and largely irrelevant words and images strung together and wonder “how is everyone still on this website?!”

Real-Talk:

You don’t need to see what your friend ate;

or what they looked like today;

or know what they did on vacation (unless, of course, the sole purpose of their vacation was to tell Facebook what they did)

You don’t need to watch more mind-numbing “original video content” which is basically just a notch more cleverly packaged, better selling version of its predecessor. You certainly don’t need to “watch what happens when…. ”

And you will never realize this unless you deactivate. Acknowledging “I know it’s a waste of time and I’ve been meaning to go off” can never be “I finally went off Facebook and found much more time for the things I love”.

The quality of content on Facebook, and by implication its relevance, are questionable. And its ability to keep users glued in spite of all its cons is alarming and quite telling. Is Facebook then just becoming a nicer-looking 21^st century version of its now-exposed predecessor, the television?
It largely depends on the next aspect –

• Content Selection

Some of my friends like to argue that they choose to view only informative content and filter out the rest.

Here’s a fact – you can’t.

Facebook continuously throws a variety of content at you to evaluate your preferences, in order to better target third-party ads that justify their hefty prices.

Some Food for thought from HuffPost & Vice.

Let’s get real – when you idly scroll through your feed looking for something interesting, you’re not by any means ‘selecting’ what you see.

A myriad of articles, photos, videos, status messages – out of which only a fraction might be relevant to you, but you end up consuming most anyway because they’re right there.

Of course, there’s the newer feature that allows you to choose “I don’t want to see posts like this”. But how often do you use it?

The activity on your friends’ posts, or the choice to not see certain content, is then used to better target advertising – of pages, organizations, companies, products, you name it!

Here, Facebook successfully manages to create an illusion of choice. The television functions in an incredibly similar fashion.

• Participation

My prequel to this post talks about a feeling of helplessness quite common in social media users. In spite of incessantly hammering and being hammered by conflicting points of view on various posts, people feel powerless after a point because there’s only so much you can do sitting on the internet machine. Very few, if at all, bother following up or taking action in real time.

This basically sums up the twin faces of this elusive ‘participation’:

• An illusion of control
• An experience of helplessness

For all this apparent lack of outlets for the common person – social media provides a tool for people to vent. People rarely read good newspapers, of which an even smaller percentage writes to editors.

Liking or commenting your approval/disapproval of someone’s opinion online therefore gives you a false sense of control. The audience of your post – a handful of your friends – maybe twice the number if you get shared. Yet, you feel your opinion relevant.

A huge part of this has to do with feeling ‘involved’ in social change. After having commented on a few updates and shared a petition or two, you are far less likely to follow up with real action or organize anything beyond the confines of the virtual world.

It is this illusion of control that manifests itself in the experience of helplessness. When words become the core of human philosophy, distancing the individual from action, it poses a serious threat to social change.

• Relevance

Social media “news” is not relevant.

What Gaga wore to the Grammys and what Ranbir Kapoor wore to IIFA is certainly not news. Stop priding yourself in knowing about it before everyone else. Stop priding yourself in knowing about this stuff at all.

In August 2014 I asked a classmate what was this ALS thing she spoke so enthusiastically about. Having been following The Hindu for over a month, I was quite perturbed at not knowing something which seemed so important at the time. She proceeded to give some unconvincing information about the ‘very serious’ condition and then spoke in-depth about the challenge.

At that point it struck me: Yes, I’d read about it! In the lower corner of a 3×3 inch ‘Trending Now’ box on the ‘Variety’ Page (no. 7) of The Hindu.

No way! Facebook was going bonkers over this?!

As it turns out, these manufactured trends have a rather short shelf life.

Do we know the implications? Every minute we waste in vitriolic criticism of a celebrity’s life choices or in blind enamour of the latest social media #trend, deals are signed between governments and policies directly impacting us are decided with minimum public scrutiny.

Our sense of control then remains limited to likes, comments & shares. Our sense of helplessness remains a constant reminder of our irresponsible social media consumption.

Staying ‘relevant’ comes at a heavy price, indeed.

---

While social media can be likened to television, certain basic differences in structural and operation remain. How we utilize these differences in making it useful for collective benefit depends largely on the type, frequency and nature of our consumption. This isn’t a one-day process, but an informed decision to take the plunge and let our instincts guide us.

In subsequent parts, I will write about some simple methods to detox from the networks and keep social media consumption to the bare minimum.

For starters

• List a couple of things you always wanted to do but could never take time out for.
• Pick one or two.
• Next, deactivate Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and channelize your energy into these micro-goals, while consciously resisting the urge to share your progress online.
• Instead, try sharing your progress with family members and/or close friends, not via texts, but in person
• Stay off the networks for a pre-determined amount of time (anything between 5 – 15 days is good to start with)

Revel, you phoenix, in your new found freedom. 

“I have no responsibility” – Alyque Padamsee

When questioned by me on this week’s episode of We the People about his role (as an advertiser) in propagating the idea of a fair skin bias through fairness cream advertising, Alyque Padamsee heroically declared, “I have no responsibility”.

I was part of the studio audience for NDTV’s weekly talk show, hosted by Barkha Dutt. With the question of debate being “Fairness Creams: an un-fair obsession?”, one would expect the argument to be one-sided.
But when a man of Mr. Padamsee’s calibre decided to speak for the fairness obsession, we knew this would be a controversial 50 minutes.

Let’s take a look at the facts. Fair & Lovely is India’s first skin lightening cream, on the market since 35 years, though the fair skin obsession has existed much longer. Matrimonial ads listing ‘fair’ as one of the qualities are not alien to us. According to jeevansathi.com statistics, 71% of women want responses from fair skinned men, while 70% men register their skin tone as ‘fair’. Not surprisingly, these men get 5 times better responses.

Owing to genetics and geography, Indians are predominantly brown-skinned people. Yet, we have not only accepted, but practiced and perpetuated this form of racism across generations. Mihnaz, a victim of domestic abuse said that her skin tone triggered her in-laws’ hostility. She was continually harassed for not bringing in “enough” dowry to compensate for her complexion.

Skin lightening advertising is turning an existing racist preference into a destructive, repugnant obsession by establishing an infrangible link between lighter skin and professional success. In this scenario, it is only reasonable to expect some form of accountability from an advertiser. So while Mr. Padamsee’s untainted ethic keeps him going in his crusade to “help dark people become fair”, his callous disregard for responsibility is a cause for concern.

The problem, however, does not end here. Fair skin is only a part of the package of unrealistic (in this case, irrational) beauty standards that women feel compelled to live up to. Where height, weight and vital stats are few things that women have hated about their bodies, skin tone yet another. It is no surprise then that the debate drifted into definitions of beauty and the pure subjectivity of the concept. Even though Mr. Padamsee may have suggested a grossly patronizing campaign – “Ugly is Beautiful” to combat prejudice, it is worth keeping in mind that he is no authority that can possibly dictate these standards.

Watch : We The People, NDTV (6th October, 2013) – Fairness Creams : An un-fair obsession?