Proprietors of womb, vagina and foetus

am a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers

and those powers severely limited

by authorities whose faces I rarely see.

—Adrienne Rich

Women’s bodies have not ceased to be political battlefields even in a civilized world. They continue to remain domains for which many vie to control. Two incidents in India last weekdemonstrate how a woman’s womb is treated as a collective property through experiences of gynaecological actions like birth control or fertility endorsements as part of a cultural aggression programme. One was the callously performed sterilization operations over 40 women in Jharkhand, exposing them to several health risks and the other was the BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj exhorting Hindu women to produce 4 offsprings, essentially male children, and offer two of them to sadhus and army. Whether there is an attempt to control population or an attempt to change demographic patterns across the country, women’s bodies and wombs have been deemed as properties of the nation or still worse, that of rabid communal leaders, robbing women of the choice to reproduce or not.

Such patterns tend to objectify a woman, treating her like a child producing factory with a patriarchal system and polity taking the liberty of deciding whether it is right for a woman to produce less than 2 or 3 children or more. The move may be necessitated by an ill-conceived policy and a corrupt culture or by communal passions but it tends to treat women and their bodies as a collective property. The Jharkhand sterilization operations, close on the heels of similarly reckless surgeries performed on 83 women in Chattisgarh, is reported to have stemmed from corrupt practices of offering monetary benefits to health practitioners for setting birth control targets. The entire scheme itself is based on the assumption that women’s bodies can be treated as national properties with coercive methods employed to ensure its success. Far worse is the call to Hindu women to produce 4 children in a bid to improve the numerical strength of the community. The suggestion is both gender biased as well as communal to the core. Its venom does not get any diluted even if attempts are made by a sheepish ruling BJP to distance themselves from the remarks or take action against Sakshi Maharaj, when the discourse is allowed to spread like virus by other votaries of the Hindu rightwing. The remarks may be shocking and downright pernicious in nature but don’t quite come as a surprise. Not very long ago, VHP’s Praveen Togadia had made similar suggestion. RSS leaders have been openly preaching population boom among Hindus and need we forget Narendra Modi, years before he became the country’s prime minister, with his infamous anti-Muslim retort of ‘Hum Paanch, hamare pachees’.

Treating women’s bodies as common property is not exclusive to the Hindu right wing. The infamous coerced birth control measures undertaken during the dark days of Emergency under Indira Gandhi still send shivers down the spine of those who bore the brunt. Beyond politics, women’s bodies become markers of masculine aggression, demonstrated through sexual and domestic violence as well as female infanticide and foeticide. Sexual violence also becomes a weapon of war in conflicts and communal rioting, women’s vagina deemed as an object, a monopoly and anybody’s property. The horrifying rapes in north-east and Kashmir, the gruesome sexual violence during Gujarat communal violence and the usurpation of women’s bodies in Chattisgarh are stories that remain unforgettable. Even more shocking that in the larger discourse of sexual violence brought to the centre stage post the Delhi bus gang rape, these stories remain muted, unheard and unrecalled as if deemed to fulfill some so-called nationalistic pursuit.

In a patriarchal system wombs, vaginas and fetuses become objects of possession, tombs and trophies of defeat and victory, that serve the collective purpose of masculinity and aggression, often celebrated as national and community pride; their acts of goodness brutal to bodies of women, lethal to their hearts and minds. As long as such trends are not construed as gender biased and violation of human rights of women as individuals, they will push the country into a mould of regression and forbid inclusive progress and security as well as retard democracy that is based on the basic principles of justice, equality and liberty.

Why women are so unsafe in our cities

Some 20 years ago, a friend from Mumbai and I were discussing how women were treated in our cities. We both agreed that women were most unsafe in New Delhi, where the hostility to them took both verbal and physical forms. In Kolkata, Chennai, and Ahmedabad, women were rarely abused or attacked in public, so long as they conformed to certain roles. They had to dress and act demurely, in keeping with what was recognised as Bengali or Tamil or Gujarati culture.

My friend and I congratulated ourselves that our own cities were more progressive. In Mumbai or Bangalore, women did not have to wear the sari or salwar kameez to feel safe. If they were more comfortable travelling in Western dress, they were not subject to hisses or glares. In both cities, there were a substantial number of women professionals, working as lawyers, doctors, bankers and teachers. Both cities also had prominent and successful women entrepreneurs.

But in which city were women more free, Mumbai or Bangalore? My friend thought it was Mumbai, where they could take public transport at any time in a relaxed frame of mind. I answered that while the public transport system in Bangalore was appalling, women driving their scooters and mopeds to work was a common sight (whereas in Mumbai it was not).

Twenty years later, I look back on that conversation with embarrassment. To be boastful about oneself or one’s family is foolish; to brag about one’s country or one’s city can be equally unwise. For the truth is that women are not safe in Bangalore anymore. In the last two decades the situation has visibly regressed. There is much more jeering at young women, and more physical (including sexual) violence against them too.

Women between the ages of 15 and 30 face the most hostility, but women of other age groups are scarcely any safer. There have been a series of horrific rapes of little girls in the schools of Bangalore. And attacks on elderly women have also increased. My 80-year-old mother was brutally assaulted on her morning walk; when she resisted, the attackers (three young men) pushed her to the ground, ripped the mangalsutra from her neck and left her with a gaping head wound.

To be sure, Bangalore is not exceptional in this regard. In all our cities, women in public places are extremely vulnerable, and, so far as one can judge, less safe than they were 20 years ago.

Indian society has always been solidly patriarchal. In the dominant religions of the sub-continent, Hinduism and Islam, women were assigned an inferior place in scripture as well as social practice. Now, as women refuse to subscribe to traditional gender roles, as they seek to educate themselves, take up jobs outside the home, choose their own marriage partners, and in other ways assert their independence, they face a patriarchal backlash. Sometimes the assault comes from within the family; at other times, from the larger society.

India is undergoing a painful and tortuous transition, where ancient hierarchies of caste and gender are slowly giving way to modern ideas about the equality of all individuals before the law. In recent years, there have been a series of attacks against Dalits across the country, conducted by upper-caste men infuriated that their social inferiors were becoming IAS and IPS officers. The surge in attacks on women is likewise an angry attempt by men to sustain the overwhelming social and political dominance they have long enjoyed but which is now challenged by modern notions of gender justice.

The violence against women in contemporary India has other causes too. Every year, millions of young men move from the countryside to the city in search of jobs. Not all these men get regular employment (for economic growth has been capital- rather than labour-intensive). Meanwhile, they are confronted far more directly by a culture of conspicuous consumption than they were in their villages. Dissatisfied and disenchanted, they vent their anger on women.

Another contributory factor is the images conveyed by advertisements and in films. Hoardings of expensively attired, bejewelled, and beautiful young women line the streets. Bollywood films, aimed increasingly at a rapidly Westernising middle class, portray romance and desire as inevitable byproducts of contemporary life, creating a further sense of frustration among the unemployed young men who watch them.

The crumbling infrastructure of our cities also militates against women’s safety. Streets lit dimly or not at all; bad or non-existent means of public transport; an incompetent and corrupt police form – all contribute to the insecurity and vulnerability of women.

I have focused on our cities; but of course the situation in the countryside is scarcely better. Here women are suppressed even more thoroughly by patriarchal norms and patriarchal institutions. The widespread practice of female foeticide; the withdrawal of girls from school when they reach puberty; the unwillingness to let women work and the absolute bar on their choosing their marriage partners – these all confirm that women are treated as less-than-equal in Bharat as well as India.

The columnist Rahul Jacob recently wrote that women in China lead more autonomous and independent lives than their Indian counterparts, and felt far safer at work or on the road. When I myself last visited China, the delegates to the conference I was attending were taken every day from hotel to seminar venue in a large bus driven by a self-confident, calm, and utterly secure young woman – not always the same young woman. This is one sphere where we can do well to emulate China. For while ‘Make in India’ may be a worthy aim, ‘Make Women Safe in India’ is far worthier.

(Ramachandra Guha’s most recent book is Gandhi Before India. You can follow him on Twitter at @Ram_Guha)

(The views expressed by the author are personal)

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