Behind the Veil

Barkha Dutt

Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7

Saturday, October 28, 2006:

It's the classic cliché: meek eyes staring out from behind miles of cloth; the grim black color making the perfect style statement for suppression.

But is it really that simple?

Is the veil a symbol of equality or entrapment? Does it stand for religious freedom or retrograde ritualism? At a time when the globalisation bulldozer is swiftly flattening out individuality and turning us all into assembly line productions, is the veil a healthy assertion of multiculturalism? Or is it simply sexist in the extreme?

Jack Straw, England's former foreign secretary, kick-started the row when he declared that he would prefer Muslim women in Britain to completely discard the full veil. Salman Rushdie was even more blunt: the veil, he said, "sucks" and was just another way of taking "power away from women".

And Tony Blair joined the chorus: the time had come, he said, to step outside the boundaries of political correctness and debate the place of the veil in a modern, secular society.

So which side of the debate are you on?

I have to confess that despite being an unabashed liberal feminist, I'm pretty confused.

Sure, I'm instinctively revolted by religious dogma and sickened by the subtext: stifle female sexuality in swathes of impenetrable dark cloth. I have always argued that certain principles of equality must override and supersede religion. So while Jack Straw's comments were restricted to the niqab that cloaks women from head to toe, personally I find even the hijab or the headscarf scarily suggestive of subservience.

But it disturbs me only as much as the ghungat in Hindu homes of rural India or the feudal chic of urban socialites who dress up in fancy chiffons and pearls and then demurely drape their heads and reach for their husband's feet if required. The veil offends my notion of equality just as much as temples that deny entry to women or churches that believe priesthood to be the preserve of men.

The fact is that gender is always on the wrong side of faith. And so by definition, the classic feminist position is always at loggerheads with tradition.

The problem as many feminists (including myself) have discovered is this: our ideology often doesn't have the width for the world's complexities. It ignores socio-economic realities and how inextricably culture and identity are linked.

In real life, context is everything: and the truth alters as the context shifts.

I remember being in Kashmir in 2001. A shadowy militant group was trying to push women behind a blanket of black: the veil was being enforced in a valley where many women traditionally never wore it. Outspoken young girls went on record to protest the infringement of their freedom and the distortion of their culture. As we aired these reports on television, a fatwa was slapped on my head warning me against traveling to the state.

A few months later, 9/11 shook the world, and I was in New York. This time, there were threats too, but of an entirely different kind. Muslim women were being compelled to discard the safety and comfort of the hijab.

At the city’s community center for Arab-Americans, social workers were advising women to dress in a way that would blend them into the mainstream: no headscarves, skirts and dresses, if possible. At a peace vigil, I met a Bangladeshi woman who suddenly broke down and wept; it was the first time she had stepped out her house without wearing the customary salwar-kameez.

Freedom had really become another word for nothing left to lose. And suddenly what could have been a symbol of oppression in another place, at another time, had transformed into an emblem of religious pride.

So when Jack Straw says that the full veil is a "mark of separation" and a custom that segregates the community, it raises all sorts of other questions. The assimilation debate is always a dangerous one; must Muslims conform to an anglicised notion of dress to be considered regular people?

London-based journalist Zaiba Malik was one such "integrated" Muslim who had never worn a veil before, but decided to conduct a little experiment. She shrouded herself in black and walked across the city. Among the slew of comments heaped upon her: "You Paki terrorist, go back home".

Reading about her experience, I thought that one remark would have enraged me enough to want to wear the veil forever.

On the other hand, there is also no doubt that across the world, there is a crisis of modernity and leadership in Muslim communities. As terrorism plunges the world into a Samuel Huntington styled clash of civilizations, Mr Straw is right in saying that cities must not be split into self-contained ghettoes. The question is this: did his controversial remarks actually end up achieving exactly that?

There are no simple answers. Modern politics has got caught in the polarisations of the West vs Islam battle, and the modern gender debate is tragically trapped in extremes as well.

Read the furious bloggers on Jack Straw’s comments. One of them, a young Muslim, demands to know: "What are Straw's views on teenage pregnancy, on young girls going out dressed in next to nothing?"

Beyond the obvious cultural clash, the comment got me thinking. Would there ever have been a public debate over whether women dressed in handkerchief skirts and bikini blouses were appropriate role models?

Of course not.

Today we believe women have traveled a long way because we are able to flaunt our sexuality and strut our stuff. To question to that is to be labelled prudish and backward. And yet, I often wonder, is this progress or merely the circle completing itself?

The debate reminds me of one of my favourite stories, one, some readers of this column would have heard before. I first met "item girl" Momed Khan during the recording of a television show on censorship. The sultry, long-haired, short-skirted Momed, best-known for her seductive serenade in the hit song Dekh Le, sprang to her feet, and pointed aggressively at the skirt riding up her leg.

This is what women wanted to be, she said, almost yelling. The age of the salwar-kameez was over. As the audience applauded, I thought: here's a 19-year old Muslim woman from conservative Lucknow, in Thackeray's Mumbai, defying convention and norm. That seemed pretty radical by any standard.

Yet I kept thinking: What did she really stand for? The manufactured sexuality, the crafted coquettishness — it seemed to me that we had just gone and replaced an old stereotype with a new one. Had she turned up draped in a full veil instead, would she have been a different woman beneath the black?

Somehow I'm not so sure.

Modernity is a confusing business, and sometimes moving forward is the same as going back.

God is in your heart and on your computer screen!!!

I was about to rant in the previous entry about how distressed I was during my trip to India ,when I couldn’t enter the temple of the deity, whom I looked for help in my past two years away from family . I guess I wasn’t destined too go in at that time!!! My dad felt for me , though I behaved like a brat at the time, and reminded me that it’s not visiting temples that counts because after all God is in your heart…he took me to Siddhi Vinayak and Mahalakshmi Temples in Mumbai to make up for it( incidentally the last time he was at Mahalakshmi Temple was on his wedding day, some twenty six year before that day in January).

Anyway why am I bringing this up and why am I not ranting? Because I believe religion is personal , and I don’t think I’ve faced religious discrimination as a woman,atleast not in a way that truly affects me because I choose to let it not affect me, though at times I think we have a Da Vinci code type scenario happening in our own backyard as well!!!

That isn’t the point of this post though, I’ve been pretty much browsing the net like nobody’s business the past few months , but today was the first day when searching for information for the previous blog I keyed in Devi in wikipeida, and saw stuff I already knew , then I thought “Well specifically I ought to click on Durga”; and I did , and I read the Durga Mahishasur story, and scrolled down the page , and I see four links and the last one is about the very temple I was feeling bad about not being able to visit, I was happy but really surprised ,there are many other more famous Durga temples in India and in South Kanara as a matter of fact!!! It wouldn’t be a big deal if it was a large famous temple because then of course there would be wiki about it , but it’s actually a small temple in a rural ( and I mean rural!!!) part of South Kanara, most of the devotees are from the village, I’m sure if my dad hadn’t married my mom he might not have heard of the temple. The priest mentioned in the article is the temple priest , and he’s a Wikipedia celebrity !!!! We usually take our family deity from our mothers side , Durgaparmeshwari is like my guardian angel, and I carry a picture in my wallet , wherever I go, I usually get questions about the picture , which I happily answer.

I guess it goes back to my dads principle of God being in your heart , and I found God when I was thinking about her the most!!!

about a girl.....

In today’s New York Times “ Doctor In India Jailed for telling Sex of a Fetus”… “In 1991 ,there were about 945 girls born per 1,000 boys ,but this dropped to 927 by 2001, according to a national census”

Anyway the article got me thinking ….In spite of being born in a country where the “cultural preference for sons has distorted the sex ratio“ ..amazingly I haven’t felt much by way of discrimination..

Well , my parents have two kids- my sister and me …. I’ve led a pretty sheltered life as long as I was in school and stayed with my parents .My mom and dad; especially my dad, mom too but if you know my dad you know he pretty much rules the homestead !! made sure that my sister and I weren’t cut any slack especially in the area of education
(thank fully my parents don’t say things like you’re girls; we cant spend on your education lets save for your dowry!!! My relatives might say such things ..but I don’t stay with my relatives. )..And it wasn’t just too keep up with the Joneses that my parents sent us to school or something..(if you know my immediate family , you must already know that we’re a rather hippie type family…)

Well my dad’s older sister is a PhD, arguably the first lady PhD in our community (incidentally my aunt worked in the Indian institute for reproductive sciences , carrying out research in the same field the Indian doctor was sent to jail for ‘mis’ using…. ), my first cousin from dad’s side has graced the cover of national magazines and has appeared in many print and television ad’s,( mind you this was in the late eighties- early nineties, when modeling was cool but not the fad it is now (yes, yes she’s modeled with Milind Soman!! :) ), and for a community that’s got a lot of people in the industry now ,she was one of the first ones . So needless to say my dad’s side of the family consists of progressive ladies ….

Really if my dad wasn’t my dad , my life would have been slightly if not drastically different, so you can imagine that coming from an environment where my immediate family hasn’t made me or my sister feel as if we ought to deserve less from life because we are female.
… I get really ticked of when random people make me aware of the fact.. don’t get me wrong ..I’m not a trailblazing Amazon.. but I don’t take kindly to the comment “You’re like a boy..” or something to that effect (and they don’t mean it as a compliment !!, I’ve only heard that once in New Zealand by a desi guy… in America the desi guys have some brains ..ok ok NZ desi’s, pretty much all of them were amazing ,but there were a couple of keeda’s from the motherland!!!! ) especially when its said by some guy my age. I mean just because at the age of 24 I don’t want to ask my parents for spending money and therefore work part time while going to school ? Because I don’t need a guy to drop me in his car when I need to do shopping?? Because I can cross the road without holding a guys hand??? … THAT makes me less of your concept of what a girl should be like!!!!

News flash buster…. Each and every girl would like to do the above things ..its just because people like you exist that they cant…

Well back to the story so till school and even undergrad in India I don’t think I suffered much!!??!! Apart from weird dress codes and suchlike… but even guys couldn’t come to college in shorts and pajamas so fine!! Well thankfully most guys I’ve met are great , apart from a occasional keedas, who were just acquaintances and not friends anyway.

In the US ,the situation is good, all the girls here have overcome certain obstacles (or not ) ,but are certainly living their dream of coming out here ..my hats off to the sisters, I know gals who’ve worked at mid night as night watchmen, washed dishes in restaurants,worked as parking lot attendants and worked thier way through school, girls who lived in the superdome in New Orleans when Katrina struck(what you thought an Indian girl couldn’t survive that ??) people who marry their soul mate irrespective of creed ,caste or community, people who earn more than their partners , yes all are desi, all are my friends and I’m proud of them and proud of the guys they are with!!

But I’ve had certain sources tell me that certain guys here don’t want to get married to girls who are studying here .. prefer girls in India …hmmm I wonder why????? ( actually not :P)

Well I pity the poor Indian girls who pay bucket loads of dowry to eventually get married to such a person ..poor gals will be dreaming of their cool American prince charming and life in the land of opportunity … Well gals here…. I break the illusion ( or at least part of it ) .. I held on to this idea as well before I came here….. Here it is…. JUST BECAUSE A GUY LIVES ABROAD ,DOESN'T MEAN HE'S COOL!!!

Sure there are great, cool guys out here , and the concept of an American Prince Charming isn’t a fairy tale ….but you have equally cool guys in India …and those psycho types you thought could exist in India only ..yupppp they’re here a s well!!!!!

Well , I’m sure all the gals would have read most of this . Hope it wasn’t too long!! But I just got on a roll with this topic ....

As for the guys ..Well if I’ve scared you off ……Thank goodness !!!!..That was the aim!!!..
For those guys who did read…. Thanks .. I hope it wasn’t too long and I hope it was enlightening to read how some one from the other side views things …

As I was writing this I had the newspaper with the article open next to me.. an American guy sitting next to me saw the bold headline of the article and said CRAZY!!! Well that’s what I said when I first saw it too!!!!