Decoding feminism in India

A discussion I recently had with a professor left me feeling mildly discomforted and unsettled, the reason being she insisted that I was a hardcore feminist who wasn’t ready to accept that.  All my life I have lived in a country where sexism stares you in the face every step you take and everyday makes you realize in different ways, that the fight for gender equality is no where close to getting over yet. Having said that, I do not even remotely consider myself a feminist, in fact the word being applied to me made me squirm for some reason. I am committed to gender equality and that’s all there is to it. After doing everything I could to convince that professor that I was not a feminist I started thinking of what feminism really was and what it really means in todays world especially in the Indian context.

Processing everything I knew about women’s rights in India from the Pink Chaddi to bra burning campaigns and more, I realized that I would have to go beyond relying on my brain to understand how feminism operates in India. So I spoke to some of my friends who considered themselves die-hard feminists and what I heard from each of them shocked, amused and confused me simultaneously.  Their ideas of feminism spanned the whole scale of stereotypes starting with equality, reproductive rights, and hatred for the opposite sex. Liberation, beauty, and vanity encompassed many of their opinions and ideas as well. The more I talked to them the more I got confused between liberals, hippies, anarchists and a weird concoction of views that everyone seems to be basing their beliefs out of.

It then hit me that feminism is a reality of its own, subtle but not subtle, there but not there, empowering in villages and raging in cities.  All the polarities in the world of feminism that seemed to exist, only told me one story- where there is oppression there is resistance. We have to learn that men are not the enemy but attitudes are more often than not the biggest enemy. Amazingly and ironically enough it was men who first started the feminist movement in India.

The more I read up and analyzed feminism in the Indian context, I realized that after so many years of being around, feminism in India has still been undefined. Surprisingly, it is still an intensely debated definition. In the urban context, it is interesting to see the evolution of feminism and how it transformed to so much more than it was originally intended for. I love the flexibility though, that feminism offers in its definition in rural places and suppressive religious environments which is the saving grace and the only source of hope, self esteem and sense of being for women and girls as opposed to how contrastingly in some urban contexts, uber-stylish activists and feminist movements seem to use it to define their existence

It is amazing how feminism can be used for feeling cool as well as attaining liberation at the same time. I guess its definition lies in the shades of gray. In a way I have started to like feminism for its liberal views and for its allowance of letting a circle fit into a rectangle quite in its own way.