Why has every Women’s Day article I read today focused on the injustice towards women and not on their achievements?
Why do they even have to build a site explaining women’s rights in Islam?
Why did I think of founding the sisbro organization (a volunteer organization that helps unaccompanied sisters arriving at railway stations and bus stands to reach safety by sending them authorized brothers seeking nothing but sisterly affection in return for their care)? And why did I have to worry about it being a failure too?
The answer – not soul stirring, not at all surprising, but the most ignored and the least sought out – is that we, as a people or a society, have not grown. How progressive can we expect an average member of a society described by the supreme court as having “low ethical levels and rampant commercialization” to be? We are immature. We are incomplete. We are illiterate. We still lack the mindset, the outlook, and even the vision of a constructive culture.
And above all we are not ready to correct ourselves.
Or to be more accurate, we are not brave enough.
We are not brave enough to:
- think about different solutions
- question injustice
- publicly and outrightly reject commercialization (especially the exploitation of women’s sexuality, and men’s carnal desires)
- swim against the stream (the stream which’s been flowing only in one direction from the beginning of time)
- break taboos
- raise our voice
- stop ‘giving’ equal status to women
- let high school students of either gender sit together (I’m particularly adamant about this one. You believe they have their own different set of problems? I believe that’s been the problem behind all these problems. Girls and boys may have different bodies, but they do have the same minds. Their problems may be different in appearance, but they’re the one and the same. And there’s no compromise on this point)
- realize that giving birth is not the only work a woman can do efficiently (especially considering the growing population of India)
- ask ourself whether it’s easier to talk about sex and birth prevention or about rape and sexual abuse.
- start accepting what’s good in other cultures (especially the western culture. Ya. I know that’s gonna make earn me a tag of a pro-western idiot. But there’s no denying the fact that many of the problems that our gloated 10000 year old culture faces now, is not at all a menace in the west, because their culture by design eliminates the causes of these)
- stop editing and re-editing your comment under this post to conform to ‘moral standards’ and start changing the world
- go and get a life
Most Indians have nothing to think about other than their boring work (which, we don’t realize is, not compulsory), and gossips. There are cooler things to do in life. (And when your mind is stretched by a new idea it never regains its original dimensions)
Happy Women’s Day, then.
PS: As I say that, I see another steamy song on the tv in which the fingers of the hero grazes over the bare skin of that sleeveless, and probably shameless new actress, and I (even I d:) can’t control the animal instincts hard coded into my brain.