Why Indian Women are not feminists

I would like to start this piece by saying that fundamentally this article is purely perspective & empirical and that there is no ‘scientific’ (in whatever way you choose to recognize the legitimacy of that word) backing to this article. I was recently reading a piece by bell hooks, who is a leading African-American feminist theorist, where she briefly talked about the importance of theorising. In this article, she mentioned how she had attended a gathering of women (who were all also African-American women) were the focus of her discussion was to talk about whether or not Black leaders like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X should be analysed from a feminist perspective. At the end of the discussion, a woman responded by mentioning that she wanted to see real change and that theorising was never useful. hooks completed her piece by adding that theory and theorising was a hegemonic practice and the mere act of African American women theorising was an attempt to break that hegemony (in my limited understanding of her text and also this was only one of the points she made). She also started her work by talking about hurt and I would like to mention I am also very hurt and I would like to put in theory my ontological belief that Indian women are not feminists. And when I say this, I am not attacking anyone in general, but attacking the anti-feminist trend that I find in Indian women all around me, even the one’s who seem to very ‘woke’.

From the very start of my childhood, I have been around women who have found themselves so crushed by capitalist patriarchy, that I have seen it oozing out in every aspect of their lives. I am not going to give you examples of how workload is distributed in the Indian households or the preferential treatment boys or men get in this country or female infanticide or literacy of girl children or the missing women phenomenon (though these are great examples); I want to talk about my personal experience. So tracing it back from my childhood, I remember being constantly nagged by the ‘aunties’ in my society for wearing short skirts. They would tell me how grown-up girls should not wear revealing clothes (the irony of the situation being that I was only 8 years old or so). I never really saw these ‘aunties’ lecturing boys on what they should wear or dress. The teachers in my school were also quite similar and so were my female classmates. Most of my teachers in school were female and were much like these nagging ‘aunties’ in the neighbourhood, they would also impose their patriarchal ideologies on me and ask me to be cleaner (because girls are always clean) or speak politely or to wear longer skirts to school or simply more. But let's skip through childhood and teenage years, I didn’t understand what feminism stood for - I was rebelling against the entire society at this juncture of my life, but the point is I (and I am sure every other girl in this country) have patriarchal ideology imposed being imposed on me since childhood.

But things have become more clear now and I can clearly see how bad patriarchy ( I also agree that patriarchy is not the only thing to be blamed here) has affected women in this country and how it overwhelms every aspect of their lives. I lead a very full life and I don’t really adhere to the standards of society, I also don’t have very many female friends and I now realize why it is so. The first point I would like to make is that of repressed sexuality. Marx would tell you that repression of sexuality is due to capitalism and other anthropologists would tell you that society represses sexuality so that race can remain pure and because it also ensures the survival of the questioned society. But I am not so concerned as to why it is so internalised in women in India but how it affects the women here. Sex is taboo, premarital sex is a sin and many kids in this country are never thought anything about sex. So when women in this country (women who have internalised capitalist patriarchy) see other women being so open about sex or somehow being involved with anything of that business, they attack it because they see it as an influence of a foreign culture. In my personal opinion, I have seen many personal female friends, who have on the side criticised my choice about my sexuality because it doesn’t align with them. I scream at the top of my lungs - What about sisterhood? What about equal rights? (because these same women would not criticize or gossip about their male best friends who are doing the same) Why are women so against other women in India? I have lost so many of my female friends. After all, they could not agree or keep up with the kind of lifestyle I enjoy or rather envy me because they have been imputed with patriarchy so deep that they cannot look at themselves or others with an open mind. This is what I find the most harmful and the most saddening.

We also see a trend of women not supporting women when they are succeeding. In the whole mythological and Hindu description of women being Sitas and Saraswati’s, it is not their place to succeed. It is only their place to encourage men to succeed. I also see how older women impose patriarchal standards on other women because at one point in their lives they must have also been affected by it by their elders who taught them this was right. But I believe that people only get old when they stop learning. To conclude, I say to those young and old women who talk about being feminist and pull down their fellow women when they do something that society describes as wrong, shame on you.

I have to confess that at this point the topic of sexuality is the one I find myself well versed, angry and agitated with. But there is a larger topic at hand here, in Indian society and my personal experience, I have seen that it is usually the women who belittle, criticize and disparage other girls and women who seem to be on their trajectory. That it is usually women who enforce patriarchal standards on other women. And it is usually women who attack other women trying to break free. Modernity has made the imposition of patriarchy so easy that men don’t even have to do it anymore! Even though this topic hurts me a lot and affects me deeply, I don’t despise these women, I rather understand them; I feel like people need to understand them so that they can be helped. Also, this same discourse could go for body positivity, same-sex rights (not only in law but in practice), the Me-Too movement, equal pay and just general support in life.

My mother is the fourth girl child in the family that only wanted a son. She often talks about how her birth was the most disappointing one in her family. She grew up to believe that if one day she ever had a daughter, she would like her to be able to do everything - everything a man did, the good and the bad. I don’t think women of this country need to be a victim of patriarchy, everyone can rise above but it cannot be with fake vocal feminist opinions but it needs to be internalised. I fail every day as well in being a good feminist but we can all try to be better.

PS. I realize a counter-argument to this discourse could be that women are sacred and that they only presume what they are doing would help the women around them. I would not legitimize such a stance and would call these women uninformed and ask people who make such argument to educate these women or stray far from them.