In the present day, the feminist crusade has developed into a highly endorsed and celebrated movement and the young are its most enthusiastic champions. The movement's popularity and influence has caused an influx of feminist theories into young people's consciousness and outlook which are propagated so widely that they have permeated every fibre of their being. Social media platforms and college campuses have become breeding grounds of a relentless campaign against patriarchy by the 'woke' generation- supposedly evolved, enlightened and free! Whether it be revealed through their online presence or in their social circles, we find that they lose no opportunity to unearth 'inconspicuous' expressions of patriarchy, condemn 'offensive' speech or actions and to call out those who exhibit sexist behaviour. But are these popular manifestations of feminism addressing crucial, burning issues of women's equality in our society? It is obvious that the perceptions and concerns of many radical torchbearers of women's equality are not always oriented towards the many dire realities of Indian society. While millions of women in India still live in the Dark Ages of patriarchal tyranny, shackled by powerful mechanisms of oppression, popular feminst theory and discourse exhibits in practice a stark antithesis that overlooks these monumental expressions of gender inequality.
The inclination to usher in the most irrelevant and meaningless of injustices and unfairness (if they can even be called so) to the spotlight and weaving or constructing around them the approaches and concerns of feminism is a flourishing trend today. We sigh over the ‘terribly prejudiced’ assumptions that people make in determining that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, debate upon the ‘horribly bigoted’ ways in which females were portrayed in ancient fairy tales, pore on the ‘unforgivable crime’ of attributing the qualities of sweetness, virtue, gentleness and meekness to womankind, rage over ‘impractical and outdated’ societal expectations toward women to honour the sanctity of their marriage and engage in carefully scrutinising and criticising the chauvinistic ideals and ways of a patriarchal society which was but a victim of its own established institutions and a primitive ignorance that was inherited from its predecessors.
It is in fact, in the very same way that the institution of patriarchy controlled and indoctrinated the minds and lives of its ascenders, that the thriving ideology of feminism holds an astute command and mastery over its adherents that they are sadly wholly unaware of. Any ideology, idea or doctrine is purposed to be wielded and employed by its enthusiasts and not the other way around! But in reality, a complete reversal of conventions is what transpired as the theory of Feminism evolved into a popular, manic current that compellingly carries people along its powerful tide.
What is distressing is that it is not our perceptions or awareness of the rampant injustices and atrocities against women that has led us to adopt feminism and adapt its relevant theories to our existing social condition, but rather the movement's rising popularity and spreading propaganda that has instructed and brainwashed us in teachings and ways that are wholly irreconcilable to Indian maladies. And this paradox has finally resulted in the completely absurd and insignificant surmises and approaches that feminist theory seems to be saturated with. The most unfortunate consequence of such a phenomenon is that the depraved and wretched realities of much of Indian society is thus neglected in the face of such overwhelming concern and preoccupation with other trifling concerns. Such an outcome is neither lamented nor unforeseen since the intention was never to redeem and obliterate those grievous abuses of freedom and inequality in the first place but an inauthentic obsession with societal conformity and acclaim.
It is the sensible and reasoned evaluation of unequal social conditions that should conduct and guide one's belief and exercise of a theory. It should not alternatively be the contrasting delusional preoccupation with an applauded and excessively lionised theory. Otherwise, after being willingly instructed in such a doctrine, it will commence to dictate and condition not only one's impression and understanding of gender equality but also the methods of proper resistance that successfully overthrowing inequality necessitates.
Anyone who questions and disagrees with this must sincerely ask yourself if you believe in and fight for the ideal of gender equality, seeing the depraved and unjust realities of your society, using your faculties of reason to assess them fairly and sensibly with honest perturbation and concern for its evil injustices. Or if rather, in a spirit of apathetic conformity to an influential movement, you follow and yield to the precepts and practices of feminism blindly as in following a general trend that is perceivably popular and fashionable. Thus, calling out its teachings and utilising the tiniest of opportunities to attribute to the evils of the patriarchal programming and judging and perceiving all things under the lens of feminist precepts that often clouds judgement and blinds one to authentic realities while propagandising the mind with false presumptions.
For example, one might see a little boy dressed in blue and a little girl dressed in pink, and immediately conclude that their parents are subjecting them to this particular patriarchal programming, while in reality both the children might be dressed in those colours simply because they have a natural, untaught preference for them. This of course, is an example of little significance and it was only cited to exhibit the fallacies of feminist assumptions, although the severity of their effects and conclusions may greatly vary.
What the ideology of indoctrination teaches is that men and women are continuously being programmed from birth to fulfil their gender roles which are often supposedly suffocating, curbing natural traits and impulses and pressurising the individual to conform to the expectations and demands attached with it. Feminists often engage in a critical examination and uncovering of such patriarchal programming in order to reject and overthrow it. It seems to me however, that even if patriarchal indoctrination is annihilated, some other influence or dogma will take its place and the natural, free self as envisioned by the feminist is a downright impossibility. For as exposited by sociology, any member of society must necessarily have his natural self modified and transformed by societal influences and some sort of indoctrination is an inevitability for him/her to be accepted by it. For even a social programming of equality might put coercion and force upon the individual to comply with incompatible insistences and violate personal beliefs. It is perhaps feminism itself then, that is now taking over the responsibility of indoctrination! Feminist theories are thus distorting reality and imputing untrue intentions to benign and harmless activities using the guise or facade of a counterfeit belief in gender equality that is a result of blind social programming rather than any genuine concern or zeal for the emancipation of womanhood.
Am I saying that the whole of feminism is a farce and that I do not believe in the equality of the genders? Certainly not! Womanhood should be cherished and valued for the distinctive, rich gifts that they bring to humanity, in the form of deep feeling and emotion that complements and enhances the justice of in-born reason, for the love, compassion and gentleness that softens and sustains humankind and for the loyalty and sacrifice that that they add to their love, in addition to many qualities of manhood that they share, excepting their biological differences.
Where feminism fails in India is in the way it becomes utterly ridiculous and extraneous when confronted with the social realities of most of India’s population, its middle class, its poor, its rural inhabitants who constitute more than 65% of its population, the dark and inhumane practices that still dominate its landscape and the repulsive crimes that yet permeate every strata of its society. While the privileged few or the elite feminists of the nation preoccupy themselves with debates upon pink and blue, the unjust use of pronouns and of course the rereading of fairy tales, the actuality faced by millions of Indian women are starkly contradictory and unfamiliar. I feel it unnecessary to contrast these blunt differences in detail since they are so well known. But I must say this, in a country where girl babies are still cruelly killed before they have a chance to live, where girl students are forced to eventually drop out of school, where little girls are married off to grown men with full social consent, where young women are still banished to dirty huts when they menstruate, where husbands disrespect and mistreat their wives with societal approval, where the unjust practice of dowry and of inheritances left to male children are widely endorsed, where girls and women are morning and night in a continual terror of being violated or abused in some way, why do we dwell upon matters that our society has not yet advanced far enough to examine and address? In doing so, our attitudes become hypocritical, our arguments become irrelevant, our thoughts become futile and they end in an insensitive betrayal of true reality and the people who suffer its cost.
Progress must be linear and straightforward. It would be against the laws of reason to presume that it can break off at one, particular point and continue its journey from a farther one. This would only logically result in a wide gap that will be left unfilled. Yet, this indeed is the present state of feminism in Indian society and an extensive chasm between our theories and our observed realities is clearly discernible.
I thus maintain that there is an urgent need for Indian feminism to start attending to social realities and ensure that they catch up with our ‘highly advanced and progressive’ theories.
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