O Calcutta!

It seems to me to be disrespectful to live in a place and know little about it. The structured and the organic conjoin in Kolkata. Modernity has wrought changes, but the influences of earlier ages are never eliminated. I decide to explore why it is as it is. 

Epistemologists say the name Kolkata is likely to be a tribute to deity, the warrior goddess Kali, or Mother Nature’s bounty. However, most newcomers to the city, and especially non-resident Indians, don’t see any godly connection, and are appalled by the congestion, the pollution and the noise. It takes time to recognize the indomitable spirit of the people and to experience their selfless giving nature, but few people are that patient. To others, although difficult to stomach initially, Kolkata, nicknamed the city of joy after a French author’s book, tends to grow on you.

Travelogues of merchants and scholars from Persia and China date the region to centuries BCE. It is mentioned in the Mahabharat, one of the country’s ancient mythological epics. It was there during the Maurya and Gupta periods and in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s rent rolls in the sixteenth century. In short, this region had inhabitants for well over two millennia before Europeans appeared on the horizon. There was also an established trading post. Burra Bazar, close to the river, was probably this business hub. The old, old trading houses are still standing, although now in urgent need of repair and restoration.

The British, though, claim to have discovered the area through Job Charnock, a representative of the East India Company that came to these shores towards the end of the seventeenth century. That strikes me as absurd; just as it must have the Native American tribes when Christopher Columbus was credited the discovery of America. Like, hey, we were here first!  

True, not much concrete evidence remains of the ancient Indian architecture. This is most likely because the people of the age didn’t use brick and mortar for their dwellings. Their homes were eco-friendly, made of mud, thatch, tiles, and regularly recycled. Temples and tombs, however, were constructed with more lasting materials and they are testimony to the local talent. 

 

The British captured three villages, Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata, to create their headquarters for trading. They put their cultural stamp on their holdings razing everything else to the ground. The eastern bank of the Hoogly tributary of River Ganges bears impressive British architecture since. The roads built were named for their convenience - Dalhousie Square, Esplanade, Strand Road, Outram Ghat, Princep Ghat, Hastings, Curzon Park and so on. Being unable to pronounce the tongue-twisting Indian names, I suppose, they called the city Calcutta.

In the new millennium, this city has been renamed Kolkata. Street names change more frequently here. Whosoever comes to power in state governance, exercises the right to rename, perhaps following the British. I look up a few on a map of the city and then try to find them on the road. It turns out not such an easy task, because the same place might be referred to with different names! It can become confusing when people forget Chowringhee Road is now Jawahar Lal Nehru Road, or by habit, remember Harrington Street instead of Ho Chi Minh Sarani.

New constructions also appear atop the old, changing the faces of things quite completely. A Bank Street, for instance, is shown on a map to run alongside the waterfront on the Kolkata side for miles. But the location of this road is still a mystery to me. On every try, I am stumped at the Howrah Bridge, because the flow of traffic goes straight onto and over the bridge. I’m missing it somehow, or perhaps the newer flyovers have been built over and across it, to make ‘Bank Street’ just another discarded historical name.

Amongst the first British projects in India was the garrison to station the troops. Fort William, founded in 1702, is still there, as are the various living quarters built within, for humans, horses and armoury. Post-independence it has been taken over to serve as cantonment for the Indian Army. Although there have been later additions of housing and schools, the heritage of older structures, including the cannons, still look in top condition. The military story from inception to today is meticulously recorded in a little museum inside the Fort. 

Fort William was a strategic placement for the British. On the bank of the river, and shaped as a polygon of six or eight sides, and gateways on each side, enabled rapid deployment of their enforcers to one direction or another. The establishment of this regional military headquarters became a bone of contention between the foreign settlers, and the Muslim monarch of Bengal. Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah’s foresight of British expansionist intentions, led him to attack the Fort and succeed in driving the British out.  

But consolidation eluded him. Within a year, his own uncle betrayed him to British cunning. The bloody battle of Plassey was fought in 1757 and the Nawab was vanquished and killed. That put an end, for a while at least, to local aspirations. The Crown established Calcutta as the capital of British India. They wanted it to be known as the City of Palaces, and accordingly, the buildings constructed were massive, ostentatious displays of British architecture, high-ceiled spacious rooms, wide main roads, handsome parkways and boulevards, and deep, concealed drainage. The capital of British India flaunted imperial superiority to this part of the world. 

 

I’ve often wondered why only a part of Calcutta is so beautifully laid out, while much more was steeped in poverty and squalor. I rationalized that the Calcutta of yore must have been a pretty small place. The locations of their architecture probably demarcated the limits of the city built by the British. The population explosion thereafter must be responsible for sections to become dreadfully congested, with narrow streets, and run down structures. Pity, I thought, that the Indians had not learned from them to value space. 

I realize now that my grasp of the history is pretty weak. Calcutta had actually been bigger than what I imagined. The imperialists were not in the region to integrate cultures. They were white supremacists, here as masters.  Calcutta was developed in two distinct parts, and their names are self-explanatory - White Town and Black Town. The land, the funds utilized in the opulent construction projects of the former, as well as the human labour pressed into service were of course, taken from their new subjects in India, probably as reparation costs. 

 

They indulged racial discrimination to the hilt, relegating the natives to Black Town, north and east of the city. Dispossessed of their own lands, the Indian people were pushed further inland. The waterways and access to the river came under the aegis of the British Raj that did not hesitate to collect taxes. Deprived of their traditional livelihoods of cultivation and fishing, they huddled together in shantytowns. Poverty and squalor become their lot, and eventually the characteristic of all Black Towns held in the iron grip of the colonizers, backed by imperial military might.

Meanwhile, education was introduced in accordance with British educational standards. It raised a new class of Bengalis, the anglophiles, the educated, rich, upper caste Hindus. They were inducted into the lower levels of administration and the Baboo culture became the backbone of the bureaucracy. The Baboos profited from British presence. Their large town houses situated just outside the White Town zone probably as a buffer, shielding the masters from the serfs. Manipulated by the colonizers, many Baboos were against their own people.

However, education became a double-edged sword for the colonizers. Many Indians quickly became discerning, politically savvy intellectuals. The seeds of nationalism against British occupancy began to take root. Calcutta became the hub of the freedom movement launched within the first decade of the twentieth century. The sepoy mutiny (the upsurge of Indian soldiers), took place near the capital.  It was said that what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. 

When the partition of Bengal was mooted in 1905, political activism gained momentum with the boycott and public burning of British goods on the streets. It forced the British to shift their capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911. Perhaps in retaliation, they vivisected Bengal and handed the East to Pakistan in 1947. Although the former East Bengal is now a country, Bangladesh, that physical, emotional and economic setback inflicted on the region, it is yet to recover from. 

 

But the Indian psyche is not built to hold onto grudges for too long. Through centuries of being invaded, conquered, annexed and colonized by different culture, we are able to take the worst misfortunes in strides. The sense of nationhood remains through oppression and democracy. We become comfortable with all outside influences. They are assimilated into the culture and Indianized.

The English language is now one of the twenty-two official languages in the country. The colonial architecture has been preserved in all its glory even so many decades after Independence. Buggy rides reminiscent of the British Raj continue around the Victoria Memorial even today. We own it all without prejudice. As part of Kolkata’s historical cultural inheritance, they remain, as they ever were - Black Town, White Town, and what-have-you.

Preservation of culture?

In categorizing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ groups, we refer to culture a lot.  According to our standards of judgement, these others belong to cultures that may be somewhat like us, or more usually, backward to us. Individual behaviours that may differ from our own, we tend to attribute to their cultural origins, their social DNA. Obviously, the term is of great importance to determine status in the civilized world.  

Culture means different things to different people. The spectrum of definitions the ‘Net throws up is wide, including: 

• Human intellectual achievement
•  Language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts
•  Quality of excellence in person or society in manners and scholarly pursuits
•  A form or stage of civilization
•  Development or improvement of the mind by education or training
•  Shared beliefs and behaviours of particular ethnic, social or age group.

However, in India, and elsewhere in the world, the administrative view of culture focuses on one aspect only – a form or stage of civilization. Accordingly, the preservation of culture is a practice. This does not apply to the mainstream, which may socialize in the global community. It is meant instead to protect uncontacted tribes located in the remotest parts of India’s vast diversity. But, does the process work?

 

No doubt the bureaucracy started out with sound rationales behind the practice.  Because they have lived so long in their own microcosms, these tribes have become endangered species. The rest of the world is toxic for them; hence the intention to save their numbers makes sense. Their physical survival is important against germs of modernity becoming life-threatening diseases.  

They are kept away on reservations of land tract, forest or islands. Their way of life of centuries continues, and that, on face value, seems logical. The social organization, their family structure, relationships and laws are to remain the same, same and same, as they ever were in the bygone days. Taxpayer monies are pumped in to maintain the appropriate ambience, and very heavy restrictions imposed on the surrounding environment. The laws strictly prohibit any interactions between mainstream society these isolated threads of humanity. Mainstream society is warned against entering their preserves, meeting the inhabitants or photographing them up close.  

I, however, find the present process discomforting. Fact is process implementation is faulty with inadequate safeguards and lax supervision. Its very purpose defeats with asphalt roads constructed around the reservations for the flow of convoys of tourist vehicles. When modernity invades their backyard, the tribes are hardly uncontacted anymore. The alien presence they are supposedly protected from is emphatically brought home to the people of the land. 

It seems to have become discriminatory, to keep the uncontacted backward, and make them anthropological attractions. Their ‘form or stage of civilization’ feeds the majority self-esteem. Tour operators rely on the greed of lower level administrative personnel to sell their tours. Their tourist convoys are little different from any jungle safari in search of exotic animals. There is folklore of their wild nature, their mistrust of outsiders, and their attacks with bows and poison-tipped arrows. They are taken as creatures of the wild and their habitats human zoos that excited tourists want to visit.  

The natural curiosity of a people is played upon. Inquisitive customers on tour crane their necks in eagerness for glimpses of their appearance with little or no clothing.  Convoy drivers are bribed to stop, and the tribals – especially women and children – to approach, enticed with food and other objects. They must then perform for the entertainments of a voyeuristic ‘superior’ civilization. The fact that they are living, breathing human beings worthy of dignity and respect, escapes attention. 

It carries the flavour of exploitation of groups unused to the culture of deception and guile. Unscrupulous middlemen take advantage of the gray areas. They grab every opportunity presented by loopholes in the system to further vested interests. Wherever there is an obstacle, bribes or favours are freely exchanged. What then is the point of laws when the measures to enforce them are weak or nonexistent?

 

In South America, watchdog organizations are able to expose the racketeering of corporate bodies that flout laws with impunity for their profits – owning land without title, deforesting without environmental licences. Because the people are isolated from modernity, and have neither the knowledge of laws, nor vigilant administrative support, they are easy prey for predatory groups unconcerned by their extinction. The spokespersons for some ancient tribes in Brazil and Peru have even claimed genocide of tribal population. 

One report from Paraguay last year says:

The secret agenda of a huge ranching firm in Paraguay has been exposed by satellite photos showing a newly-constructed reservoir. The reservoir reveals the firm’s intention to clear nearby forest belonging to an uncontacted tribe. In a pattern characteristic of the Chaco region, landowners first build large water containers before clearing tracts of forest for livestock. Carlos Casado SA’s construction of the reservoir puts neighboring Indians, especially uncontacted Ayoreo, in immediate danger.

Another report in March this year points out the growing dangers posed by unbridled industry:

Many Ayoreo have already been contacted and have been claiming title to the land owned by Carlos Casado S.A. for more than twenty years. Their uncontacted relatives who remain in the forest are extremely vulnerable to diseases brought in by outsiders, and unwanted contact could be deadly. The uncontacted Ayoreo are being forced to flee as their forest is being rapidly bulldozed to make way for cattle. … In 2009, Survival International successfully lobbied shareholders such as the Church of England and the Rowntree Trust to disinvest from mining giant Vedanta Resources, because of the company’s intention to mine the sacred mountain of the Dongria Kondh tribe.

 

It may be argued that in the Indian context, the situation is not so dire. I would add ‘yet’ since it is only a matter to time before it might be. The environment and fragile ecosystems are already endangered, as changing weather patterns testify. The lack of ethics in modern society makes illegal mining, deforestation, poaching, and industrial pollutions almost the rule. Corporate bottomlines drive the agenda, backed by powerful resources. Faced with the politico-corporate nexus, the bureaucracy falls silent, while India’s non-governmental social organizations lack bite. 

Superiority in this new age is certainly in terms of corruption. It threatens not only people groups, but also planet survival. The majority should forget their preoccupation with empty status and relearn from people backward to us a bit of forgotten ancient traditions. The uncontacted tribes have preserved a culture for centuries, that the mainstream has lost sight of – adaptability to Nature, and harmonious existence with its creations. They could ensure longevity of the planet, and yes, of our modernity.

Must they be ugly?

I never really considered a social context to art before.  Artists idealize gods or royalty, create something incomprehensible or objectify sexuality. At least, it so seemed in my experience. A friend recently passed on to me Linda Nochlin’s collection of essays that I initially looked at only to be polite. But then some insights caught attention - the social power of gender portrayed in and through art.

Nochlin’s focus is the social status of women - or rather the lack of it - depicted in the structure and theme of the artworks. She investigates images painted by both male and female artists in the West, between 18-20^th centuries. It is interesting to note that in the art world as in any other organization, for female workers, the glass ceiling is imminent, among other things. Their being out of sight, so to speak, makes no difference!

In the essay Women, Art and Power, Nochlin writes:

… representations of women in art are founded upon and serve to reproduce indisputably accepted assumptions held by society in general, artists in particular and some artists more than others about men’s power over, superiority to, difference from, and necessary control of women, assumptions which are manifested in the visual structures as well as the thematic choices of the pictures in question.

Her sentences sometimes feel a sea of words, and I cannot claim to have understood all pronouncements of the book, but some perceptions make absolute sense. She points out how prevailing social contexts have strongly influenced the artists. Their works reflect the thought and guidelines of behaviour in the society of the times. These notions appear as subtext in the pictures about women and by women.

 

 

In the eighteenth century, assumptions about women being the secondary sex were clearly stronger than they are now. Women were conditioned to prefer death to defying conventions. Gender was objectified in art as in all aspects of everyday life, and so was class and race. The hierarchical divisions were rigid, immovable. For instance, a painting of honourable British women in colonial India during the sepoy mutiny, entitled In Memoriam, portrays them heroic in the face of danger. How so? The women do nothing at all to survive, but properly await their fate.

Nochlin explains:

Now there are at least two discourses articulated in this image. One is the overt story of heroic British ladies and their children during the Sepoy mutiny, fortifying themselves with prayer as they are about to be assaulted by savage, and presumably lustful, natives. The other discourse, less obvious, is the patriarchal and class-defined one which stipulates the appropriate behaviour for the lady, and it implies that no lady will ever unsex herself by going so far as to raise a hand in physical violence, even in defense of her children.

She says that the original image, considered too graphic for the delicate sensibilities of the upper crust Victorian society, had to be painted over with the Scottish rescuers appearing at left replacing the “presumably lustful” Indian rebels! 

For eons, respectability for women has meant the confines of home and family. Women are honourable in the community as long as they are weak, passive, nurturing and domesticated, available for the needs of their husbands, and with no real needs of their own except to be of service to preserve the social order. Women artists have been hard-pressed to find acceptability and self-expression outside the entrenched social rules. They have had to be subtle in their approach; else risk caricature. Case in point, Nameless and Friendless by Emily Mary Osborn in the nineteenth century that describes in more than a thousand words the plight of women in the harsh reality of the time.

The young woman artist/model, stepping outside the home, possibly facing hard times yet unwilling to lose her dignity, is nevertheless subject to keen male scrutiny and condescension, both for her person and her work. It is surprising that, despite this painting of 1857 being created by woman herself, it was described in a 1970 art publication as Gentlewoman reduced to dependence upon her brother’s art. Perhaps the standard received wisdom carried forward is that women are incapable of creativity. The female artist too must adhere to that social norm and deny talent to her female model...but does she?

The slightest aggression amongst women or other signs of being unsexed would banish them from the respectable class, and put them beyond the pale of ‘normal’ or ‘human’. Women social activists have thus been portrayed as poor, ugly, demonic rabble-rousers, destroyers of the social fabric. It would seem that these social have-nots strive, in frustration rage, to reverse proper power equations. Apparently, the mere attempt at being a change agent renders a woman certifiably insane! 

Some women artists of earlier times have adhered to the popular myth in their creations. Perhaps, riding the traditional bandwagon has been the only way for them to survive in the man’s world. Sadly in the process, they do themselves and their own representative group no service, because the association renders capable women untouchable - poor, mad and ugly – and open to derision. 

 

Many closet feminists suffer emotional pain in private at their own public obeisance to gender inequality. Unable to cross the invisible social barrier, they confess cloying the deception to the pages of their personal journals. In an essay on the works of Florine Stettheimer, Nochlin quotes a telling poem written by the artist and poet, but published only after her death:

Occasionally

A human being

Saw my light

Rushed in

Got singed

Got scared

Rushed out

Called fire

Or it happened

He tried to extinguish it

Never did a friend

Enjoy it

The way it was

So I learned to

Turn it low

Turn it out

When I meet a stranger---

Out of courtesy

I turn on a soft

Pink light

Which is found modest

Even charming

It is a protection

Against wear

And tears

And when

I am rid of

The-Always-To-Be-Stranger

I turn on my light

And become myself. 

Ah, yes, on the other side of the world in India as well, feminine initiative is traditionally discouraged. This image of assertive women being dark and disorderly has endured through mythological epics created over two and a half millennia ago. Durga, the sylvan deity, is the epitome of beauty and grace as wife and mother. But in her role as the warrior goddess Kali, she is depicted as so frighteningly bloodthirsty and uncontrollable that few women would want to identify with her fearsome (outcast) image or be inspired to action. Of course, only the intervention of husband Shiva, shames her into remembering her place, and brings the Kali fighting evil outside back home to her senses!

The at best patronizing attitudes to women and women’s work have resisted change in many parts of the world. Women must think, feel and act exactly as males at home or in society decide for them, or else. In social fundamentalism even today, women and girls seeking education or employment have been brutalized, defaced by acid, shot, raped and murdered; punished for transgressing some gender role or dress code dreamed up by men to reiterate authoritarianism. 

It is more than time to rectify this demeaning outlook. Many women artists have used deconstruction techniques to make their point, to expose and deny the standard received concepts of beauty. Hannah Hoch’s Pretty Girl is an intriguing photo-collage from, I believe, the 1920s. This woman artist was earlier considered marginal, but it seems to me that her bold perspective and courageous rejection of the pervasive patriarchal order puts her far ahead of her time.

Nochlin writes:

Pretty Girl is in part a savagely funny attack on mass-produced standards of beauty, the narcissism stimulated by the media to keep women unproblematically self-focused. At the same time, the collage allegorizes the arbitrarily constructed quality of all representations of beauty: the “pretty girl” of the title is clearly a product assembled from products …

I must confess that as a very ordinary spectator, my unconscious search has been for aesthetic harmony in art images. I remember once visiting a photo-art exhibition in USA in the late 1990s. I forget both theme and name of artist, but it seemed an ugly, unabashedly cynical display of larger-than-life male genitalia. Possibly I was both naïve and prudish that I found the pictures off-putting, although other viewers appeared unfazed. I thought it a deliberate intent to elicit reaction, which I found repugnant. Was it necessary to assault the senses to draw attention? I took it as narcissism hidden behind the right to freedom of expression, laziness in actually harnessing creativity, and a banking on gender to carry the work.

Nochlin’s essays push me, the reader, to rethink my own premises. Definitely there are thought-provoking aspects to art I overlooked before. I wonder today if I did that phallic photographer a disservice in my negativity. There might have been a social comment in the work that escaped me. Perhaps the artist attempted to shock viewers into a conscious awareness of the effects of overindulgence. The graphic images might actually have highlighted the increasing social preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure in developed society. That technology scales new heights, but the minds of men remain entrenched in overt, self-absorbed and even deviant sexuality… I don’t know, maybe…  


Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. "Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays". ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press USA & UK. 1989.

Blue helmets: come home

In 2007, the United Nations broke new ground. A contingent of 103 peacekeepers reached the capital of Monrovia in Liberia. Immaculate in blue, these 103 peacekeepers were all women. Indian women. Known as the "Blue Helmets", these women guarded the President office by day and patrolled crime-ridden areas by night. Their presence marked significant change. Trained in sophisticated weaponry and combat tactics amongst other skills, the Blue Helmets' foot patrolling by night reduced armed robbery by as much as 65 per cent. Local women felt safer; children felt safer; and men who were not involved in crime, felt safer. 

In India, we tout traditions of respect and equality for all mankind. In fact, that is how we explain namaste or namashkar, the traditional greeting with folded hands, which impresses the world. But it shames us as a people that, to protect our own women and children at home, the collective in this country fail. As a New Year’s wish, ordinary citizens in India would wish for the blue helmets to come home as soon as possible to work their magic on mounting gender-based crimes.  

Respect and equality for all seems to disappear rapidly in the case of females. Gang rape and murder of innocent women and girls is on the rise, not only in regions in conflict. It has naught to do with genetics, rather the social learning of gender inequality.  Assumptions of the old adage boys will be boys simply gloss over their loutish behaviour. Around the world, men club with the perpetrators to apportion blame onto the victims. Some women rape easy says a senate hopeful in US. In India, men in respectable positions wonder why, if they are “respectable”, the females are out at night with male companions not their relatives. 

A local politician declares: There's only one word – Limit. If you cross the limit, you face the same treatment that Sita faced in the Ramayan. If you cross the Laxman-rekha (i.e., boundary), Ravan will kidnap you like Sita. A godman advises women to address the predators as “brothers” and beg for their lives. The son of the highest incumbent of the land rubbishes the spontaneous demonstrations in New Delhi over the gang-rape and murder of a young paramedic trainee with: What's basically happening in Delhi is something like the pink revolution, which has very little connection with ground realities. Women who are beautiful, painted, dented, go to discos, give interviews, are not particularly serious about the protests for which they have come out on the streets.
 

The idea of masculine identity is testosterone fueled. Women’s education, women employment that become an affront to male dominance must be put down, and this aggression is rationalized as right. The continued practice of blaming provocation onto victims is shocking to the freedom loving sections. But shock we feel for all of a few minutes before things return to the way they have always been – to the status quo of powerlessness before learned patriarchal dominance.

An opinion in The Hindu explains the point in India:

It has become commonplace to understand certain spaces and institutions (say, the street and Parliament) as public, and others (say, the home) as private. The terms “public” and “private” have, in turn, become linked to ideas about the “proper” realms for men and women. Women are tolerated in public spaces and within public institutions but are expected to behave “properly.” Otherwise they suffer ridicule and violence. The media quite often provides accounts of public women (say parliamentarians) through describing what they wear, or, how many children they have; women’s primary identity continues to be defined through an implicit understanding that public institutions possess (and should possess) a masculine identity.

Fundamentalists point fingers at “decadent” urban culture brought on by the “depraving” influence of the West, which generally refers to women aspiring to equality. Others blame it on the traditions of male dominance formed with usurpation the position of women in an earlier era. Thus creates the legacy of confusion between progressiveness and orthodoxy that fragments society also on gender issues. But no, nothing and no one else is to blame for the ways things are today. The fault is ours; we who are global citizens of the structure that, on the one hand, unquestioningly carry forward ignorance and animosity of the past that festers gender roles, and on the other, takes freedom to the extreme of demolishing the very concept of family.

An opinion on the Daily Mail says of the West:

  

Our generation, who started to grow up ‘between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP’ got it all so horribly wrong. We ignored the obvious fact that moral conventions develop in human societies for a reason. We may have thought it was ‘hypocritical’ to condemn any form of sexual behaviour, and we may have dismissed the undoubted happiness felt by married people as stuffy, repressed and old hat. But we were wrong, wrong, wrong. Two generations have grown up — comprising children of selfish grown-ups who put their own momentary emotional needs and impulses before family stability and the needs of their children. 

We have been unable yet to find common ground between antagonistic perspectives. In the resulting confusion, perhaps the collective stops thinking, as individuals and as groups. Our evolution then is measured on technological advancements and not the minds of people. India and Pakistan for instance are said to be traditional rivals. Not really, since the two were part and parcel of the same nation for thousands of years before the Partition tore them apart. Vested political interests have kept the animosity alive, and even six decades after their separation as two different national identities in the sub-continent, both countries bleed attitude. When their citizens meet in neutral settings, they relate as mature adults. However, there appears to be something in the sub-continent that keeps the same people sprouting vitriol from opposite sides of the fence, whichever that is. 

And thus follows the stress of paranoia, the fear of being overwhelmed by others. These make for self-centredness, pushing the conservation of resources, and protection of identity. The creativity in problem solving is lost, because the intent is to control by any means, rather than adapt to new realities.  It is time to change stagnative structures. Patriarchal hierarchy needs to give way to democratic spheres of influence. It is perhaps more than time for the women peacekeepers to make their presence felt back home.

 

In a blogpost about these warrior women, Kohli says of their effectiveness: 

Far from being "soft" which is what many expected an all women's contingent to be, the Blue Helmets endeared themselves to the local community. Their message was simple - you can trust us. They were perceived as polite and forthcoming in help, and did what they were meant to do - keep the peace.

In India, this we need today: the return of traditions of respect and equality in this new avatar – women in the role of protectors of the sisterhood of mothers, wives and daughters.

Heard of Dark Continent?

The little girl looked carefully at me. Had I ever heard of Dark Continent, she asked softly. I was surprised that she knew enough to quiz about it, considering her background. She was a child of the slums, and hardly ten years old, her clothes worn, frayed at the edges. Perhaps this is the habitual mistake the “educated” make. We look upon the poor as an undifferentiated mass of entrenched illiteracy, impediments to the nation’s economic progress. 

This country does its best to eradicate poverty, but with the population burgeoning, it is difficult to make much headway. I believe a Japan adds on in people numbers each year or so! Illiteracy is the other face of poverty; hence education for all is a part of social development in the socialist, democratic republic of India of the present.  Education is heavily subsidized to make it within the reach of the economically disadvantaged. 

In a bygone era of numerous monarchies, organized community living in the Indian sub-continent had strict social segregations based on birth. These divisions of society were hierarchical. The Brahmins were the academicians, teachers, custodians of the scriptures; the Kshatriyas were the royalty, the warriors; the Vaishyas were the business group; the Shudras were the menial labour, the untouchables. Social discrimination was rife. Males born into a particular family were forced to follow the trade of their fathers. There was no escape; caste was hereditary.  The “upper” castes hoarded wealth and privileges, and imposed upon those “lower”. 

The right to education was restricted to the top of the social ladder, and those born to families low on the totem pole were barred from it. The epic Mahabharata recounts the story of Ekalavya, the talented son of an untouchable. Unable to attend the martial arts academy run by the renowned Dronacharya, guru to the princes, Ekalavya practiced archery on his own before a statue of the teacher he revered. He caused consternation when he dared compete against Prince Arjuna, the guru’s favourite student. Teachers, during that period, were not paid salary, but received guru dakshina (returns in cash or kind) from the students or their families. Although not directly responsible for Ekalavya’s prowess, Dronacharya nevertheless claimed dakshina from him, and demanded his archer’s thumb in reward! 

Women of course, were entitled to a caste only after marriage. Thus the point of their education really did not arise outside of chores learned at home from childhood - cooking, cleaning and rearing children. Although social reformers fought long and hard through the colonization of India to remove the social discriminations, the perception of women being secondary to men continued far into the twentieth century. All that the marriage market required was the minimal ability to read and write; girls hardly needed to become pundits! In fact, the elders feared that prospective grooms would turn away from over-qualified brides, who would never get married and thus dishonour the family name. Even today many believe that investment in the education of boys bring returns in future, but girls are paraya (outsiders), soon to belong to another family. 

In the ‘sixties, my father broke family tradition, as it were, by sending daughters to English-medium schools to get what was then the best education. I remember that during university days, a classmate and I were in heated discussion of a certain project on the tram ride back home. While we argued our points, other passengers were listening in. After I got off the tram, the man that took my seat turned to my companion and inquired where I came from. His eyes popped when he heard that I was a local. Huh, he exclaimed in astonishment, Speaking English! Educated!

At the time, the tuition fees everybody paid were about two hundred rupees a year, that is, less than five dollars annually, even in the science subjects. This was because the political intent post-Partition was to rebuild the dismembered nation. They assumed that the intellectual crop so nurtured would take the country forward. But that idea backfired in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Unlike many other nations, India did not have a compulsory service scheme for its citizens. Thousands of top graduates and post-graduates winged their way to the West, lured into serving in the more lucrative workplaces overseas. The expendable patriotism of the already privileged sunk the nation deeper into debt, because there were no legal bonds to hold them back. With the actual cost of the university education for each a few hundred thousand rupees at least, the eventual loss to the national exchequer with the brain drain must have been in the billions. Without the IT boom and the outsourcing industry, the Indian economy might have still wallowed in the doledrums. 

Although scores of private autonomous universities have since mushroomed charging exorbitant amounts for better teaching facilities, the educational subsidy continues in governmental institutions, the university fees being raised minimally over decades.  Furthermore, in and around Kolkata, primary and secondary governmental schools waive tuition fees for the economically disadvantaged sections. After generations of illiteracy on the backs of social segregation and poverty, their offspring are exposed to the R’s, and graduate degrees. One parent told me that they would have been satisfied with their children being allowed to touch the benches of high school; to have a graduate in the family was beyond imagination. 

I visited the students of a governmental primary school recently to get a sense of their ability in the English language. Both boys and girls present were the first school-goers in their family. I looked at one young boy’s exercise book. He had made many mistakes in an earlier spelling test, and in one word, written “dee” instead of “deer”. Just carelessness, I presumed. I pointed to the word, and asked him what it was meant to be. He blinked at it a moment and then whispered to me that it was a very hard word. What is it, I insisted. Elephant, he replied glibly. Clearly the wiggles on the page made no sense to him at all! 

It seems to me that, with the decision to eliminate examinations in the school system, the point of education is being lost. The light of knowledge being spread is dim because the children are not pushed to rehearse, remember, think complex and compete intellectually. They are being uniformly promoted with no quality control of capability, simply pushed up to a new level of incompetence each year. Education to them thus becomes a meaningless trudging back and forth each day, uncomprehending. 

An interesting TV reality show is titled Are you smarter than a fifth-grader? Questions from science, math, history, geography, grammar, etc., are asked of adults locking horns with the academic level of the average American ten-year-old. It proves that the children really do have to study a lot, because most adults trip up in the programme. But sadly, amongst the economically disadvantaged groups in this state today, many children of the same age are stumped by anything to do with academics. 

Education for all is a commendable idea in democracy, but is the process in use the best for the country? The educators might boast of rising literacy numbers, but the quality of education differs widely between the social sections. Eliminating competition in schools for the disadvantaged encourages their students to avoid critical thinking, to seek the easy ways out. Where ability counts most, in the work world, they fail to impress employers.  The degrees they possess may not be worth the paper they are printed on. The joke is, toss a pebble on the street and you might hit such an “educated” unemployed. 

The little girl clued into the Dark Continent is one bright spot of intelligence amongst the general clueless. Surely, there are many more talents like her touched with the light of knowledge, passionate about learning, and waiting for the opportunity to excel.  Education is meant to enlighten minds, to create awareness of the environment for adaptability, and to dispel the darkness of ignorance, superstition and discrimination. The socially disadvantaged groups need out of dole dependency to develop as people. Else, lamp-lighting ceremonies in the educational institutions become mere rituals, while the dark continent of mindsets are preserved across society.

 

Women on guard

The research institute I visit on occasion is a massive structure. Its wings stretch out in long corridors to accommodate the rooms after rooms required for research, replete with state-of-the-art machinery each priced at lakhs, if not crores of rupees. At the entrance to the premises a bunch of uniformed sentinels are constantly present. They are the undifferentiated security buffer to the outside world, and few know them as individuals.

The institution was born decades ago, when a small group of doctors mooted the idea of ongoing research and development. The founders had to fund the projects themselves, initially. Today it has grown prestigious, and money is no longer an object. The institution is showered with scholarships, fellowships and grants. New sections are added or renovated at will. But rather like within a beehive, roles are preordained. The building buzzes with activity with hundreds of personnel. Scientists and research scholars scurry about in their lab coats and latex gloves, focused unwaveringly on making new discoveries. Each such member hardly has the time to look around at their surroundings, much less to interact with people unrelated to their technical universe.

The security staff is meant to facilitate the institutional preoccupations, to ensure the safety of the institutional members and their magic machines. A small security complex is built right beside the gates. It has a tiny office for the security supervisor, a chair or two to rest on by turns and little else in terms of facilities. The security cell is not air-conditioned, and one large standing fan is in operation at the height of summer. Ineffectual at keeping out the heat beating down on the low roof of the structure, it serves to merely move the hot air around.

I notice a woman there on guard duty. She is tall, of athletic build, attractive and still young. She looks smart in her uniform of shirt with epaulets and security insignia and starched white sari. Her employment is probably a result of the increasing percentage of women being employed. Yes, she nods; her duty is to interact with the women, so that they do not face handling by men. Since she is the only female in the cell, her services are invaluable. During conventions and other important meets she must be in attendance for all the lady visitors. That means, rain, hail, shine or personal illness, she cannot be absent.

We spend a few moments in girly conversation, about fashion accessories that I might wear but she is not allowed to by the regulations. There does not seem to be any separate facility either for her as a woman although she has been at work for a couple of years. I ask why she took this job. She has a ready smile and pleasant manner. Surely there are other avenues of front-office employment open? She gets many offers, pips up one of her colleagues, but she does not take them up. Everybody wants her and nobody here will let her go. I smile at the extravagant words. The woman blushes pink and shushes him.

She tells me she comes from a police family. Father, brother and sister, are all in the force. That was the life she had wanted too. Her application was being processed, but then marriage happened, and the regulations immediately rendered her ineligible. The touch of vermillion in her hair signals her marital status. I ask how she balances between her work and her home. She looks away momentarily, and shakes her head. Her child is being raised by the extended family, and she barely gets to see them. The job demands her time and all she can do for family is pay the costs. The emotional conflict is tangible.

Walking out from the institution, I spot a policewoman at work on the street. She is on traffic duty dressed in the khaki service shirt of the police force and sari, though, as she tells me later, they must wear trousers too. I stop by the side of the road. She motions me to stand near her as she waves her arms to regulate pedestrian crossings. I shake my head and say I stopped to see her. She looks a little perplexed. I suppose she too is used to being seen as a role rather than a person. She is middle-aged, looks drawn and seems to favour a limp. She is unsmiling, her tone strident as if used to encountering intransigence. And, true to “regulations”, she has never married. She tells me she has been ill for some days, but her leave application was not sanctioned.

It is her duty to serve. I watch her tackle jaywalkers. See, she says, as she points to offenders that can see the lights are green for traffic, yet run across dodging the oncoming vehicles. She stops several and gives them a stern talking to, but the habit is ingrained. It seems a thankless job to speak about public safety because the people she stops argue in return. Unfortunately, she is powerless to issue deterrents like spot fines. She threatens that should an accident occur, she will not book the driver, because it would be the victim’s own fault for getting in the way. 

I wonder how long she has been a traffic cop. She says she is not. She has thirty-one years of police service but the assignment here is only for the day because of shortage of women personnel.  Their job is to follow the orders that come and she was told to report here only two hours before. Earlier, she was engaged in crowd control at the sports stadium. I ask her why she chose the force. What jobs are there for us, she counters, thousands are trying to get this one now. She looks around her, comments that the streetlights are inadequate for such a busy intersection and then limps away to stop a few more defaulters.

I am surprised that to this day and age in India, the archaic service conditions for women carry forward unquestioned. It seems the men in any organization may have family but women in uniform must sacrifice for service. Not all women though - I remember a high-profile female police commissioner portrayed in the media as the ideal, efficiently managing both work and family, so there must be regulations and regulations. Equality, it seems, is for men or else, for those at the top of the heap. Why so? The obvious issue is biological – the bearing and rearing of children. Those remain the woman’s personal works in this region, while elsewhere in the world, campaigns run for paternity benefits!

Under these regulations, the discrimination of gender and class in bureaucratic employment continue, leaving many of these women vulnerable, open to exploitation. It is hard for those ensconced in ivory towers to think beyond themselves. Their tunneled vision of the world makes social conversations with others difficult, or even to relate to them as people. I called on the institutional director some years ago, to suggest people development programmes with personnel across levels. In my perception, many could do with some training of social skills, understanding the reality of others through feedback, especially of those below them in the hierarchy. The man sitting in the plush chair, dwarfed by the massive desk and protective detail, was incensed by the implication. We are an HRD institution, he shouted, it is our job to teach! 

Women are comparatively new to employment and work conditions. Guard duty, for instance, is not a common choice of work for women brought up with marriage as their goal. They seek employment for economic needs. But when required to sacrifice home-life for work-life, they are being force to pay a price for being women. Social activism attacks poverty or corruption, but there seems none to fight for the rights of women putting life and limb on the line to keep others safe. Their work conditions are pathetic, and urgently require revision. It is more than time to address the pervading standard received wisdom of keeping them disadvantaged. The powers-that-be of institutions need to learn a little empathy, a little humility before they teach.