This one month has been bizarre for me. Here is a government trying to hit hard on the structures that perpetuate violence and here we have women’s rights activists-feminists protesting it.
The discourse on empowerment within the single women’s movement is so superficial limiting it to affirmative action. I recognize that affirmative action for single women is needed but it is only a stepping stone towards addressing rampant discrimination against single women pervasive in our society. It is only a step towards challenging and changing the patriarchal status quo. Unless the socio-cultural structures that perpetuate domination are eradicated, only affirmative action will be futile. Affirmative action must be complimented by announcements and policies such as the current one if we are to truly liberate ourselves from subordination.
In this context, the budget announcement has attempted to go beyond the quick-fix measures of quota and “space” for women, for it has challenged the traditional boundaries of a woman’s existence that our Hindu de facto-de jure value system reinforces. However, this same act of challenging the Hindu-ness has clearly revealed the Hindu biases of our state and decision makers. The announcement clearly is redolent with Hindu assumptions rendering it exclusionary. It fails to encompass different intersections of a social identity – class, caste, religion and ethnicity that constitute a Nepali woman. It is as if the prerequisite of a widow is Hindu and upper caste. This is what our single women activists should be protesting about, not the totality of the announcement on the account of it being demeaning that has put dignity of single women at risk.
Disagreeing with the allegation that the announcement has commodified women, I believe it has in fact done the contrary. Recognizing and challenging the socio-religious (Hindu) intersection that has treated a significant number of single women as commodities till now, it has tried to de-commodify them. It has attempted to challenge the system/mindset that sustains male dominance. This one month has been bizarre for me. Here is a government trying to hit hard on the structures that perpetuate violence and here we have women’s rights activists-feminists protesting it. At this juncture, I am having difficulties to gauge who is more anti-women!
I was shocked to see the reaction and responses of many activists. The very anti-attitude to this announcement was a bit suspicious. Many single women activists hailing from Hindu backgrounds made me question this even further. A blow to the traditional practice, that too by such a patriarchal state, despite its weaknesses and blanket approach, I thought was quite remarkable. The state is showing a little interest in women, I thought. After a month-long discussion and protests that we’ve witnessed, I wonder if the value-laden Hindu single women have become aggressive about the announcement because it has shook their own Hindu value base? I am hesitant but are our single women activists resistant to change? Why are they immensely attracted to maintaining the status quo? This then raises another question in my mind. Is it the legally-binding act of monetary affiliation with remarriage undignified or is it really the notion of remarriage itself? It’s a question that needs true introspection.
This is also an opportune moment for serious debates on how the policy is applicable to women from different ethnic groups where remarriage is not an issue. And why have the single women activists not raised it? Perhaps, remarriage is not even a marker of women’s empowerment for these communities; it could merely be a convenient pragmatic action so the ancestral property does not leave their clan and get divided into tiny insignificant pieces such as among the Tharus. Or perhaps, it is an adaptation strategy for many Himal communities where the community is just too small and remarriage is the only way out for producing offspring to continue the lineage. I believe that tangible cash associated with the announcement will be irrelevant for many communities. What will now be the implications of this announcement within these communities where remarriage does not have a negative connotation and was never associated with monetary compensation?
The single women activists should have put more energy in bringing out the voices of widows from various ethnic communities, even in order to compensate for the lack of inclusive vision and frame of mind that the government has shown. What do they think of it? Maybe women from different ethnic groups do not find this announcement undignified; maybe they are indifferent to it, or maybe they have embraced the announcement. Will we ever know? We don’t know! The single women’s movement has claimed to be representative of all single women but have failed to see the intersections that constitute them. The protest campaign would be legitimate if it is able to bring in the voices of single women of different ethnicities for whom Hinduism, to an extent, is merely an imposed reality.
The current status and nature of the protest will only be a snare for the women’s movement if it continues to define dignity and “dignified living” for all women without understanding what it means for the majority. It will be recoiling of the movement, once again. We are again limiting ourselves to the liberal feminist agenda which seeks to include women in social and political structures but does not challenge how these structures sustain through women’s subordination. The socio-structural change the budget announcement hopes to start is worth praising. Till when do we want to be stuck with the idea of empowerment limiting it to quotas and reservations? The government seems to have tried to take a great leap forward, however, without addressing the catalyst-affirmative action. But time has given us a brilliant opportunity to take forward simultaneously the agendas of affirmative action for single women and a religio-social transformation.
retika.raj@gmail.com
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