PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2012 ID-29145
.
collective masculine honour of the family/community) by exercising her autonomous choice of husband, or marrying outside prescribed caste/community norms, he is socially sanctioned, even expected, to forcibly prevent or avenge this loss of honour. The bond between brothers and sisters, or the filial duties of daughters towards fathers, are not always experienced as coercive. The raksha bandhan ceremony is one in which many women take great pride. The brother needs a sister to protect, as much as the sister as much as she needs his protection. This bond of benign patriarchy is strained only when the sister exercises sexual and/or economic autonomy: making self-choice marriages or marrying outside prescribed norms, or demanding her legal share in land and ancestral property. In most Indian cultures, across castes and communities, the young adult woman is viewed as a ward, an asset (paraya dhan wealth that belongs to another) kept in trust for a future owner, that must be handed over sexually un-violated and innocent to her husband. Therefore the daughter/sister is loved, adored, in her natal family, but hedged about by anxiety about her chastity, innocence, and sexual purity. Why does this anxiety about control of the daughters sexuality prevail to a large degree even in the labouring classes and castes, even where transfer of property around a legitimate line may not be a big factor? One answer is that marriage strictures (laying down the prescriptions and prohibitions for who you can and cannot marry) are also crucial to maintaining caste purity, and for maintaining control over the smooth transfer of community assets and caste identity. Rape and violation of women of the oppressed castes by the upper castes is one of the many forms of caste domination and privilege. When these communities resist oppression and assert their identity, fighting feudal sexual exploitation is central to such struggles. But this sense of identity can also bring with it an assertion of a sense of patriarchal honour, and a need to control women when they seek to forge sexual relationships outside these oppressed castes. For the womens movements against sexual violence, consciously rejecting and challenging this ideology of patriarchal protection is not just a discursive gesture, or a nod to political correctness. It reflects the very necessary understanding of the fact that the same ideological framework and sexual politics underwrites sexual violence as well as everyday social subjugation of and violence against women. If we continue to raise the slogan of suraksha, we have to take pains to inscribe, and popularize, radical interpretations of this term, rather than fall back on its common sense connotations. One way to do so might be to assert womens demand for suraksha (security economic and social) in her own right, rather than as a female dependant on a masculine provider/protector. We could demand steps to ensure that womans security is not contingent on marriage (i.e the exchange of womens sexual and reproductive labour for survival). The State, therefore has an obligation to ensure that women have access to remunerative work, equality and rights at the workplace, crèche facilities, as well as rights over land, and other resources, in order to create a material environment that promotes and nurtures womens autonomy and assertion. If this were done, women would also be better placed to resist the multi-faceted coercion and violence they face in daily lives. It is important to distinguish such measures from what passes for empowerment in the neoliberal framework. Avenues of employment and survival promoted by the State exploit, rather than challenge, the existing social subordination of women. For instance, women employed in the ASHA/anganwadi rural health schemes run by the Government and World Bank, are paid a mere honorarium; womens unpaid labour in the household is being extended to the workplace, similarly masked by the patriarchal ideology of womens selfless service to family/society. Microfinance schemes, too, exploit the notion that women make more reliable candidates for loans, because they are less mobile and therefore less likely to abscond, and are more vulnerable to peer pressure and shaming tactics in case of failure to repay loans. The States job cannot begin and end with policing, either. It must be obligated to provide truly effective shelters that provide support for the survivor of violence. At present, there is a great paucity for any shelters, and existing shelters at best treat the survivor like a jail inmate, and at worst, are themselves places where women are vulnerable to systematic abuse (as the Arya Orphanage case and the case of baby Falak and her teenage companion tragically indicate). A sojourn in such shelters would only reinforce a survivors sense of helplessness and lack of options, rather than providing any effective possibility of autonomy from the household which in many cases has been one of the sites of abuse and violence. .
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2012 ID-29145
.
collective masculine honour of the family/community) by exercising her autonomous choice of husband, or marrying outside prescribed caste/community norms, he is socially sanctioned, even expected, to forcibly prevent or avenge this loss of honour. The bond between brothers and sisters, or the filial duties of daughters towards fathers, are not always experienced as coercive. The raksha bandhan ceremony is one in which many women take great pride. The brother needs a sister to protect, as much as the sister as much as she needs his protection. This bond of benign patriarchy is strained only when the sister exercises sexual and/or economic autonomy: making self-choice marriages or marrying outside prescribed norms, or demanding her legal share in land and ancestral property. In most Indian cultures, across castes and communities, the young adult woman is viewed as a ward, an asset (paraya dhan wealth that belongs to another) kept in trust for a future owner, that must be handed over sexually un-violated and innocent to her husband. Therefore the daughter/sister is loved, adored, in her natal family, but hedged about by anxiety about her chastity, innocence, and sexual purity. Why does this anxiety about control of the daughters sexuality prevail to a large degree even in the labouring classes and castes, even where transfer of property around a legitimate line may not be a big factor? One answer is that marriage strictures (laying down the prescriptions and prohibitions for who you can and cannot marry) are also crucial to maintaining caste purity, and for maintaining control over the smooth transfer of community assets and caste identity. Rape and violation of women of the oppressed castes by the upper castes is one of the many forms of caste domination and privilege. When these communities resist oppression and assert their identity, fighting feudal sexual exploitation is central to such struggles. But this sense of identity can also bring with it an assertion of a sense of patriarchal honour, and a need to control women when they seek to forge sexual relationships outside these oppressed castes. For the womens movements against sexual violence, consciously rejecting and challenging this ideology of patriarchal protection is not just a discursive gesture, or a nod to political correctness. It reflects the very necessary understanding of the fact that the same ideological framework and sexual politics underwrites sexual violence as well as everyday social subjugation of and violence against women. If we continue to raise the slogan of suraksha, we have to take pains to inscribe, and popularize, radical interpretations of this term, rather than fall back on its common sense connotations. One way to do so might be to assert womens demand for suraksha (security economic and social) in her own right, rather than as a female dependant on a masculine provider/protector. We could demand steps to ensure that womans security is not contingent on marriage (i.e the exchange of womens sexual and reproductive labour for survival). The State, therefore has an obligation to ensure that women have access to remunerative work, equality and rights at the workplace, crèche facilities, as well as rights over land, and other resources, in order to create a material environment that promotes and nurtures womens autonomy and assertion. If this were done, women would also be better placed to resist the multi-faceted coercion and violence they face in daily lives. It is important to distinguish such measures from what passes for empowerment in the neoliberal framework. Avenues of employment and survival promoted by the State exploit, rather than challenge, the existing social subordination of women. For instance, women employed in the ASHA/anganwadi rural health schemes run by the Government and World Bank, are paid a mere honorarium; womens unpaid labour in the household is being extended to the workplace, similarly masked by the patriarchal ideology of womens selfless service to family/society. Microfinance schemes, too, exploit the notion that women make more reliable candidates for loans, because they are less mobile and therefore less likely to abscond, and are more vulnerable to peer pressure and shaming tactics in case of failure to repay loans. The States job cannot begin and end with policing, either. It must be obligated to provide truly effective shelters that provide support for the survivor of violence. At present, there is a great paucity for any shelters, and existing shelters at best treat the survivor like a jail inmate, and at worst, are themselves places where women are vulnerable to systematic abuse (as the Arya Orphanage case and the case of baby Falak and her teenage companion tragically indicate). A sojourn in such shelters would only reinforce a survivors sense of helplessness and lack of options, rather than providing any effective possibility of autonomy from the household which in many cases has been one of the sites of abuse and violence. .
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