Misogyny, women empowerment and the hypocrisy

M.R.Lalu

As the octogenarian President of the US bows out of the race, Kamala Harris has stepped up her stake. Being a woman, her candidature began to matter. The oldest democracy so far failed to elect a female President. Hillary Clinton puts it amply clear in the New York Times that Kamala’s race is not going to be that easy, especially her fight through the intense sexism and double standard in American politics. Hillary recalls her candidature. She was, by the misogynists, being termed as witch and nasty, which she says was an insult that had gone deeper into her senses though she strongly ensured her presence in the race divulging her essence and power of being a woman. She says it was a self revealing fight of her essential instinct of being a woman even though she was abused and frequently burned in effigies. Your identity of being a woman becomes so hard to establish in a country that drumbeats its gender equality while hypocritically sensitizing its impact of being a free society. Additionally, the race is more compact and challenging for Kamala as she is the first black woman and also a South Asian and misogyny is the most dangerous weapon that she has to fight against. This indeed has become the pressing threat and demands our attention.

America’s long journey as democracy failed to award its female population the right to vote until 1920. It remained a male dominated democracy for centuries and even today when Kamala Harris ramps up the show, the concern that disturbingly echoes across the echelon of the polity is her gender, color and ethnicity. And this time, for her, it is intense misogyny with racism. This has been the reality of the western world. Women for centuries were pressed hard to suffer the ignominious authority of male dominance and endure society’s resentful hypocrisy. Male -driven societies had vehemently justified their indifference to the feminine gender mostly refusing to treat it with respect. With religious doctrines sanctifying masculinity as the power and authority to capture the prospects of societies fully, women in most of the western world had to quell their desire to break the misogyny.

Undoubtedly, fables of a God who created a woman to breathe from the rib of a man, whom he created in his own image, do not, in the first glance, appear to be misogynistic. This, in a later period, was canonized as a divinely ordained enterprise of the almighty. The differences and their ramifications and the disorder began there. Accentuating the sanctity of misogyny further, the New Testament of the Bible, on behalf of St Paul declares that women could not teach at the pulpit because of their inherent sinfulness and moral corruption. Your journey through the philosophical gardens of monotheistic religions would not bless you with the breeze of equality and amiability between the two prominent genders. In fact, they would crush your confidence and pull you hard from the meadows of spiritual insights that you have consistently gained by flipping their pages. The alarming reality overturns your conviction and a new dawn of understanding gets its imprints deeply engraved.

India’s case was entirely different. We, from the beginning of our civilizational journey were aware of the feminine energy, its power and impact on society. The godhood that we adhered for centuries was a fine combination of the masculine and the feminine. We worshipped the feminine power in the form of Durga, Saraswati, Lakshmi and Kali. We adorned its power and made its various representations part of our daily spiritual activity. Celebrations in the name of the divine in the feminine bring millions together even today and the festivities run for days. A complete assimilation of womanhood in the lives of Indians has given it a deeper meaning. We began it from the smallest social units called families, where the women received the highest recognition. Families nourished the feminine aspects of gentleness and empathy with respect, acceptance and inclusion. No religious authorization could throw her away from the institution called family. Though that was not the case with monotheistic faiths across the world, India, especially the Hindu view of life, preserved its womanhood.

Our spiritual understanding had never discriminated between man and woman. Both enjoyed equal space and valid representation in the society. Creation, according to the Indic traditions, was supreme, which they professed, was divine. God, in Hinduism, is a divine representation of half man and half woman. Epics were written to establish womanhood, its purity, sanctity and power. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have comprehensive descriptions of respect enjoyed by women such as Sita and Draupadi and they also depict the sacrifices these women had to undergo while remaining virtuous. The wars that the epics have resoundingly narrated were for the protection of womanhood and its dignity.  Lord Rama had a long and tedious journey on foot devotedly taken across the gigantic landscape covering the whole of India for his divine consort Sita. And his ultimate challenge, the sea, was also overcome with admirable focus.  The Vedic period was probably the golden period for women. From among the Vedic women emerged female sages who are known to have composed certain hymns and taught generations of students.

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of America. She ran for the top job in 1872. Among those who tried their luck was Patsy Mink in 1972 to Carol Moseley Braun in 2004 to Hillary Clinton and Tulsi Gabbard and a few more women of socio-political repute. But their race to the Oval office ended as a dismal affair and got throttled under the power of the country’s patriarchy. Kamala, the first female Vice-President is now the candidate for the top job of her party. Though India held womanhood in high esteem, murmurs from the political colonies in our country were also heard recently when Draupadi Murmu, India’s first adivasi woman became the President. There were misogynistic narratives on her ascent being apathetically scribbled and publicized by people in social media. Questions were raised and eyebrows convulsed skeptically on the woman who held the top office even before Murmu’s regime.

Pratibha Patil was the other woman, who, the remnants of misogyny got rattled about. There had also been instances when deep seated differences were buried under particular circumstances and a leader to the stature of Atal Bihari Vajpayee was seen showering his deep poetic vocabulary of veneration for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Indic spiritual background that India as a civilization has been leaning on has surprisingly been an indicator of respect and honor that the Indian society had accorded to women’s self-esteem. As a society, our democracy and spiritual values have assertively added meaning to our entity and protecting the interests of womanhood has been an important aspect of it. In India, this cultural idealism has helped its women to rise to the top. The question is will Kamala Harris overwhelmingly galvanize her country’s women power to the top office?

(Author is freelance journalist and social worker based in Kerala. The views expressed are personal opinion of the author.)