We were recently asked to put up a proposal for funding. The proposal had to be for something different and relevant to our times. After some pondering and brainstorming we decided to once again walk the extra mile and requested funding for a series of workshops on sex education and gender equality. The proposal was well received and we were asked asked to provide details about how we would approach the problem. Easier said than done as how do you talk about sex education in a patriarchal society where sex is so taboo that if we do not run our workshops carefully, we incur the risk of having parents remove their children from project why. Yet it is imperative that children lean about these issues at the earliest.

If there is one thing that needs to come out of the closet it is sex education!

The number of rape and abuse of children in homes and even schools, both considered ‘safe’ places, is mind boggling and as long as the code of silence which is de rigeur in patriarchal societies is not busted, children will continue suffering in deafening silence in the name of honour or any such inanity.

Sex education in India is banned. And even if it is imparted it is done so with reluctance. Parents leave it to schools; schools outsource it; in some cases teachers skip the chapter asking the child to read it at home! An excellent video gives you a taste of what sex education looks like in India. Do view it if you can.

In privileged homes maybe things are a little better, but in slums and poor homes where parents are illiterate, the silence that surrounds sex can be dangerous. They live in cramped homes where they ‘see’ and ‘hear’ sex and abuse. They grow up thinking that sex and even abuse is a duty for girls and a right for boys.

Conversation on sexuality, if there is conversation, focuses on abuse never on the positive aspects of sex and sexuality. Sex education is an absolute must and politicians have to step out of their comfort zones and skewed political agendas and act. Age appropriate sex education should be an integral part of school curricula if we want to aspire to a healthy society. Band aid and knee jerk solutions are not the answer.

Now the problem that arises is how does one address the situation and come up with the right way to impart sex education in the given scenario.

What we intend doing is having a series of workshops for both students and teachers. Th subjects we inter covering would range from ‘good touch bad touch’ to the importance of ‘consent’. One needs to start telling children at a very early age that it is important to ask a play mate before touching them; teach children empathy and the importance of not hurting another; teach them to help someone who is in trouble. It is also very important that a child be taught to say NO and STOP and to honour the same when they are told these words. If your NO is not heard than we must teach the child to think whether she or he is feeling safe and good. It is also important for children to learn about their bodies and use correct words and not words that carry negative images as is often the case.

Older children need to be taught about body changes and that these changes are natural. Their self esteem has to be built and the importance of consent. It is also important to talk about hormones and how the may affect our thinking. It is also important to encourage them to ask the questions that bother them and answer them honestly. As most if not all these children cannot discuss these matters with their parents, our teachers have to be trained to be mentors. It is an uphill task wrought with dangers but that needs to be tacked head on. I guess we will have to craft the ‘syllabus’ as we go on.

The other burning issue is undoubtedly gender equality. I personally believe that there are two main issues that seem to have not been addressed as they probably do not mesh with  existing societal realities. The first one is to address the X Y chromosome theory that would, if understood, liberate women from the erroneous perception of being the ones who determine the sex of the child and thus are ‘responsible’ if the child they bear and give birth do is a girl and not a boy. I wonder why this has never been a loud and blaring campaign. It is time men and their mothers realised that the wife/daughter-in-law is not at fault and thus does need to be blamed. And talking of mothers-in-law, we must accept that gender inequality is first and perhaps foremost perpetuated by women: mothers and grand mothers and other women in the family who treat their sons/grandsons differently than their daughters. This is highly visible in a daily pattern that may vary but that is nevertheless present. The boy child is treated like a prince where the girl is more Cinderella’s sister. It is there that it all begins and thus there that it needs to be stemmed.

The same discourse is present in our school books and often perpetuated by teachers: Sunil is confident and will make a good leader; Asha is caring and she will make a good mother. These stereotypes may look innocent but can be damaging. And look at fairy tales where the Prince saves the Princess. It is important to remember that sex is a biological fact and gender is a social construct. Boys and girls do not have any natural psychological or social differences, but it is society that makes them learn gender roles. It is for teachers and educators to balance the equation and have gender neutral teaching material.

When I was in class 6, I attended a lycée in Rabat. It is was a mixed lycée but what was interesting is that both boys and girls attended housekeeping and sewing classes as well as carpentry and electrical repairs one and no one felt that it was wrong. That was way back in 1962! Maybe that is a first step one could take in project why too.

The other discourse that could be followed is to be gender neutral when talking of professional options. The best chefs, hairdressers, couturiers and make up artist are often men, and women excel in many of the professions considered male prerogatives.

In an interesting article, Aparna Rayaprol states that: Institutionalisation of patriarchy in the various agencies of socialisation such as family, school, media, religious, legal, and political institutions allow individuals to become transmitters of gender biases. The school is one place where such institutionalisation takes place in a very subtle way. Only teachers can confront patriarchy by consciously helping children to become good citizens of the world. The first step is to make an equal world in the classroom. It is time project why became an equal world.

Gender sensitisation is not about pitting women against men. Gender sensitive education benefits both sexes. To get long lasting effects, I believe that the first step is to train teachers who then can create the ideal environment for students. Training teachers who come from patriarchal homes is no mean task. The first step would be to build a conducive and unthreatening environment for candid and spontaneous participation where stereotypes and biases can be clarified. This entails understanding the difference between gender and sex and sharing real experiences. The next step would be to analyse how stereotypes are perpetuated by the teachers and work out doable alternatives. A variety of interactive tools would need to be evolved along the way.

It is time to come out of closet!

or a woman!

On March 6th a girl was brutally raped in Ahmadabad.  The brutality of the incident was a stark reminder of the Delhi rape of December 16, 2012. The only difference was that this girl was six year old. The only difference was that no one took to the streets, held candle light vigils or expressed any anger. You see she was poor. Had she been your or my child the heavens would have fallen. And yet she should not have been raped as she did not violate any of the so called canons that are always regurgitated to justify rape. She did not wear revealing clothes. She was not out with her boyfriend at an ungodly hour. She did not board a bus. She was just playing with her siblings outside the shack that was her home. Today she fight for her life or perhaps she is no more. She barely made the headlines of our news hungry press.

Her torturer left no stone unturned. With third degree perennial tear, serious rectum and vaginal injuries, the damage to internal organs is beyond shocking. Her haemoglobin level has dropped to 3 due to acute blood loss. When asked why he did it, his chilling answer was: I just felt like doing it! The mother just wants her child to be whole again. That will never happen not only because of the gravity of her wounds but because such scars never heal.

Yesterday a baby died because his father could not produce the 800 rupees the hospital demanded. The baby was delivered on the street. The child died minutes after his birth. The police called it an accidental death. Just like the little girl who fights for her life, this baby too was ‘poor’.

When I hear about such tragedies, I feel so totally helpless and abjectly saddened.

Then as you turn on your TV, you are greeted but yet another uproar. You tune in and realise with utter shock that the subject is once again about women. This time it is a so called ‘respected’ member of the upper house of Parliament that has found it politically correct to talk about women during a debate on foreign direct investment. It takes a rather skewed mind to talk of women’s bodies, of the colour of their skin and other such aberrations to state his party’s stand on the bill discussed. Racism. misogyny, sexism and patriarchy: you have it all. And if you expected the chair or any other member of parliament to object, you have it all wrong. What you heard while he babbles on his laughter, sneers and tacit approval. Come on boys will be boys, even when they are meant to be legislating and crafting our future. The MP in question remains unapologetic; he actually feels he has done no wrong. I guess he just felt like saying these things just like the man who felt like hurting the six year old.

How can women ever be safe as long as  people with such views sit in Parliament. For them women are objects and nothing else. They will continue to be raped every twenty minutes and perpetrators will be protected by a boys will be boys attitude. This is also the same man who was willing to die rather than pass the women reservation bill as he feared that the Parliament will be overrun by short haired women. These are the kind of men who blame women for being molested or raped based on what they wear, or where they go.

They will never feel outraged at any aberration, and remain unperturbed at the news of a child violated by a man. Boys will be boys is the litany we hear over and over again.

And we, the dented and painted ladies who defend our own, will not find the heart to take to the streets for a six year old who was brutally violated or a little baby who died because the hospital wanted 800 rupees. You see these two come with the tag ‘poor’ attached to to their toe and that makes them inconsequential. And what about the 72 year old nun who was brutally gang-raped by eight men. I guess there is some tag that makes her rape material. It cannot be her dress, her age, her life style! She was not out at night but was asleep in the safety of God’s house. Even that was violated.

We can be as outraged as we want. We can have as many laws as we want. But as long as the present mindset exists, and exists its does as it is even aired with alacrity and impunity in the hallowed halls of our Parliament, we are fighting a lost battle.

And if you needed proof, rather than an apology this is what the parliamentarian said today when faced with the ire of women parliamentarians: “The bodies of women from the south are as good as they are beautiful.”

I am aghast.

This is indeed no country for women be she 6 or 72!

 Trying to define who we are and what we do in a blurb has always been a challenge I have not been able to overcome. If I try and limit myself to a few words they always fall short of what we really are. I am compelled to go into a lengthy spiel with a lot of ‘buts’ each almost rebutting the previous statement: we are an education oriented organisation but…! The best I came up with was : we are just an answer to prayers but it does sound cliche does it not. This morning we had to redo the exercise of defining ourselves as we may need to come up with a good pitch in the near future, but mercifully this time we had a dear friend and super supporter at hand. We needed the right peg that would make us stand out.

So we began to try and once again define all we do in the light of what was shared by our friend: the fact that many think that we are a ‘school’ or a ‘tuition’ centre and though I may still accept the former I totally reject the later. The difference this time was that we sort of knew who we were targeting: young and not so young professionals. So we did the rounds, each one trying to come up with an idea, but each idea again falling short. As we enumerated all we did, and boy even I had not realised the extent of our outreach, we had our eureka moment: we gave underprivileged children, what you (the educated privileged) gave our child. Now it was just a matter of finding the right phraseology. I guess we will have some smart copy writer do just that.

However I found mine: being mom! That is what we, and certainly I, have been since day one. You could find numerous ways of stating this: providing an enabling environment to slum kids or nurturing underprivileged children but I like my being mom!

It encompassed everything we do be it providing the education needed for children not only to remain in school but excel; giving extra food when needed; taking the child to the doctor or the psychologist when needed; rushing out to buy warm clothes for a child who was landed in class on a chilly winter morning without a sweater as the only one she had was still damp; providing special classes to the a child who wants to dance, paint or sing; taking kids to parks, museums, movies and even a fast food joint once in a while; being mentor or friend as the need arises; being the pal you share your first love story with; counselling the child and bringing her back to the fold; moving heaven and earth in times of crisis as when a child needs an open heart surgery. In other words just being mom!

I guess I too am on the rape probables because I wear jeans, because I sometimes dare step out of my home with a man who is not my father, uncle, grandfather brother after 7 pm, because I am a flower that needs to be protected by some male relative, lest I be thrown in the gutter and eaten by a dog. Should I be raped then I am to blame, or so say most of the men in the country I call mine. There are many catches though. I am sixty + but how does it matter in a land where a one year or a 80 year old are both rape-able commodity. Now as for the father, grandfather part, at my age they are all dead and gone. As a flower I am faded and even I guess putrefied, but I also guess there are hyenas that would still find me palatable. Dogs and hyenas are a plenty in this land.

I apologise for these rather unpalatable words but I am so angry and disturbed that I am unable to keep hold on my thoughts and fingers.

I have been told by the powers that be – powers I too voted for in spite of some reservations, as I was seduced by their promise of better days for all, and my personal opinion was of no importance if the millions waiting for better days could accede to them, be it those who go hungry every night or those who have been waiting patiently for the rights promised to them  since the day they were free, be it a roof on their heads, clean water to drink, a quality education or just basic dignity – that they had banned a film that told the story of a brave young woman to protect her honour or rather the honour of my country.

I am one of those who saw the film before it was blacked out and I can only say that the banning of the film had nothing to do with protecting her or any woman’s honour, but rather protecting the so called honour of those who think women should be kept in cages visible or invisible, with the key in the hands of some male or the other, depending on her stage in life: father, brother, husband, son and so on. They are the ones who will decide what she eats, wears, sees, thinks; where she goes and with whom.

What was terrifying in the film was not what the criminal said, but what the men in their black coats said, men who are supposed to be guardians of the law of the land. If you step out of line you will be doused with fuel and set to fire. These words, or variation on the same theme, are what had to be banned for no one to hear, words that resonate in many minds. Nobody wants to have a mirror held to their faces. So break the mirror.

I am tired of all the talk about the girl child; I am fed up with all the programmes that aim at bettering the plight of the female sex. They all sound false and empty as was so well said by the mother of Jyoti – and let us call her by her name as that is also the wish of her parents -: if there are no girls left then who will we educate; if girls are raped in schools ad school vans then whose morrow will we better. Before she even has a chance to live she may be killed in the womb, raped or as was so explicitly said by the lawyer in the film: taken to a farmhouse – don’t miss the farmhouse – and doused with petrol and burnt in front of her whole family.

Maybe dear Sirs, if you truly want to better the plight of our girls, it is not the girls you should ply with inane schemes, but rather run schemes for the boys who become the men we see in the film, and I am not talking of the rapist but of the esteemed lawyers; who become politicians, policemen, even Godmen and go on to blame girls for every aberrations perpetrated by men. Men rape because of what we wear, eat, drink and so on. Giving lofty speeches or launching schemes will not stop rape, domestic violence, acid attacks, molestation and abuse of all kind. As long as those in power continue to says: boys will be boys or why was she out at night, nothing will change.

It is time blinkers came off. It is time men looked at themselves in the mirror with honesty and learnt to hate what they saw. Sweeping the reality under the carpet or resorting to knee jerk reactions like banning this that and the other is nothing sort of cowardice.

It is time to celebrate parents like Jyoti’s who did everything to fullfil their daughter’s dreams, even if it meant selling their land and tightening their belt till it hurt; who trusted their child to step out of the house after seven because they respected her right to be free. It is time to transfer the onus of maintaining the honour of the family from the girl to the boy. Do that and mabe things will change.

There is another solution. Instead of killing girls one by one, why not kill them all, at one go, whatever their age and become the most honourable land in the universe, a land without women, a land you will not have to protect by banning films.

One of the perpetrators of the terrible Delhi gang rape of December 2013 has given a brazen and shocking interview. This blog is not about the merit or demerits of interviewing such sick people by giving them unnecessary publicity, though that could be a point to debate. This has actually been the subject of much heated and even frenzied debate for the past day or so. And though I understand that many feel that this interview by a unrelenting perp is galling to say the least, what worries me is the absolute refusal to go beyond the interview which is apparently a part of a documentary on rape made by a rape survivor. Her attempt to try and put her point across has been thwarted by the myopic view of giving a criminal a platform and sullying the character and memory of the victim. Even the entreaties of the film maker to hold on to judgement till her film was seen has fallen on deaf years. I for one, would like to reserve my opinion till I see the film, but that may not happen as the film is on the way of being banned, if it not already is. One thing that needs to be said is that we as a nation have become intolerant and that is nothing short of terrifying. We refuse to see what disturbs us and deal with it by obliterating the truth, or taking an ostrich like view. Films like Matrubhoomi run to empty houses and that too for a short week.

This blog is simply my reaction to the content of this interview. The comments of the perpetrator may seem shocking and monstrous to many, but sadly they reflect a very real mindset that exists in men in India. If one were to sum in a phrase the essence of the interview it would be: she was to blame! She was to blame because she was out at night; she was to blame because she was with a man; she was to blame because she dared raise her voice; she was to blame because she fought back. All these emanate from the existing gender equation where women are at best second class citizens.

What the rapist and murderer said is what has been echoed time and again, overtly or covertly, in different situations by men of all kind: politicians, policemen, neighbours and even family members. This is what is meant in the ‘but’ that often qualifies reactions to come against women. You are right, but; this is terrible but; it should not have happened but! How many times have we not heard reasons meant to mitigate the horror of the crime and that often pertain to what the victim was wearing, drinking, smoking and so on. No matter how many laws you make or how stringent you make them, things will not change on the ground until we address the situation head on.

The rapist states in his interview that: When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. He goes on to say: A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. And what was even more shocking was the comments made by the lawyers defending the perps as they also reiterated what was said by the murderer.

I wonder why we are so shocked. Have you forgotten the (in)famous boys will be boys and they will make mistakes, that was uttered a senior politician; and what about the sickening comments made by law enforcers who blame western culture for rapes, and the officials who call rape routine and unavoidable. And the deafening question begging to be asked but never formulated: have the rapes stopped? And the answer is a loud NO! They go on with impunity. And its is not just women, but children and even babies. And what about honour killings and this misplaced belief that family honour lies with the girl and should she dare step out of line, she must be done away with.

Is it not time that we faced the reality with honest courage?

To any sane person or sane society such behaviour is nothing short of repugnant, nauseating, loathsome and whatever adjective you can come up with. And you would be right. And yet what the murderer said is what many say or believe, so the logical conclusion is that we are not a sane society, at least when it comes to gender equations.

It is time we accepted this fact and rather than fly off the handle and come up with yet another futile knee jerk reaction, let us take a deep breath and calm down and look at reality as it exists. We have to stop being in denial. If you simply Google for rape statistics in India, this is what hits you: 92 women are raped in India every day, 4 in Delhi. As you read on you are told that in 94% of the cases, the rapist is know to the victim. These offenders included parents in 539 cases, neighbours in 10,782 cases, relatives in 2,315 cases and other known persons in 18,171 such cases reported over the year. I shudder to think about how many are unreported! And these are rape cases, one cannot begin to imagine how many sexual abuse cases one needs to add to these terrifying statistics. The problem is real and far beyond one or two aberrations. The kind of reaction we have seen yesterday and today are not what is needed to address this horrific reality. There is another statistic that one should look at, that of conviction of rapists and this one is no less shocking: While rape cases have risen from 16,075 in 2001 to 24,923 in 2012, the rates of conviction have dipped from 40.8% to 24.2% in the corresponding period. And every parent of every raped girl wants justice. Let us not forget that!

I listened to some of the debates in Parliament. Sadly the few voices of reason who compelled us to take the debate beyond the documentary and the issue of the rapist being interviewed, and look at the reality that stated us in he face, were drowned by those who just wanted the film banned and someone taken to task. I guess the someone will be some petty official who ‘dared’ give the permission for the said interview. Of course we were treated to the usual foreign agenda to sully the image of India, as if in this day and age of social media anything can be brushed under the carpet. One lady parliamentarian even stated that the airing of the film would affect tourism. My answer is simple: any rape affects tourism and I know what I am saying; we lost a large chunk of support after the rape of a foreign tourist a year ago. Every rape, Madam, tarnishes our image, it is time we stopped all rapes and that can only be done if we have the courage to change mindsets and look at ourselves in the mirror. Another MP stated that any time there is a rape, blame is put on the woman that she was indecently dressed, she provoked the men etc. Yes Ma’am you are so right. One of our students was raped when she was 4 year old. Th perp went to jail and came out. That young girl was ostracised by her peers and neighbours and ultimately had to leave the city. And it is not just rape, I also know of a 12 year old who was molested by an older family member. When she dared speak up, it was not the perp’s character that was maligned, but hers! So let us call a spade a spade!

Will not airing the documentary stop rapes. No! Will hanging the perps stop rape. No! Though it will give some sense of closure or justice, if closure and justice there can be for a grieving family. All this talk about tarnishing the memory of the brave heart falls flat in my opinion. Her memory is tarnished every 20 minutes when one more woman is raped in India; it is tarnished every time a child is raped; every time an honour killing occurs; every time a woman is molested or abused.

That beautiful and courageous  woman was taller than anyone and she had the courage to fight her rapists to the very end. We as a a society can only honour her memory if we stand as tall as her and accept that mindsets exist, that we are somewhere guilty of perpetrating them, that we need to address them each time they occur and not turn away, that we need to pledge to do everything we can to change the way women are treated in our country. Nothing short of that can honour the memory of a young girl who died fighting and refusing to be silent.