How not to convert concern to control

One thing engaging with patriarchy down time has taught us is that control of the “powerless” by those in power almost always comes waltzing in masquerading as concern.

Madhu Bhusan

Like the Lakshman Rekha drawn around Sita in the forest of exile by a concerned brother-in-law. Or the fruit that was forbidden to Eve and Adam in the garden of paradise by a concerned Father. Both women crossed the line. And till today women continue to pay the price and be trapped between the two tropes – at one end the good and pure woman and on the other the the temptress. One continuing to need protection and the other punishment. Either way the intent being to keep women in control.

The narrative never changes. Just that new ones keep getting grafted on to the old. Like that of communal bigotry on that of increasingly toxic sexism.

The recently proposed Bill on increasing the age of marriage and the anti-conversion Bill are cases in point.

Take the concern of the government with maternal and child health that is the professed logic for increasing the age of marriage from 18 to 21 for women. Logic being that they are not emotionally or physically capable of taking on the responsibility of marriage and choosing an appropriate life partner. If health was really the concern then the priority should have been to systemically improve the nutritional status of girls and women, give holistic sex education in schools and colleges while also protecting and promoting their autonomy, specifically the right of adult women to make decisions about marriage and motherhood. Especially when dishonor killings of young women and men who are choosing to get married against the wishes of their families are on an all-time high.

Instead what we have is a patriarchal state legitimising the concerns of a patriarchal society insecure about young women exercising their autonomy over their choice of partners and therefore seeking legal control over women’s choices and sexuality.

The same logic of “concern” is at the heart of the anti-conversion Bill. The concern that “our” (Hindu) women need to be protected from their own carnal instincts which God forbid, might also lead them to fall in love with Muslim men who the majoritarian mindset warns us are all not only potential terrorists but whose singular agenda it is to outbreed all other faiths.

This Bill goes one step further. Like with women, the government is also concerned that the helpless poor, Dalits, Adivasis are being forcefully coerced and converted to Christianity. And in the process will end up depleting the population of Hindus. reduced to a minority in their own land. The concerns at the heart of both the Bills are not only irrational but patently fraudulent and insidious.

The fact is that that young women and men are exercising their choice to have sexual relationships like they always have. And we have to learn to deal with it. As mature adults and not as a paranoid, prejudiced and misogynistic society. The answer is not to criminalise and communalise marriages between two consenting adults by whipping up hysteria over non existent phenomena like Love Jihad that is at the heart of the The fact is that even the NIA, which the Supreme Court directed to investigate incidents of so called Love Jihad in Kerala in the course of the infamous Hadiya case in 2018 stated that it does not exist. There was love but no jihad. They went on to state that the Constitution of India had provided freedom to practice and promote religion in a peaceful manner to all citizens as a fundamental right. The fact is that the Government is firing the gun on the minorities from the shoulders of women. The fact is that there is no dangerous spike in either the Muslim or Christian populations. That is only in the false and fake rhetoric of Whatsapp forwards and not borne out in actual census records and demographic data.

Fact is that Hindus are not in any danger except from their own selves and those who claim to be the protectors of Hinduism. We need to wake up to the fact that we are a plural society and a democratic polity. Not a theocracy or a dictatorship. That we are a land of fluid faiths in which several Gods and Goddesses have argued and survived together in merry anarchy.

Go to villages and tribal villages. And to the homes of the marginalised and discriminated. In the homes of sex workers, I have seen an unbelievable pantheon of Gods ranging from Rama to Jesus to Allah with Guru Nanak and Kali thrown in for good measure. In tribal hamlets you will see families where father is Christian, mother is Adivasi, the son is dancing in front of Ganesha while the daughter is a devotee of Yellamma and Mother Mary. In slums you will see Dalit husbands who are Periyarists and wives who are priestesses running temples in their home and yet go to the neig