Since the horrific bus rape case, the problems of rape in India have been firmly on the western media agenda. Today BBC World is carrying two different and terrible stories – one of the rape of a five year old girl in Delhi, and one of the death of a rape victim in a botched abortion.
I spent several weeks last year researching in archives in India. I had expected to love the country and its culture, and to my surprise I found I detested it.
I initially stayed a week in a budget tourist hotel in Delhi a short walk from Connaught Square and the main railway station. My window looked out on a street that seemed very busy with pedestrians 24 hours a day. At any moment I could see a hundred or more people clearly, and I soon noticed something very strange – there were virtually no women out on the street, undoubtedly less than 5% of the people out and about. Yes, if you went to Connaught Square you could see middle class women, particularly students, walking around. But not in more normal Delhi streets.
As I flew to different Indian cities on internal airlines, I noticed that security at Indian airports was segregated – there were separate male and female lines for bags and scanners. The female lines were virtually deserted, and it was evident that women are a very small percentage of passengers on internal Indian flights. On top of which, I three times had the experience of sitting next to businessmen who were travelling business class while their family was behind in economy. This was evidently thought perfectly normal.
It is all getting worse – just one straw in the wind, but it is only in the last two years it has become actually illegal to serve a beef steak in Delhi.
I am not even going to start getting in to the appalling caste system, and the dreadful gap between rich and poor. Knowing Africa very well, I had expected India to be in some ways similar. But in fact inequality was far worse, and the educational level of the poor was far worse, than the countries I know well in Africa. Taxi drivers in Delhi, for example, were nearly all completely illiterate. Here in Accra you would never meet a taxi driver who cannot read an address. In the National Archives of India, even some senior archivists do not speak a word of English – the official language of the country, and crucially the language of the archives they are supposed to be curating. In Accra the archivists are extremely well educated at British and American universities.
What I found most extraordinary, is that whereas here in Ghana all the rich Ghanaians I know would absolutely agree that it is highly desirable to raise the education, standard of living and welfare of the poorest in society; in India I found an extraordinary callousness among wealthy Indians to be the norm; they simply do not believe lifting the poor from poverty is desirable.
Yes, the stories about rape in India have touched on a very important point about the position of women in an increasingly oppressive and rabidly conservative Hindu society. But that is part of a much wider picture. In the UK a combination of India’s historic anti-colonial role, its legend in hippy chic and latterly a reverence for economic growth appears to be handicapping a much needed airing of truths on just what a narrow, nationalist, repressive and bigoted country India is becoming.
Quite agree Craig…horrible place…though Goa is rather nice…
Can’t comment on India (or Ghana) but I found the male presence of Turkey quite like your description of India. Turkish women were seen in Istanbul, though considerable less so than men, (their numbers bolstered by women tourists), but in the villages and small towns women were almost non-existent. Interestingly the coastal towns towards Georgia were the only places where women were found in public, and they were Georgian prostitutes, presumably servicing men who would one day be marrying a Turkish virgin. This reminded me of our great English novelist, Robert Bage, and his third novel “The Fair Syrian” (1787) in which a Georgian sex-slave, Amina, is an example of a girl who, since she cannot be found a husband at the right price, is sold into slavery – as are the “daughters of priests”.
By coincidence this morning I met a Turkish woman with a golden cocker-spaniel with whom I had a short chat. She came from the outskirts of Istanbul. A woman walking a dog on a lead in Turkey would never have been seen ten years ago. It is something to be proud about of in this country that we no longer have the former system of dowries. Women can, and do, integrate freely, education and job-opportunities are available for boys and girls, men and women, though in Bage’s day they were not – and these were issues about which he campaigned through his novels and through his deeds. Everybody should read the novels of Robert Bage who campaigned also against the trans-Atlantic slave-trade through Fidel, who was transported from Benin, east of Ghana, before being enslaved in Jamaica. In the 200 plus years since Bage died (1801) England and Ghana have come a long way in some respects. Other countries are taking longer to adopt equality.
“In the National Archives of India, even some senior archivists do not speak a word of English – the official language of the country”
Oh dear, that sounds rather colonial. The official language is in fact Hindi in the Devanagari script. English is an additional second language for some official work (not including archiving by the sound of it).
Good post, Craig.
Speaking the truth about such things attracts a lot of criticism. Here in Oz, Indian taxi drivers are notorious for committing sexual assaults but the link cannot be openly discussed.
There’s a lot of talk that India will be one of the next superpowers, on a par with China. These two countries do not even compare. My personal experiences with people from these two countries is extensive and intimate. I can confidently say that China will certainly be a superpower while India wallows in the filth and misery of its proudly traditional culture. Compare the hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games with that of the Delhi Commonwealth Games. It’s pretty stark.
Hmmm. It is a strange ‘nationalist’ country which forces through stuff like this:
“uproar in India’s parliament over the cabinet’s decision to open up the retail market to global supermarket chains” –
bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-15885004
As usual, the dead hand of the IMF, which is behind the huge and useless infrastructure projects, which deplete local resources, increase poverty, and cause chaos in villages and regions, can take a lot of the credit. Goa was nice, once, before this happened there too – the people there have been up in (peaceful, democratic) arms for years.
profit.ndtv.com/news/economy/article-recent-measures-to-help-india-realise-potential-growth-rate-imf-321193
Add to that the effects of GM crops on Indian farmers, the erosion of family life in cities thanks to Western companies outsourcing call centres, the introduction of plastic to replace everything from traditional clay throw-away cups to shopping bags (something which people are also starting to combat), the activities of companies like Coca Cola (see Kerala as one example) and the replacement of the (profitable, low-impact) hippy trail by vast, resource-hungry intercontinental hotels – and India starts to look like a symptom of a familiar structure, not just a cause, in many ways.
Otherwise, the caste system generally and the position of women generally – yes.
MJ
I think you are wrong there. I don’t believe English has a subordinate status to Hindi as an official language. See this for example: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/asia/17iht-letter17.html?_r=0
A great many communities in India do not speak Hindi at all. The British, of course, were by no means the first colonisers of India; the Moghuls being obvious and non-Indian predecessors.
In any event, I think expecting archivists to know the language of material they are archiving is pretty reasonable, especially when it is, at the very least, an official language of their country.
“A great many communities in India do not speak Hindi at all”
Correct. That is why the constitution recognises a further 21 regional languages.
The article to which you linked is predicated on the fact that English is not the official language. That’s why it says things like “English is the de facto national language of India” and “Accepting that English is the national language would have benefits”.
I like to keep abreast of what’s happening on the Anna Ardin liar thread from time to time, and just came across this written by one Acne Cyst. I’m sure even the non-English-speaking librarians MJ has met could make a better stab at selling whatever Acne Cyst is selling (student loans I think) than Acne Cyst has done.
“I have cultured a few important things by your post. I’d personally as well in the vein of to mention that near can ensue location where you will make use to get a loan and never ought a cosigner such as a Government Student Abet Lend. But proviso you are obtaining that lend owing to a conventional advance check next you’ll need to become prepared to have a co-signer complete to make it easier for you. The lenders can foundation some decision from the few factors except the largest will probably be present your credit rating. There are some credit companies that will furthermore glare in your work memoirs and choose based proceeding that but in roughly every gear it’ll pivot resting in your credit slash.”
It speaks for itself.
MJ
The article says “Hindi was downgraded to one of the two official languages in which the government would conduct its business. The other official language was English…”
It advocates English should now be the sole official language.
Becoming? They have been at this for a few thousand years. And for the elites it does very well thank you very much.
Anyhow head own south and it’s a different universe. Women in the street, as a foreigner easy to talk with literate, intelligent people and not just Brahmins.
Craig:
I’m incredibly surprised that the archivists couldn’t speak English. When I was there for 6 months, just about everyone I met could speak very good English. In fact, I found I could count on English being spoken everywhere and by everyone.
I know what you mean about gender issues though. I remember eating at the same restaurant every day for a month (during a meditation course), and the woman serving me didn’t make eye contact with me a single time. Another time I was walking down the street with a female friend, and a random guy just walked up and grabbed between her legs before running off. After returning home to Australia, I was discussing some of these issues with some Indian co-workers, and they seemed completely blind to the problems facing women in India. Having said that, these same Indians thought I was crazy when I mentioned the Indian ‘head wobble’. So maybe these people were just amazingly blind to their own culture.
A few years ago, I shared a flat with two hotel workers from India: one was from the North East, the other from the mid South. Interestingly they could only talk to each other in English (in which they were both very fluent).
A vision of India that is as raw for me in its viceral shamefullness as ever it was when I experienced it over 40 years ago:
I was a Merchant Navy Junior Engineer. My ship was loading iron ore in Vishakapatnam in the Sweltering heat of August. Each morning I and a few other ignoramuses would have breakfast on a poop deck overlooking the quayside. We would place bets on who would get various scraps of food tossed over the side – almost by way of sport: The shite hawks (as we christened the enormous vulture like scavenging birds, the wild dogs, or several persistent beggars – the birds usually won. One of those beggers was clearly half-caste (colonial/native parentage) with what was left of his legs looking and functioning somewhat like seal flippers (rickets? polio? I don’t know); he was on a sort of scooter trolley, propelled with hands pushing on the floor; he was maybe 30 years old at most. Another was a strikingly beautiful and graceful young native woman, maybe 20-25 years old and nursing a clearly sick infant. Every 30 minutes or so, lathee-wielding policemen would drive them away with vicious strokes of their canes – 10 minutes later they were back and pleading – and the sport would begin again.
The anguished expressions on those faces haunt me to this day; still prompting penance for my bewildered but nonetheless, callous bravado-laden and childishly feigned indifference, to the brutalities I witnessed during that one week stay – well I was after all a superior westerner wasn’t I?
No direct experience with the Culture, but they are just plain old human beings. India has modeled themselves as Western capitalists, and that creates class lines based on wealth. Privilege is equated with your standing, and the easiest observable feature of standing is the extent of your wealth. It is exacerbated by caste. But caste is just like racial characteristics in the US or Royal blood in the UK. As John Lennon said in 1971 “Woman is the nigger of the World”, their gender falls way behind males in just about every culture except the mythical Amazons. They’re at the bottom of the heap of humanity, when it comes to equality of pay. For centuries they had no property rights, no voting rights, and that’s here in the good ol’ USA, Land of the Free.
I’ve recently returned from a holiday in India,staying in intercontinental hotels and as such was sheltered from everyday life, but didn’t notice any imbalance of the sexes on the railway stations of Delhi and Jhansi. In fact it was the women who were openly amused by the sight of our group of white men and women getting on and off the train !
It is true that education in India has only been compulsory and free for 6 – 14 year olds since 2009 and there have been some problems. For example the number of school places has not kept pace with the rising demand so in some areas children only go to school for half a day. Also children who haven’t been to school before are being put in their year group instead of having the extra help they need. So it’s not perfect but they are getting there and are aware of how far they need to go to catch up.
In a Hindustan Times article (online 20/03/13) the President of India is quoted as saying their higher education is not adequate and they have ‘miles and miles to go before they catch up with America’.
I don’t know what Africa education is like now but the African students I met in the 1980s had all been to mission schools, been taught in English and taken English ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, all irrelevant to the continent they lived in. There may be more of a tradition of formal schooling in Africa but don’t they still have to pay fees? Correct me if I’m wrong !
I didn’t meet any wealthy Indians so don’t know if they are callous towards the poor but I know there are plenty of wealthy and not so wealthy people in Britain who denigrate the poor as scroungers and shirkers who don’t deserve benefits.
George Orwell lives! Craig in a budget hotel (aka spike?) and Wiki observing the humiliation and degradation of those whose lives are reduced by hunger to a daily desperate search for food.
When I read Craig’s post I thought to myself WHOA! He’s going to get the same sort of reaction from the right-thinkers (or perhaps I should say left-thinkers) as he did when he posted an article in favour of the EU. Along the lines of “oh, it’s all the fault of colonialism” or “the Western powers and the US have a cunning plan to keep India poor and ignorant”, you know the usual stuff we get on here.
Well, I was overly pessimistic.
But not wholly wrong : here are some nice ones from our Californian thinker Ben at 16h28 :
– it’s just human nature
– it’s the fault of class based on wealth (India had adopted Western capitalism, you see)
– it’s no worse than what happened/happens(?) to blacks in the US.
Ben obviously hasn’t got a clue what Craig’s going on about, has he.
CheebaCow
I was researching in the National Archives of India for several weeks, and I can assure you that several of the senior archivists either could speak no English, or pretended they could not.
Wikispooks, beautifully written and touching.
Enjoyed your article Craig. I spent 4 months last year in India, travelling from the south to the north. As a western woman I was persona non grata for the entire time. I was essentially ignored as a customer by men, although in the Buddhist areas of the Himachal Pradesh areas, things were very different. In a restaurant in one of the cities, I was very amused when I asked the waiter for a naan bread and he turned to my husband to ask him if it was O.K. The only attention I got was very much unwanted, I was groped in the street twice, despite that fact that was I dressed ‘appropriately’ and was accompanied by my husband. There generally seemed to be an unhealthy attitude towards sex and the media objectifies women. We saw many women with facial disfigurements caused by acid attacks and the media reported a constant stream of horror stories of institutional discrimination against women. One that sticks in my mind was a woman abused by police officers when she tried to report her husband for sexually abusing her children. It was difficult to treat each new person we met with openness and trust as our daily experiences with attempted scams wore us down. I too was left with a very bad feeling about the place. There was a lack of morality driven by the ‘hand to mouth’ existence, but as a relatively rich westerner I cannot judge such an approach as I would probably be the same had I been brought up there. The previous year we spent a month in Indonesia, where there is a ‘hand to mouth’ existence and a similar attitude towards women, however, people could not have been friendlier and happier and we were treated graciously wherever we went.
Wiki’s story minds me of what wealth disparity and poverty mean in practice. Not just a matter of have and have not, it is brutal and callous relations, caused by callousing of the heart on pitiless experience.
– it’s just human nature
of course, Ben is right, it’s all a part of human nature; some good, some bad.
– it’s the fault of class based on wealth (India had adopted Western capitalism, you see) – absolutely true in the instance of the caste system and the ‘class’ system. India has had global corporatism forced on it in the last 20 years: I’ve seen the changes. They have not made the situation better, and they’ve created a climate where it is equally hard to progress against inequality – see ‘poverty gap’ right here in the UK.
– it’s no worse than what happened/happens(?) to blacks in the US.- are you trying to be flippant about the situation of and discrimination against, or ignorant of the history of, dark coloured people in the US? Surely not.
I’ve had the luck to travel all over India, from Kashmir to Cochin, for both work and play, over many years. It has been dangerous, glorious, fascinating, warm, educational and heart-breaking in equal measure. My god-mother (raised in India) always said that, while Europe was a water-colour, India was an oil painting. Its history, its gods and goddesses, its culture, its extremes: I don’t think that anything but a book, or several, could do it justice. There is no doubt, from my last visit, that the increasing ersatz Westernisation – from crap rap to poor porn – has affected people; as has the imposition of what we laughably often call progress. Thanks for this post: it makes me want to dig deeper.
NB I have been wondering why Western media is so keen to report instances of ‘horrific’ rape there (as though there were a ‘nice’ kind); is the same kind of thing not happening everywhere? Would we actually leave our houses or travel anywhere if they all got the same coverage? But this applies to news in general, of course.
Sorry, last post (thinking aloud): if the media coverage helps the women of India, or in general, in any way, then that is only a good thing, of course.
Sheryl
21 Apr, 2013 – 10:08 pm
“Enjoyed your article Craig.”
As much as you ‘enjoyed’ your trip, Sheryl? Sure you know the meaning of the word ‘enjoy’?
“There generally seemed to be an unhealthy attitude towards sex and the media objectifies women.”
Oh yes, and please let me know which country that you’ve travelled to has a healthy attitude towards sex? Sweden, perhaps? The Vatican? Indonesia? When I last stayed at the Jakarta Ritz-Carlton, you dialled 69 in your room phone for a massage. Now thats what I call gracious hospitality. And what about this country’s slosh-and-shag culture, set aside recent pedophilia revelations, decades deep.
Ditto for “the media objectifies women”, pray tell me where in the world does that not happen, even in this day and age? (Perhaps we should ask Sir Martin (Sorrell), who I believe runs a very successful series of enterprises in Craig’s “narrow, nationalist, repressive and bigoted” India?) Although, in this country I note the trend to objectify dogs in the media is re-emerging with no particular untoward consequences.
Btw, does anyone else here love the recent ‘Airwaves’ TV ad campaign?
Also, I would rubbish your “many women with facial disfigurements caused by acid attacks” remark. Sure you hadn’t drifted into Taliban territory?
Sheryl; you are much more tolerant than I. The first grope would’ve been met with a twenty lb handbag with about 200 ft lbs of force. The second one would’ve been just a thought.
Ben: yeah: shouting ‘are you some kind of pervert? would you do this to your sister?’ also helps, I’m told.
@ Technicolour (22h42) :
pardon me, but am I mistaken in thinking that the caste system in India predates, just a little, the last 20 years (the 20 years in which “India had global corporatism forced on it”)?
@ Villager and his “the media objectifies women happens everywhere” :
you may be right, but am I mistaken in thinking that throwing acid into womens’ faces and the groping of women on public transport is perhaps just a little bit more prevalent in India than in most of those other countries making up your “everywhere”?
Yes, although this might run counter to your favorite world-view,you’ll just have to get used to the idea that evil things also happen in countries other than the US and Europe.
I’m surprised Habbakuk. The caste system is quite similar to feudalism.
I’d have thought that you’d approve.
Habbakuk: of course, but rather than allow the natural progression of humanity towards rationality and balance take its course, the IMF stepped in. Please see, and address, if you can, my points earlier.
We are discussing, of course, a war-torn country, in which the East India Company had violently meddled for centuries beforehand, so to try and isolate specific instances of Western influence in Indian history would, as I said, take several books. I am only able to testify to the last twenty years, personally.