On Thursday 27 Mar 2008 5:12:04 am divya manian wrote: > There is, frankly, no Athithi Devo > Bhava, only a lot of hypocrisy.
Ironically, the ONLY atithi devo bhava I can see is in Diptosh Majumdar's special treatment of the Scarlett case while ignoring the everyday killing and harassment of women that are reported in the "vernacular" media. I think he is going overboard with this one murder and is missing the forest for the trees. He seems to go on and on about prudery in India. But that should not surprise him. Prudery is Indian and a single individual becoming liberal and enlightened hardly makes a difference. The media rant about the Shiv Sena or Mullahs agitating against Valentines day or "immodest" clothes worn by women. But the rants do not alter the fact that Indian society behaves like a "Keep yer wimmen covered" society. Women by and large do cover themselves up and educational institutions insist on "modest" dressing. Foreign tourist women who come to India rapidly learn how to dress for India. There appears to be no mass movement in India to accept women who show more skin than is conventional. Many of us allow our daughters to dress as they like and expose as much skin as they are comfortable with. Daughters are basically babies who grow up innocently and will happily walk around skimpily dressed unless they are warned. I have had to warn my daughter when I see the usual workers who come to my house gawking at her dressed like a lightning rod for a fatwa. Indian social norms about female behavior and dress may be outdated and bad, but those social norms still exist. They will not go away magically, and one is always taking some risk when you repeatedly step outside those social norms. The women who work out in the gym in Bangalore club and walk around in tank tops are fine and safe in the club. But they would be out of place in Kalasipalayam. If you are an Indian woman and you have to live or work in the Kalasipalayam area, your dress code has to be suitable for Kalasipalayam. The shorts and T-shirt you were wearing at Gatwick airport yesterday might not be appropriate. Goa may be a special case in Majumdar's view but I think not. I believe he might have been deluding himself. I went through college thinking that Goa was the place to watch topless white women on the beaches. And I am sure I was not alone. I betcha several hundred million Indian boys have drooled over the prospect of what they might get to see in Goa. Why is Majumdar having a rant about an aspect of India that is patently obvious? Premarital sex, drugs and "live in" partners are the "standard formula" description of immorality in the Indian mind. Why pretend that words like " freethinker or libertine" are likely to lead to anything other than trouble in India. Majumdar isn't new to India is he? Indians do not love murder any more than anyone else. When faced with a murder they have questions and anxieties and look for answers. Could it happen to me?. The conclusions they reach in every case may be faulty - but the conclusion people seem to have reached in the case of the Keeling murder is that "They were immoral. Immorality is bad. Therefore bad things can happen" After all this conclusion is easy to reach if your society tells you exactly that right from the day you are born. On Thursday 27 Mar 2008 12:34:15 pm va wrote: > the unstated simmering > discordant note in society that women have gotten more than they > deserve in life and hence conform less to the earlier patriarchal way > of life. I seem to have missed how you felt this way from these articles. Once again, I believe that Indians clutch at any little straws that they can hold on to to show why they might themselves escape such a fate. Looking for differences between one's own situation and that of a murdered person makes one feel safer. shiv
