On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 10:48 AM, ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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.
Not just him, we all give it a miss unless the media thrusts it into our face making it the topic for discussion over coffee/tea, which lasts until the next eye-ball grabbing sensational case occurs. > 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 Not really, Charles responded to this one aptly. > 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. Conventional ? Ever seen the pre-18th century carvings / architecture ? > 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 Indian social norms about female behavior and dress may be outdated and bad, 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 The social norms (usually interpreted as take law unto own hands) exists because the police do absolutely nothing about cases of eve-teasing, rape, molestation and assault. > 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. As for social norms, who gave society the right to decide/brand a woman in a tank top as someone with loose/no morals ? Isnt that imposing ones ideas of so-called morality on others ? > 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. Not from the articles but from the fate of the protagonists at the centre - both women, one killed by her suspicious husband and the other child by men she may have known or not. If anything both didnt conform to the atypical notion of how a wife/child-woman should behave, were not submissive (she asked for a divorce), decided to live life on their terms and paid a heavy price. > 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. Wrong, that fate can befall any woman of any age, strata of society/religion/location, and the external appearance (dress) has nothing to do with it. We fail as a society when law enforcement agencies do nothing to bring the offenders to book, rather aid in botching things with sloppy forensics.
