We have had a Hindutva government ruling India for more than a decade now and there is no sign that it has any plans to make women into second-class citizens, writes Tavleen Singh.
Dec 8, 2024 08:14 IST First published on: Dec 8, 2024 at 05:30 IST
When the monstrous Taliban government announced last week that Afghan women would no longer be allowed to study medicine, my first reaction was horror and then shock. Where are those human rights watchdogs who make so much noise about much lesser crimes against humanity? Their silence is despicable, and they have been silent throughout the dehumanising of Afghan women that began for the second time after the Taliban returned to power three years ago.
It is hard not to conclude that this deafening silence is because human rights activists tend to be leftist ideologically, and leftists have shown a peculiar empathy for jihadists of the kind that are currently running Afghanistan. These bearded fanatics have already banned girls from secondary education, from being seen in public unveiled and unescorted by a male relative and even from speaking too loudly. But this is truly the final blow because if there are no women nurses and doctors left, who will deliver babies and tend to the medical needs of women?
Jihadist Islam is evil. There is no question about this and when it becomes mixed up with politics and governance, as in Afghanistan and Iran, it turns into a weapon that is nearly always used against women. When I said something like this on ‘X’, I got two reactions from Indians on social media and both worried me. The first reaction came from those who believe that Islam is a terrible religion and wherever it exists, this kind of barbarism will become the norm.
The second came from those who wrongly believe that there is no difference between what is happening in India and Afghanistan in view of the rise of militant and fanatical Hindutva. This lot said that I should keep my ‘senile’ views to myself and instead of commenting on Afghanistan, should observe what is happening in our own Bharat Mata. In angry tones they declared that Hindutva and Taliban were as bad as each other.
A truly false equivalence. We have had a Hindutva government ruling India for more than a decade now and there is no sign that it has any plans to make women into second-class citizens. On the contrary, many Muslim women have welcomed the law that bans Triple Talaq. What is more important is that there is not a single Hindutva leader who supports the idea that women should be deprived of the right to education or employment. Indian women have come a long way from those primitive times when they were married off as little girls and then forced onto the pyres of their dead husbands. Child marriage still exists in pockets, but it is no longer socially acceptable.
Now for the bigger point that I wish to make this week. In India we must pay attention to the ugliness of what has happened in Afghanistan and Iran to observe what happens when religion is mixed with politics. The danger of this happening in India is real and must be addressed before it is too late. Last week was the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and remember the horrible violence that came after that event on December 6, 1992? Since then, we have seen far too much religiosity enter the space that was once occupied by secular ideas. And, we have seen secularism mocked and reviled as ‘sickularism’. I am routinely accused of being ‘sickular’ and to those who so accuse me, let me say I have no hesitation in admitting that I am proudly secular. And that I despise religiosity.
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It is true that the religiosity we increasingly see was initially a reaction. It was born out of a false kind of secularism. It was this that caused the rise of militant Hindutva. But now it is time that secularism was brought back into play as a valid and fine idea. It is unfortunate that the political parties that can play a role in bringing secular ideas back are so obsessed with Gautam Adani that every time a new session of Parliament begins, we see hours and days wasted on trying to force the government into a discussion on this businessman. A discussion might have happened already if the Leader of the Opposition did not make it clear that his reason for wanting said discussion is to prove that ‘Modi and Adani are one’. Rahul Gandhi should know surely that when you charge the Prime Minister with corruption so openly, it is unlikely to lead to a debate in the Lok Sabha.
Let me return to my fundamental point which is that religion and politics should be kept far away from each other. But can this happen now that ordinary Hindus behave like holy warriors? On social media, while writing this piece, I spotted a video of a Hindu teenager beating three small Muslim children with a slipper and ordering them to say Jai Shree Ram. It sickened me to watch but watch it I did because it reminded me of a little girl who was locked up in a box and left for hours in the sun by an ISIS monster because she could not recite the Quran correctly. Her Yazidi mother, made a sex slave by this demon, was forced to watch as her five-year-old daughter died slowly of hunger and dehydration. India must never become a country in which children can be tortured for religion.
