Beyond the Mars and Venus Dilemma

'The Cockfight' (1846) is a painting of Jean-Léon Gérôme (May 11, 1824 – January 10, 1904), a French painter, kept in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.( Source: Wikipedia)

In my speech at Nandini Satpathhy’s 79th Birth Anniversary at Jaydev Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, India, on last 9th June, my claim that sexual rights for women are mandatory, raised the eye brows of our social gurus and some intellectuals. I think it is time for a new feminist perception without any misandrist ideas. If men and women would be aware that the other has a problem, then they should tend to treat the other in exactly the way they want to be treated (a.k.a. ‘do unto others’). And if this were done, I think we could solve a major sexual crisis without having to do any more lengthy and costly research studies. To me, the answer seems clear. We are all first and foremost human beings and are basically against any type of chauvinism, be it in the form of misandry or be it in the form of misogyny.

In my previous article, I have discussed about Prakruti and Purusha concept in Sankhya Darshan, a well-known Hindu philosophy which denoted co-eternal binary opposition. The concept of such dualism is not only seen in India.

The concept of Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy was also originated in the Confucian school (most notably Dong Zhongshu) around the second century BCE. It is the most scientific Chinese description of how things work. Yin and yang are symbolised as two spots, one in black in the white space and another is white in the black space, and moving within a greater whole. Yin moves downward and Yang moves upward. They are both, though, opposite; Yin is usually characterized as dark, passive, and downward, cold, contracting, and weak while Yang, by contrast, is characterized as bright, active, upward, hot, expanding, and strong. They are associated with two forms of energies, negative and positive, and also as femininity and masculinity respectively. Though these two energies are opposite to each other, they are complimentary to each other as well.

Though Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a trendsetter personality in human psychology, much of his life’s work was spent exploring other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy. Jung claims that ‘anima’ and ‘animus’ are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, opposite but complimentary to each other. The animus is an archetype of the male personality whereas anima is the archetype for the female personality. According to Jung, all relations with the opposite sex, including parents, are strongly affected by the projection of anima or animus fantasies. The more astonishing postulate of Jung is that every man carries within him the anima, and a female bears an animus within her.

The eternal image of woman residing inside a man is not the image of any particular woman, but a definitive feminine image. This image is … all imprint or “archetype” of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman. Since this image is unconscious, it is always unconsciously projected upon the person of the beloved and is one of the chief reasons for passionate attraction or aversion. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous anima within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials.

How is the animus formed in a woman? How is the anima formed in a man? They are shaped by relating to and being in the presence of the parent of the opposite sex. The man’s anima takes form through relating with the mother. The woman’s animus takes form through influence by the father. But Jung focused more on the male’s anima and wrote less about the female’s animus. According to Jung, anima in man developed in four distinctive levels, Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia.

The first one is Eve, and deals with the emergence of a male’s object of desire. The second one is Helen, and is named after Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, anima shows a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination). The third phase is Mary, and is named for Jesus’ mother Virgin Mary, and in this stage, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if it is in an esoteric and dogmatic way). And in the final phase, Sophia is named for the Greek word for wisdom and is where anima allows females to be seen and related to as particular individuals who possess both positive and negative qualities.

Later Jung had been criticised for his dichotomy of masculine and feminine concept which is considered as sexist theory similar to patriarchal milieu. Feminists, mostly the feminists of the second wave, criticised that Jung’s archetypes are actually socio?cultural constructions, not timeless psychological truths. But I think, Jungian theory at least tries to alter the conventional concept of masculinity, where images of masculinity are somehow outdated insofar as they placed tremendous emphasis upon the dominance of the male: the male as the breadwinner, the male as the unquestioned authority, and the male as the heterosexual. Jung tried to redefine that the male is no longer the primary breadwinner, is not necessarily heterosexual, is hardly the unquestioned authority and power-holder and is, within the context of Western societies, not necessarily dominant.

But the social scientists always claim that gender differences in behavior and personality characteristics are, at least in part, socially constructed, and therefore, the product of socialization experiences. Most of the feminists believe that gender role in our society often politicised and manipulated patriarchal society, which then resulted in the oppression of people. Social scientists always try to differentiate biological sex and gender, and though to some extent, they seem to be correct but their extremist outlook suggests an androgynous gender stereotype, which approaches cross-cultural sexual archetypes.

Masculinity and femininity culture thus painted with a gender bias outlook makes both the sexes opposite and rival to one another along with their original characteristics of being complimentary to one another as believed by ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese culture, or even modern Carl Jung’s perception.

Gerda Lerner, a historian and a Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University, wrote a book in 1986 entitled The Creation of Patriarchy. In that book, she claimed that “patriarchy” was something created by Judaism and Christianity. Patriarchy always tries to place masculinity at the centre, never at the margin; always dominant, never subordinated. But actually, if we would omit the patriarchal outlook for masculinity, we find each and every man does not possess hegemonic masculinity and a culturally idealized form of masculine character is totally different from that of hegemonic model of masculinity.

Here, I can’t resist my instinct to share a novela by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), one of the premier Islamic feminists on the Indian subcontinent who is very much discussed in Bangladesh while very little is discussed in West Bengal. And I don’t really know the reason for this! In her English novela Sultana’s Dream (1905), she depicts a fantasy, where a Muslim girl dreamt about a Ladyland, where women were roaming freely on the roads and she met more than hundred women, but not a single man. She felt herself more curious to know where the men had gone and she asked a lady. The lady replied they were in their right place where they ought to be; they were shut indoors. Sultana (the Muslim girl) then asked the lady how it could this be possible when men are mighter than women? To her query, the lady answered that a lion is stronger than a man but it cannot dominate the human race. So the masculine world is kept indoors in a place called ‘mardana,’ where they have to mind babies, cook, and to do all sorts of domestic work, while the outer world is controlled by the feminine masses.

Rokeya’s feminist utopia may be considered as a gender role reversal to highlight the absurdity of the position of women in society. But the main point of discussion here is that all our studies about male hegemony are from a patriarchal viewpoint and not from the individual man’s perspective. Whenever men are studied, they are generally studied from an essentialist perspective, as if their biology predetermined their behavior; as if all men were the same.

But there are men actively supporting female issues. In India, for example, the issue of women’s suffrage and other issues are always initiated and ignited by men. In India, I have discussed in my earlier essays, how the feminist movements are also begun by males [please see: Beyond Mysogyny]. In such cases, how is it practical and accurate to blame masculinity for male hegemony?

Rokeya ‘s novela was originally published in Madras-based The Indian Ladies’ Magazine in 1905. Rokeya also represented the Muslim female mass, who were opressed by the patriarchal religious and social gurus and she fought for their proper education and employment for the female masses within the Shariyat law. Though the condition of the Hindu female mass was not satisfactory, it was better than that of the Muslim mass.

A lot of important social and economic changes have been taking place in India since then as a result of modernization and industrialization. As demands of the times and altered situations, women entered the workforce into fields that previously had been male-dominated. Some examples of these fields are: politics, art, and industrial careers. In the middle classes, there have also been important changes in social norms, largely influenced by international tendencies. These changes affected most of all the identities of gender and the hierarchical relations in marriage and the family. Individualism was increasingly the norm among these social classes and new forms of experiencing gender relations came into the foreground with the questioning of patriarchy. Questions were raised on piety, purity, submissiveness, and the definition of true womanhood. This comes to the front in the discussions about free love, the end of marriage, and the feminization of men.

Femininity and the Feminine Mystique

( The Birth of Venus (Botticelli) is a classic representation of femininity. Source: Wikipedia.)

I want to dedicate this blog to Julie Bodhi Deepika from Belgium whose mails inspired me to write this essay.

While surfing through Wikipedia , I came upon an old story from the Bible, as told by Rabbi Joshua:

"God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam's head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked."

This article, I think represents a patriarchal view of what a woman should be in their eye. A woman should not hold her head high; should not wish to pry into all things; would not wish to hear all things that man could hear; should keep her mouth shut against all the mischievous acts of a masculine world; and should talk less and leave desire to take anything, and even will not envy. It sums up that femininity, then, simply means frilly, flouncy, flippant, frivolous, and fluff-brained.

There are significant gender differences in how women and men socially construct the meaning of femininity in their lives, particularly concerning the intersection of gender, sexuality, and power. Freudian psychoanalyst theory says as women lack the visible genitals of the male, they feel they are "missing" the most thing central necessary for gaining narcissistic value and therefore, they develop a sense of gender inequality and penis envy, which in later periods, has related to power relation between gender. Freud said a little girl when observing the difference between the genital organ of her father or brother and the similarity with her mother, can notice her status of being the second sex, the less dominant sex. From this time of noticing, a girl possesses envy towards the male role model and tries to compare and identify herself with the male role model as the power holder.

According to Freud, sex is the most powerful instinct in humans. This tendency later develops into an Oedipus Complex and an Electra Complex. Being a woman, I can say that this ‘penis envy’ is not at all a significant point for femininity. It is not a proper place to discuss this topic in detail, but I referred to this Freudian psychoanalysis theory, as I have an idea that the formation of genital organs in male and female might have a link with their masculinity and femininity. The male genital is projected outward whereas that of a female remains inward. These structures may create the different characteristics among both genders. Femininity, so an introvert in nature to which some psychosnalysis termed as ‘passive’ while the extrovert masculinity for its outward projection of genital organ as ‘active’. Gerard Hendrik Hofstede, the Dutch scholar (I have discussed and compared his theory with that of Ashish Nandy in one of my earlier essays ) described these differences as ‘Quantity of Life’ and ‘Quality of Life’ repectively.

I solely believe that both masculinity and femininity are different but they are always complimentary to each other. We can’t say which one is superior and which one is inferior. In Samkhya Upanishad, the philosophers of the Vedic period named these as Prakruti and Purusha. But in their concept, Purusha (masculinity) is passive and Prakruti (femininity) is ‘active.’

‘Samkhya philosophy’ also described the creation of life with this Prakruti-Purusha concept. According to this philosophy, this Prakruti is an all pervasive but complex primal substance which is transformed into multifarious nature. The original entity is not found in its original form but remains in a state of equilibrium, and in a non-modified condition. This eternal and infinite principle is lifeless and consists of three inter-reliant and interchangeable elements called the ‘gunas,’ which consists of three parts: sattva, rajas, and tamas. These gunas are not the qualities but rather the constituent parts of Prakruti. They give complexity to Mula (original) Prakruti.

But Purusha is inactive and passive, but also alert and infinite and eternal. Under the inscrutable influence of Purusha, the equilibrium in Prakruti is disturbed and the whole universe of unlimited permutations and combinations comes into existence. The first modification of Prakruti, primordial nature, is called Mahat or Cosmic Intelligence. It further involutes into two forces, 1) Akasha, the primal matter, and 2) Prana, the primal energy. Akasha forms the material basis and Prana the energy basis of creation. From the interaction between Akasha and Prana are formed five delicate elements, crudely translated as Ether, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. In various proportions, these are the constituents of all the material existing in the universe. As can be seen, even Mahat or Intelligence is matter consisting of three gunas and five elements.

I believe the role of femininity can be explained in no other way. Femininity is thus considered as Shakti or a source of energy in ancient Indian Philosophy. It is a regrettable and astonishing fact that while discussing ‘femininity,’ we discuss Christian ideology or psychoanalysts’ point of view but never any day has anyone discussed the idea of this Indian philosophy.

It is correct that the word femininity has not been heard very often as compared to the word ‘feminist.’ I have observed that in the West, only the Christian religious scholars discuss more about ‘femininity’ while the feminist scholars did not like to utter this word ‘femininty’ partly because of stereotypes as opposed to archetypes. They were dedicated to the proposition that the difference between men and women is a matter of mere biology and some of these feminists tried to avoid the word altogether or whenever possible, denying femininity a reality of Nature’s design and making.

On the other hand, throughout the millennia of human history up until the past two decades or so, people took for granted that the differences between men and women were so obvious as to need no comment. They accepted the way things were. Patriarchal society also used this hypothesis as an issue of the gender power battle with male hegemony and adherence to traditional male and female roles. For centuries, the concept of ‘femininity’ has been used for transforming patriarchy, making females to be subordinate in a masculine world. Femininity has always been used with a double standard by patriarchy.

While a nude art or its artist receive appreciation for the aesthetism from society, at the same time, the model has also been criticised for lacking the modesty of femininity. In the name of sexual objectification, both patriarchy and feminism have never adored femininity in any real sense. They impose many taboos and regulation on femininity in the name of keeping it safe and secure.

It is no doubt that due to feminist movement and discourse, we now have the opportunity to express ourselves; to make ourselves more visible in social perspectives; and to embrace our sexuality and sensuality. As Julie relates: “But still, women also have issues. For instance, many girls and women in Western don't totally accept themselves as they are because of the beauty standards the media and society imposes on us. The focus is so much on outward appearance rather than inner beauty.”

And she goes on: “Women also experience so much pressure. They want a career, be independent, have a household, kids, etc., etc....And manage that, ALL at the same time. Still, every woman wants to be feminine and beautiful with her dresses, jewelry, and modest attitudes. They want to be very beautiful and soft, but at the same time, strong. And that kind of women I see as my inspiration -- a humble, kind, loving woman, but at the same time, strong and intelligent.”

In earlier articles, I have discussed these matters in detail to show not only how both patriarchal society and the feminists make the rules and regulations and create the new taboos to make women more controlled in the name of ‘freedom.’

But still, women are subjugated and controlled in the name of ‘modesty’ and are also ignored in the social perspective. Their term of femininity is misunderstood and misused either by patriarchy or by the apostles of the so-called radical feminism.

Personally, I never find any difference between modern femininity and feminism if we consider feminism as a goal to make females strong enough to mark their identity against becoming invisible by those who want them to be. We should be thankful to our predecessor feminists who have made patriarchal man turn into a new masculine entity who believes in gender equality.

I believe femininity is related to ‘shakti’ and being ‘shaktified’ (I borrowed this word from my friend Wahkeena Sitka’s article ‘What Is Shakti?’). We could include power of intelligence (buddhi), compassion (daya), and divine love (bhakti) in our femininity. I also believe that this femininity has a wonderful power.

In our de-gendered times, a really feminine woman is a joy to behold and you can love and unleash your own unique yet universal femininity. We are here for gender sensitivity to proclaim the differences between men and women with a kind of pretence that we are all the same. Too many women have been de-feminized by society.

To be feminine today is to know how to pay attention to detail and people, to have people skills, and to know how to connect to and work well with others. There will be particular times and situations in which you'll want to be more in touch and in tune with your femininity. Being able to choose is a great privilege and a great skill.

Feminine India? Masculine Britain?

Taking Ashish Nandy to Task

It is my friend Malavika Velayanikal, the Principal Correspondent of DNA, Bangalore, who persuaded me to read Ashish Nandy and to share my views on his perception of “Feminine India, masculine Britain.”

Ashish Nandy, who is lesser-known to the Indian public than his brother Pritish Nandy, is an Indian political psychologist, a social theorist, and a contemporary cultural and political critic. He is a recipient of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007 and is also listed among the 100 top intellectuals by “Prospect Magazine” (UK) and “Foreign Policy” (US).

In his book The Intimate Enemy (1983), Nandy discusses how the British occupied India without any blood shedding and hardly any sustained violent response to the colonizers, as opposed to the colonization of Africa and of Latin America. Nandy discusses, in depth, the psychology that the British were masculine in character and that India was feminine in character. Using these metaphors of masculinity and femininity, the British believed in the superiority of the masculine traits over the feminine. I believe there would probably be numerous misconceptions about Nandy’s conception of masculinity/femininity.

In 1998, similar to Nandy, Geert Hofstede, an organizational sociologist who studied the interactions between national cultures and organizational cultures, wrote a book entitled Masculinity and Femininity: The Taboo Dimension of National Cultures. In it, he pointed out that masculine nations believe one should "live in order to work," and that feminine nations feel one should "work in order to live." What is the specific evidence that masculine nations feel that a "performance society is ideal" whereas feminine nations feel a "welfare society is ideal?”

Hofstede created his ideas from the results of a survey conducted by IBM, the well-known computer company. In1970, this multi-national organization sent a questionnaire to its employees across all its branches in 40 nations to find out the results of factor analysis of work goals. From the survey results, Hofstede described his idea of the masculinity/femininity dimension. (See Masculinity and Femininity: The Taboo Dimension of National Cultures, edited by Geert Hofstede, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 1998, 238 pages). Though the goal of IBM’s survey was to find out the work habits of a hypothetical worker from a feminine nation with those of a hypothetical worker from a masculine nation, Hofstede prepared a list of differences in the notion of masculinity and femininity.

Nandy and Hofstede never say, but it is obvious from their books, their idea of femininity is not the same as an ideology of feminism.

Unlike to these two thinkers, Sandra Ruth Lipsitz Bem or popularly known as Sandra Bem, with her book Lenses of Gender, argues how vague the idea of androcentrism (male-centeredness) is, an idea which defines males and male experience as a standard or norm and females and female experience as a deviation from that norm. Nandy and Hofstede, interestingly enough, both are male and both possess a similar attitude that men are inherently the dominant or superior sex, and that both male-female differences and male dominance are natural. These ideas shape not only perceptions of social reality but also the more material things—like unequal pay and inadequate daycare—that constitute social reality itself.

Ideologically, I believe that women are clearly different from men in some ways, and these differences should be considered but not devalued.

As Ashish Nandy has written, “The ultimate authority in the Indian mind has always been feminine.” And he very cleverly has tried to link Gandhi’s non-violent Satyagraha with a feminine approach. Let us study how sexist Nandy’s idea is when he compares everything in our tradition and politics with a gender bias outlook. It is no doubt that sexism is bias. Bias is when you have particular opinions about some group of people, and you then apply them to the individual. Unlike India in Britain, myths are also created to glorify femininity.

Is everything which related to harsh, crude, power and potentiality related to masculine characteristics and those related to soft, submissive or cooperative mutual understandings related to femininity? What about the men who are gender-liberated, anti-homophobic and sex-positive pro-feminists? Are they called feminine?

An Unconventional Family is the second book of Sandra Bem and is an autobiographical account of the Bems’ nearly 30-year marriage. It is both a personal history of the Bems’ past and a social history of a key period in feminism’s past. In1965, when psychologists Sandra Lipsitz and Daryl Bem met and married, they were determined to function as truly egalitarian partners. During the next ten years, they exuberantly shared the details of their daily lives in both public lectures and the mass media in order to provide at least one concrete example of an alternative to the traditional heterosexual family. What would Nandy say about Daryl Bem? Would Bem be feminine?

Another question that may be asked to Ashish Nandy is, what is the criteria he used to measure femininity?

Judy Giles, the first woman in the UK to gain a doctorate in Women's Studies writes in her book The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity how women experienced modernization. She argues that the working-class women of Britain did not feel the same need as their bourgeois counterparts for a private life apart from their families. They also did not value formal education, which Giles states is based on patriarchal western thought and not as empowering as the second wave feminists have argued. Further, Giles shows that homemakers were not as passive or unsatisfied as these feminists often portrayed them. Not only did they frequently ignore the messages of mass advertising, but they also participated in local, regional, and national social and political organizations. So if we agree with Gill, feminine characteristics have to be divided as per their class statistics and hence Nandy could be asked which class he would secure for India to retain its feminine character?

In Britain, and all over the world, many men are getting more involved with the feminism movement to support their cause. In 2008, Jon Waters set up the London Pro-feminist Men’s Group. Hannah Cann published her interview with Jon Waters in York Uni Women's Society magazine. Why Pro-Feminist? Jon Waters replied to the question:

“Well, we discuss it now and again... Not everyone agrees with the name. Some think that we should be called an ‘anti-sexist men’s group.’ There’s the idea that we don’t want to colonize a term for a movement set up by women for the liberation of women, and that calling ourselves male feminists or something similar would suggest we don’t understand and aren’t sensitive to the issues. However, plenty of feminists argue that feminism is for all people who want equality, and that men ought to call themselves feminists as they are fighting the same fight as female feminists. I think we’re happy calling ourselves pro-feminists and helping to define what exactly that term means by simply existing under that title!” (See: http://londonprofeministmensgroup.blogspot.com/)

Hence the old pattern of a patriarchal society has also been changing and now in the post-modern period, radical feminism has lost its importance and it is now time to think about the new dimension of feminism. But Nandy, away from this modernity, always places himself ideologically as having a conservative and orthodox outlook, which I will say is more radical and fundamentalist in thought. In his various other articles, Nandy has supported the ‘sati system,’ which is the custom of widow-burning on a deceased husband's pyre, a controversial topic in contemporary India. Nandy argues the ‘sati system’ is also necessary to maintain respect towards women committed to this custom. I failed to understand what he meant when he writes ‘respect’ in connection with women? Does he want to say that ‘chastity’ is the only respect of woman? I don’t find any difference between any fundamentalist religious guru (either from Hinduism or from Islam) and Mr. Nandy, who deliberately denies a women’s right over their body. Does Nandy think that woman are such helpless creatures that they would not protect themselves and a masculine bodyguard is always required to safeguard their genital parts, when most of the religious gurus consider the genital part of a woman is the most significant asset to protect her prestige. So, being assaulted physically for a woman is a normal phenomena for these intellectuals than the so-called adultery of a woman.

The irony of the present day’s growth of post-modern fundamentalism, whether religious or political, is that it tries to raise women's consciousness and not only encourages the emergence of a vocal faction of middle-class women’s determination to reinterpret fundamentalism. These activities, though, overtly show their aim as empowering the strength of women while the hidden agenda is to make the consciousness silent under a false aroma. Slowly but surely in the process, women surrender the course of their own destiny and that of their collective history to fundamentalist ideas. This is a new form of post-modern patriarchy which works under the banner of ‘progressive intellectualism.’

I can’t remember now the name of the author whose few sentences impressed me while reading her works. Her words go something like this: feminists have to be pragmatic about the choice of their strategies, overtly and covertly; anonymous and public; gradual and confronting; and incidental and continuously.

The fight against fundamentalism can also mean simply to continue living your own life as a woman.

The Beauty Dilemma

That day, one of my younger colleagues wore a pair of earrings, which made her face bright and beautiful, and she looked quite pretty and we, that is, all the female teachers, appreciated this. Meanwhile, one of our senior male colleagues made comments about her ‘so provocative’ get up. “What is the difference between ‘beautiful’ and ‘provocative?’ ” I asked that older teacher. And he replied, “Whatever it may be argued, but a teacher should keep herself away from any fashion.” I laughed and told him that “I wish if Betty Friedan were here, she could see how similar her ideas are with yours.” Certainly my old colleague doesn’t know who Betty Friedan is, so he considered it as a complement to him!

Betty Friedan (1921) was a leading figure in the "second wave" of the U.S. Women's Movement and is mostly known for her book The Feminine Mystique, which is considered as a succeeding effort of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Simone’s great comment “One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman” made her successor feminists so much influenced that the total attitude of second wave feminists changed. Simone wrote The Second Sex in 1949. In French, Le Deuxième Sexe. Jonathan Cape first translated it into English and it came to America in 1953. In that book, Simone wrote that patriarchy always attempts to trap a woman into an impossible ideal by denying the individuality and situation of all different kinds of women. Patriarchy tries to impose an authentic false aura of ‘womanhood’ in them.

In 1963, ten years after The Second Sex was published in America, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published. In this book, the author described the social pressures on women to be ‘beautiful’ as an example of a patriarchal society's conspiracy against them. She explained that to serve women as good consumers of the thousands of products and services, the fashion industry consciously manipulates its portrayal of women. Although Friedan's book focused primarily on advertising's images of women as housewives, in later periods, radical feminists focused on advertising’s use of sexual implication and feminine attraction to sell products, and the term ‘sex object’ was coined and became part of the English-speaking vocabulary.

The advertising industry was blamed, and there were protests against the cosmetic and fashion industries. Women were asked by these feminists to give up cosmetics and fashions. In 1968, a group of women picketing the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City tossed their bras in the garbage getting instant media coverage and hence, the term "bra-burners" entered the media vocabulary as a pejorative for feminists.

Then came Naomi Wolf and Ariel Levy with their books The Beauty Myth (1991) and Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005) respectively. Both the books are considered to be successors to The Feminine Mystique, where like Friedan, the writers argue that to make a woman interested in fashion and beauty culture is purely political and also a part of the process to maintain the patriarchal system. Naomi Wolf argues, in The Beauty Myth that American culture’s images of beauty -- found on television, in advertisements, women's magazines, and pornography -- are detrimental to women and are a weapon used to make women feel badly about themselves. In Ariel Levy’s book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, she states that there are two types of feminists: ‘lipstick feminists’ and ‘loophole women.’ According to Levy, lipstick feminists believe, for example, that stripping is empowering and that putting on a show to attract men (be it through makeup, clothing, or girl-on-girl gyration) is not contrary to the goals and ideals of feminism. These feminists sometimes exaggerated in their essays by adding overstated and false facts. These can be observed from few excerpts of Wolf’s book:

“A century ago, normal female activity, especially the kind that would lead women into power, was classified as ugly and sick. If a woman read too much, her uterus would 'atrophy.' If she kept on reading, her reproductive system would collapse and, according to the medical commentary of the day, 'we should have before us a repulsive and useless hybrid'...Participation in modernity, education and employment was portrayed as making Victorian women ill...Victorians protested women's higher education by fervidly imagining the damage it would do to their reproductive organs...and it was taken for granted that 'the education of women would sterilize them' and make them sexually unattractive: 'When a women displays scientific interest, then there is something out of order in her sexuality.”

Wolf was against the feminine idea of getting slim by just going on a diet to lose weight in order to make one’s fitness in beauty competitions. She claimed this tendency may create diseases like Anorexia and Bulimia. These are eating disorders. Wolf falsified facts in her said book, quoting “The American Anorexia and Bulimia Association” [reports] that “anorexia and bulimia strike one million American women every year...Each year 150,000 American women die of anorexia.” Later, Gloria Marie Steinem, a feminist journalist quoted the same facts in her book Revolution from Within (1992) which supported these facts. But after publication of The Beauty Myth, the president of the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association denied the fact. In a 1985 newsletter, the association hadn't referred to deaths at all, but rather to anorexia sufferers, a state prone to subjective assessment. In 1988, the National Center for Health Statistics reported 67 deaths from anorexia, and its Division of Vital Statistics reported 54 deaths in 1991. The figures used by these feminists for anorexia deaths are 2,238 and 2,777 percent greater than that found by any serious scientific source!

Many times western feminists, especially the second wave feminists, adopted these fanatics, falsified, or wrong determinations to challenge the patriarchal hegemony of the “sex/gender system.” Simone’s ideas made the feminists of the second wave keep themselves away from the masculine world. They refused to make themselves instruments (objects) towards masculine sexual pleasure and even kept themselves away from heterosexuality. We find the feminists of that time were either bisexual or lesbians. The result was that many women who generally supported feminism were not prepared to fully accept the ideological underpinnings proposed by these radicals and socialist feminists. Linda Scott, a pop singer feminist admits in her book Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism that feminism had suffered a lot because of its views on beauty and fashion.

Fashion is a barometer of cultural changes. It not only embraces clothing, but also accessories, jewelry, hairstyles, beauty, and body art. What we wear and how and when we wear it provides others with a shorthand to subtly read the surface of a social situation. Fashion is a form of non-verbal communication to indicate occupation, rank, gender, sexual availability, locality, class, wealth, and group affiliation. Fashion is a form of free speech. It is the best form of iconography we have to express individual identity. Popular personalities are known to us by their fashion.

For example, Mahatma Gandhi’s short ‘dhoti,’ bare body, round spectacles, and long stick is sufficient to make his iconography. Further, we can easily associate icons with Karl Marx for his thick beard, Abraham Lincoln for his attire, and Indira Gandhi for her short hair. In fact, cartoonists routinely use the individual fashion of a personality as a part of their iconography.

For centuries, the authority (state, society, or religion) tended to grip its control over individuals on the use of fashion. Emperor Napoleon stopped the import of English textiles and he revived the local fabric industry so that fine fabrics like tulle and batiste could be made there. To make women buy more material, he forbade them to wear the same dress more than once to court. During the Emergency in 1970, Indira Gandhi imposed a ban against the wearing of ‘bell bottom pants’ by girls and the keeping long ‘hippie hair’ by boys. Police were authorized to cut the pants and hairs of the students. I remember my father bought two ‘saris’ for me, though I was not comfortable with this long-wear style. The orthodox semi socio-political parties now run their schools in India, where they impose a dress code not only for students but also for teachers as well. In my state of Orissa and in other states also, the government has imposed dress codes for students. In Judaism and Islam, they have a written dress code in their Holy books. In many religions, though there are no written codes, a magnificent nonverbal practice has been traditionally continuing.

The authorities always show a reluctant attitude for any change in the system of fashion. Socially, there is a great difference between taboo and fashion. Every society prescribed fashions for different genders and the modification in these items are considered as fashion, but the use of the other gender’s item is called ‘taboo.’ Hence society considers cross-dressing as a taboo, not as a fashion.

Indian readers will remember that once, the orthodox Muslim Mullahs raised their objection on the wearing of short pants to Sania Mirza, an international tennis player. Ironically, she was asked to wear traditional Muslim dresses while playing tennis.

But history shows us that with the change of time, these taboos are sometimes also changed to fashion. In the last few decades of the nineteenth century, when trousers were first introduced for women instead of traditional skirts, The New York Times pointed out the trend as “A Curious Disease” in its editorial and wrote: women in trousers needed treatment in “the best conducted hospitals for the insane” ( see: The NY Times May 27, 1876 p.6 ).But after Second World War, trousers became the mass uniform for ladies. Trousers may have been begun to be worn during WW II as many women went to work in ammunitions and other factories there to help the war effort and due to the unavailability of men.
In the early 1980s, fashion designers tried to create a groundswell of skirt-wearing men in the previously skirt-phobic regions of the West, but the fashion never caught on with the public. So, we can’t say that the ‘market’ (which includes advertising) does not decide the trend of fashions but it is the consumer who decides what to adopt or what not to adopt.

Sometimes institutions or authorities introduce this cross-dressing as a new fashion to society. The woman empowerment policy of government in India made trouser and shirt as a mass uniform for the women members in the police and home guards. The leftist Maoist-Leninist Political Party, popularly known as Naxal in India, prepared their own comrades for guerilla warfare and they introduced trousers and shirts for its women fighters. Nobody asked the authenticity or peculiarity of these fashions or are these not counted as the cross-dressing?
In the third wave or post-modern era of feminism, some feminists came forward with their Avant-garde idea to save feminism in America. The long tradition of denying feminine mystique was again put on trial and the issue of personal appearance has been used repeatedly as an instrument of power and control within the women’s movement, reinforcing biases of class, education, and ethnicity. These Avant-garde feminists pointed out that people in every culture and throughout history have groomed and decorated themselves, and for a complex variety of reasons, not just sexual attraction.

The eighties saw a group of “American feminists” come forward to counter the ideas of The Beauty Myth and its followers. Lois Banner's American Beauty (1983), Rita Freedman's Beauty Bound (1985), and Valerie Steele's Fashion and Eroticism (1985) were some landmarks, which opposed the radical and social feminist’s idea that beauty and fashion subjugate over the power of women. They argued that the use of fashion and beauty products evolved as a rejection of the Victorian prohibition on sensual expression and that it is absurd to blame fashion, as such, for turning women into sexual objects as men and women look differently and do different things. Rather than considering beauty products as symbols of oppression, these new feminists urged the pragmatic recognition that beauty is one of the few paths to power that women have whether they be producing or consuming. For example, nearly all the founders of major cosmetics companies in America were women: Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubenstein, Estée Lauder, Dorothy Gray, and others.

In India, feminism does not have such variances in dimension as in America. Here, still feminists show their neutral attitude for fashion and beauty. Rather the anti-feminists or misogyny attitudes try to get a control over feminine fashion and beauty culture. But there is a strange similarity in the attitude of Western social and radical feminists of the second wave and the patriarchal society of India as far as the sexual objectification of women is concerned. Both of them believe women have often been valued mainly for their physical attributes. Here in our country, the ‘izzat’ (prestige or pride) of a family means a lot and it is always associated with the ‘chastity’ of female members of the family. If a boy falls in love with a girl, the boy’s family does not have to care for the loss of their ‘izzat,’ but on the other hand the girl’s family feels they have lost their ‘izzat,’ when a daughter falls in love with a boy. So the ‘authority’ of a family often shows too much concern about the fashion, get up, and behavior of the female members of their family. The restrictions are enforced and different behaviourial codes are created. Though the ‘head of the family’ requires the female members of the family to obey that behavioural code, the male members of that same family may show excess affiliation towards the female of other families who are prone to fashion or beauty make ups.

But the contradictory fact is, still ‘beauty parlours’ are brooding up in small to smaller urban areas and even if in semi-urban villages. The tribal girls, who were supposed to adopt ‘natural’ get up, are also showing their fascination for stylish haircuts or in using cosmetics. The ‘fashion’ is not restricted to any age group and we can see all age groups (16-60) show their interest in beauty culture. Today, beauty parlours are not limited to just female customers; they have added male customers as well. Still reluctant attitudes have prevailed in society regarding feminine fashion.

Actually in our subcontinent, we are living with a great paradoxical confusion. The patriarchal restrictions differ with variance of caste, class, and even vary from region to region. In rural areas, the restrictions are more than in urban areas. In comparison to urban areas, those in the Metro (big cities) areas are more liberal. The liberal attitudes again depend on literacy also. So, in such a mixed and confused state, it is difficult to generalize any statement. But above all, it is true that still in India, the grip of patriarchy is very much present and most masculine groups, irrespective of caste, creed, class, region, or language, would not prefer to see that their ‘izzats’ (women in their families) are enjoying complete freedom like them.

A Voyage to Women's Inner Core

(A still picture from the video ‘Original Sin’ (1993/94) by Polish female artist Alicja Zebrowska, who critically explores sex and sexuality. Setting the female body alongside religious symbolism has been a recurrent motif of avant-garde female Polish artists since the 1990s. )

Rebati, a country girl of Orissa in India in the end of nineteenth century, had intended to read and learn more though she could manage to learn many devotional songs, the bhajanas and could memorise the verses of Holy Bhagwat. Her father Shyambandhu Mohanty, a village tax collector for the local landlord Zamindars arranged for a private tutor named Basudev Mohapatra. This teacher, popularly known as Basu Master, was the only teacher of the village upper primary school and was graduated from Cuttack Normal School. Rebati’s grandma was against such a type of liberation to Rebati as she thought reading and writing were not the job for a girl. Instead, she should learn cooking, housekeeping, sewing or other skills which were meant for a girl. But Shyambandhu did not pay attention to his mother’s complaints.

During their tuition, a silent love affair was developed between that teacher and the student, although they did not express their feelings in a verbal manner. The story turned tragic mode when Shyambandhu and his wife died of Cholera, one after the other. The Zamindar overthrew the facilities given to Shyambandhu and the family was in distress. As Basudev was the only male person closer to that family, he came forward to take the responsibility of these two dismayed women. But perhaps God was more cruel than we thought and Basudev, while he was on a short tour to another examination, also died of Cholera, leaving Rebati and her grandma totally alone and without any support or shelter. Adding to these serial deaths and other consequences, Rebati’s grandma began to believe that these misfortunes were the result of a curse for Rebati’s education. She blamed and began to rebuke Rebati for her unusual role of showing interest in male chores. Rebati was harassed, mentally broken after the death of her parents and of her lover mentor Basudev and she felt herself sick and at last died, leaving the grandma lonely.

“Rebati,” written by Fakir Mohan Senapati in Oriya in 1898, is a landmark story of Indian fiction with many extraordinary and advanced qualities in comparison with other stories written at that time in Indian literature. It is the first story, written about middle class life. The stories of that time were mostly based on the royal family. It is also the premier story which dealt with feminism and especially with women’s right for education.

Some queries and doubts have been expressed by my students from time to time of how it could be possible for a ten-year-old girl to find herself mentally involved with a grown up man and why Shyambandhu did not send her to school when there was an upper primary school in the village. In the story, all the supporters of women’s education had died while the grandma, who differed with them and opposed female education remained alive until the end of the story. Did Fakirmohan want to send a message that education of females was a fatal decision for society?

Rebati was only a ten-year-old girl. Assuming the present day’s situation, a ten year old girl was a mere child for either marriage or for love. But if we consider the nineteenth century Indian culture, a ten-year-old girl is quite old enough for starting her young-age activities. In 1806, the age of marriage for a girl had been set at ten years old. The Special Marriage Bill raised it to 14 years old for Brahmos in 1872. And in 1891, the age was raised to 12 years old for all girls. But reformers considered this to be barbarically low and their attempts to raise the age of consent still further were seen by conservatives as an attack on Hindu culture.

The story was a unique presentation of social conditions in the countrysides in India. When contemporary readers try to imagine these conditions in comparison with those of today, it seems to them somehow unbelievable, impractical, and impossible, though these conditions were prevailing at that time. These consequences and change in scenario prove the tremendous social changes in our social life in the last century only.

In the eighteenth century, there was no standardised institutional education facilities for young children in India. They were taught reading, writing of Vernacular language, specially aimed with reading skill for all Puranas and Shastras, and perhaps a little arithmetic and Sanskrit. Reading and writing were not so mandatory for girls; they were taught cooking, sewing, and household management. Above all, education was a family responsibility, not a social obligation. The administration or the King’s court had nothing to do with this education system.

Perhaps the best known educational arrangement in pre-colonial India was lying with the hand of private tutors who opened the ‘village schools’ (known as ‘chahali’, ‘chatsala’ or ‘pathashala’) and it was a traditional ancestral occupation for such teachers. A legal entitlement to standardised instruction for all children was first implemented by the British in the eighteenth century and schools and colleges for vernacular and English education and even Madrassas for Arabic or Persian educations were established. But the education of females still remained in miserable condition as middle-class parents still did not like the idea of educating their girls with language or arithmetic.

At the beginning of nineteenth century, a British company started to educate Indians and opened schools for the children. In 1821, the Church Missionary Society of India decided to establish 30 schools for Hindu girls and Miss Mary Anne Cooke was asked to manage them. The first boarding school for girls was founded in Thirunelveli in that year. By 1840, six schools with a total enrollment of 200 Hindu girls were constructed. Until the mid nineteenth century, the Church Missionary Society had an enrollment of 8,000 girls under its banner. In 1871, for the first time, a school for Hindu girls was set-up at Cuttack and even after the school ran for ten years, the number of girls had only increased to a mere 25 (Source: Utkal Deepika, Vol 16, No 44, Nov 5, 1881).

“Rebati” was written in 1898, where the protagonist’s father employed a village master for her daughter’s tuition at home. The story was not merely a love story as Rebati never asked for love from her mentor Basu Master. In the story, except a ‘smile,’ the readers could not access any picturisation of love ideas.

Fakir Mohan was associated with the first girls’ school of Orissa and after ten years of the school was established, only four Hindu girls were enrolled. Senapati was one of the persons who got the attention of parents and urged them to send their girls to the school in larger numbers. But in his story, the family of Rebati has been ruined and her grandmother believed that this disaster was a result of enforcing girls’ education against tradition. Fakir Mohan was not an idealistic propagandist unlike other writers of his time. He didn’t want to glamourise girls’ education but tried to portray the idea of his contemporary society regarding this education.

Some critics try to project the central theme of the story of being confined to women’s education. But really, it is the first Indian short story which deals with the identity and sexuality of women. Female sexuality in the nineteenth century was oppressed by a patriarchal society. Though girls were married-off between the ages of 8-10 years old, the age limit of their grooms was not confined by the society of that time and it was normal to find a middle-aged man getting married to a girl his daughter’s age. Remarriage for a man was not banned while remarriage of a widow was not allowed.

Widows were supposed to live pious life and were not allowed entry in any celebration. Their presence in any good work was considered to be a bad sign. Sometimes the heads of widows were also shaved.

Also, as a result of these child marriages, there were more problems such as increased birth rate, poor health of women due to repeated child bearing, and a high mortality rate among women and children.

The use of veil or the ‘purdah’ system in North India was also widely prevalent in nineteenth century. It was used to protect the women folk from the eyes of foreign rulers who invaded India in the medieval period. But this system also curtailed the freedom of women. Indian patriarchy at that time wanted to control a woman’s sexuality by subjecting different ethical moral rules on them.

It is no doubt a trauma for a girl to be married before she reaches puberty and to subject herself to ‘sex’ when she is not mentally or physically prepared for a ‘sexual relationship.’ Normal marital sexual relations for women [and girls] at that time often resulted in feelings of being raped. And they were supposed to live under these inhuman conditions for the sake of some implicit false moral code.

‘Gender’ was a central issue for the nationalists and reformists in colonial nineteenth century India. In middle of the twentieth century, when India gained independence, these issues were a central theme in democratic constitutions. The constitution laid the term and idea of ‘woman’ disuniting from the idea of ‘woman’ lying with colonial concept in the minds of people.

The 86th constitutional amendment has also made elementary education a fundamental right for children between the ages of 6 and 14 years old. According to the 2001 census, the total literacy rate in India is 65.38 percent while the female literacy rate is only 54.16 percent. The gap between rural and urban literacy rate is also very significant in India. This is evident from the fact that only 59.4 percent of rural population is literate as compared to 80.3 percent of the urban population, according to the 2001 census.

In 1971, only 22 percent of Indian women were literate but by the end of 2001, 54.16 percent had achieved literacy. This represents an increase of around 33 percent. The growth of the female literacy rate is 14.87 percent as compared to 11.72 percent for males. These results would seem to indicate that there were now many ‘Rebatis’ emerging in Indian social life to greatly contribute to the needs of women for a free life away from and outside the control of patriarchal values.

Soon after, these ‘Rebatis’ found themselves in ‘bread-earner’ status, unlike their previous status of being solely dependent on ‘patriarchy’ for their own existence. They also have benefited from the results of self-determination, statehood, democracy, progress, modernity, and development. Thus, the total outlook on their new status lead to confirm their identity and right over their own sexuality. It was not like that in colonial times; nobody raised her voice about feminine identity.

There were some writers like Toru Dutt (born: 1856) who signified the binary gender theory with egalitarian outlook. In her Sonnet—The Lotus, both Cupid and Flora engage in a deliberative process—carefully weighing the merits and claims of each flower—but, ultimately, the poetess stresses upon us that it is Flora, not Cupid, who decides the question. The proclamation of women’s sexuality within the Indian tradition incorporates Eastern as well as Western allusions. In her poem “Savitri,” included in her Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882), she portrays Savitri as a free woman. It is true that Toru Dutt was not a suitable person to represent an Indian poetess of that time as most of her time she lived in Europe. Her parents moved to Europe when she was a mere child of 13 years. Her parents were more inclined to Western culture and Toru Dutt continued her writings in both French and English.

In later periods, many such ‘Rebatis’ emerged in Indian literature and contributed greatly to women’s rights over their sexuality away from an outside control of patriarchal values. Ismat Chugtai (born: 1911), Amrita Pritam (born: 1919) and Kamla Das (born: 1934) were three prominent personalities in Indian Literature, who were born in colonial India and used to write in post-colonial days, and put the status of women relating to their sexuality in their writing. Their creative output added a philosophical base to claim that sexuality is not a hidden subject, and they tried to write on the topics which the patriarchal society often considered very scary, unspeakable, and shameful to contemplate.

Chughtai's most famous Urdu story is “Lihaf” (The Quilt) included in her short stories collection The Quilt and Other Stories is a pioneering achievement. When it was first published, Chughtai had to defend herself before the Imperial Crown Court of India. The story deals with a lesbian encounter in a Zenana (an all-women setting) in a traditional Muslim household. The protagonist in the story, a housewife, is so lonely in her husband's house that she takes a female servant as her lover. In another story “The Veil,” the beautiful young bride is forbidden by Hindu tradition to remove her own veil, and thus, is forced to disobey her husband. Indeed, Chughtai's stories offer insightful glances into the rebellious character of the female mind over a patriarchal system. She began writing in Urdu at a time when South Asian women were still sequestered and their voice suppressed.

Chugtai was born in a not-so-orthodox Muslim family where her father was a civil servant. She was the ninth of ten children (six brothers, four sisters), and since her older sisters got married while she was very young, most of her childhood was spent in the company of her brothers and according to her, this contributed greatly to the frankness in her nature and writing. Ismat Chugtai was at her best when she wrote about ordinary people, especially women. The better part of her writing shows a deep and abiding preoccupation with women’s issues, particularly their cultural status and their myriad roles in Indian society. By underscoring women’s struggles against the oppressive institutions of her time, she brings to her fiction an understanding of the female psyche that is unique.

Another frank-speaking writer, Amrita Pritam, also deals with the politics of female sexuality and questions of gender identity in her writing with an immediate political context. Born in a school teacher’s family in Gujranwala, Punjab, now in Pakistan, she got married at the age of sixteen and later she found it was difficult to stay with a man to whom she never ever loved. She was in love with Sahir Ludhianvi, a Urdu poet and left her husband but Sahir then had a new woman in his life and did not marry Amrita. Later, she lived the last forty years of her life with the renowned artist and writer, Imroz. Amrita’s life was like an open book (so to speak) and she neither wanted to hide anything nor did she deny anything in her writings. Her own life made her beliefs strong and she used her poems and fiction to depict the sexual politics played against woman by society of that time. Whatever she experienced, she recorded in her poems and novels. Her legendary love for Sahir Ludhianv or for Imroz was the subject of so many of her anecdotes which revolved around her love for these two men. Once her son asked her, “People say that I am Sahir Uncle's son.” Imagine the inner courage and conviction of a woman who could reply, “I wish you were Sahir Uncle's son.” Though writing in Punjabi, Amrita Pritam could represent the south Asian women’s voices regarding love and sexual politics.

Another bilingual writer who could make her voice prominent to protest patriarchal values and established her will to proclaim sexual politics over female body was Kamala Das. She had a natural flair for both Malayalam and English. She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair (Nallappattu) family having Royal ancestry. Her father was a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and her mother, Nalappatt Balamani Amma, was a renowned Malayali poetess. Her formal education stopped at the age of 15 when she was married to K. Madhava Das. She was 16 when her first son was born and she said once, “I was mature enough to be a mother only when my third child was born.” Because of the great age difference between Kamala and her husband, Mr. Das often played a fatherly role for both Kamala and her sons. Her husband often encouraged her to associate with people of her own age. My Story is considered as her outspoken autobiography and is also a source of controversy. It contains the clear picture of her multiple affairs, her strained relationship with her husband and so many hidden facts of her life.

In an interview, she admits that her husband was the greatest supporter of her writing career and even when controversy swirled around Das' sexually-charged poetry and her unabashed autobiography, My Story, Das' husband was “very proud” of her (Warrior interview). After the death of her husband, in 1999, Das converted herself to Islam and married a young chap. The poetess who always wrote about Lord Krishna and imagined to be his Radha suddenly started to address Allah. Her statement, “I converted my Krishna to Islam” evoked much opposition from conservative Hindus in Kerala. However, she was bold in her decisions and continues her life according to Muslim beliefs.

The sexuality of women, which was depicted in Chugtai’s fiction in generalised form, became more personified with Amrita and Kamala Das’ writings. In comparison with Amrita, Das more honestly extends her exploration of womanhood and love, but her poetess self can think while sleeping in her lover’s arm, ‘What is it to the corpse if the maggots nip?’ (See Das’s poem In “The Maggots” from the collection, The Descendants) Indian women, however, do not discuss these experiences in reverence to social customs. Das consistently refuses to accept their silence. Feelings of longing and loss are not confined to a private misery. They are invited into the public sphere and acknowledged. Das was so daring to describe her idea in total frankness that she could tell: “(the) musk of sweat between breasts/ The warm shock of menstrual blood" should not be hidden from one's beloved. (See Das’ poetry collection: The Descendants). The poetess argues, “A woman should stand nude before the glass with him” and “allow her lover to see her exactly as she is.” (See the poem ‘The Looking Glass’ from The Descendants ).

What would be the differences of time between old Rebati and these new Rebatis? Say merely fifty years? But the time, the tone, the outlook, and the surroundings were totally changed and created a gap between colonial and post-colonial milieus. The Rebati of Fakir Mohan did not speak a word to her lover Basudev, but only smiled once during the tuition. But the Rebati of Kamala Das could say:’

“(They) Ask me, everybody, ask me

What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,

A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake

Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like

A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,

And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is

Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price....

(‘The Stone Age’ from Kamala Das’ The Old Playhouse and Other Poems)

(Readers can read and download the English translation of "Rebati" from http://grassrootsbooksindia.com/frontend/book.php?autcode=1&codetype=U)