The twenty-one years of Pakistan have come to mean much more to a
women for, while for a man wider scope to the all ready existing though
limited activities, to a women it meant the beginning of a change in her
very “being”. The realization that it is one thing “to be” what one is, and
quite another what one “ought to be” is a revolution. And when revolution
comes there is bound to be a lot of sound and fury signifying tremendous
possibilities, and the smugness of the upholders of the old values and
systems is bound to receive many a rude and unexpected shocks. Their lot
then is a perpetual harking back to the “good old
days.”
But for a Pakistani
women, the first disillusionment with the “good old days” came with the sad
gory tale enacted in East Punjabi and other parts of Bharat with its
repercussions in Pakistan. In this the female of the human specie was not
even given a chance to die for what she believed or stood for. She was
abducted and raped and made to live in shame and ignominy. Even her own
people did not receive her happily for no fault of hers. All this raised
many questions in her mind: Life is not easy, it is a mighty challenge;
alongside beauty and harmony, there is ugliness and sordid realities. Should
then a women be kept sheltered, hidden, absolutely innocent and oblivious of
all this? Must not she be made tough, bold, self-confident and knowledgeable
about the world she has to live in, move and have her being? Is
innocence a virtue? Is sheltered piety and chastity an achievement? All
these doubts penetrated our unthinking smugness and reverberated in private
discussions and public debates. In sheer disgust at the 1947 happenings many
discarded ‘purdah’ and with or without the cooperation of the family decided
to venture into a world hitherto unknown, with all the hazards of
inexperience and the hostility and antipathy of the
environment.
Sometimes sheer necessity and hard realities of life and
circumstances makes the society give in spite of itself. The British
authorities and the public ridiculed and thwarted the efforts of the
“suffragettes”, but when during the First World War they justified
themselves by manning manifold activities behind the battle-lines, they got
the right to vote as soon as the war ended. In the post-partition days the
gruesome and colossal, problem of the refugees who poured into Pakistan into
Pakistan, maimed and penniless, by the millions, needed first aid and care.
Women, some of whom had till then hardly stepped out of their homes expect
for certain conventionally accepted occasions-marriages, births, deaths and
festivals—were now working shoulder to shoulder with men, sharing the
national triumph and tragedy as never before. This experience was bound to
open new avenues of service for them on a larger scale than it ever was in
pre-partition days. There was no going back because they had achieved
satisfaction in something that was more than just procreation. It was a case
of an inner awakening, a conscious realization that she is not what she
ought to be. There was a powerful though a vague restlessness within her for
a fuller human life. Now, once this awakening has come, whether it is in a
man or a woman, it has to follow its logical course. This is where I would
like to strike a note of dissent, for it is high time that
somebody did it, and this with reference to the “Westernization of Women.” I
confidently assert that the slogan is misleading and unfair to the women of
Pakistan for it detracts us form the real thing. No doubt that the dynamic
impact of American leadership in almost every field includes also the
cultural externalia of life. But these cultural tags adopted by women or
men, for that matter, are a passing phase even in the land of their birth.
What matters is the “inner awakening” and that is independent of nay
influence. This awakening cannot be artificially injected, nor can it be
suppressed for long once it comes. Its natural sequence is application of
reason and logic, rejection of authority and the demand for conviction in
answer to the question why? The human attribute of the freedom to choose
asserts itself, independent thinking is manifested, search light is thrown
on the inconsistencies
My plea is: As t is, the process of change is never easy. It is the
most trying and difficult period of any nation’s history. We only make it
more difficult by our irrational and unsympathetic attitude. whatever is
happening anywhere in the world is a matter of cause and effect. Whenever we
criticize or pass a judgment we should take this into consideration. I have
analyzed just one probable cause above. Another could be the hypocrisy and
false piety of the elders. In the West it could also be a reaction to the
inhabitations and sexless ness of Christianity. An incomplete understanding
of Freud’s psycho-analysis of the libido could be another. In short, what
needs to be done is to find out the root cause and remove it. it is unfair
to throw the whole onus on the emancipated women. It is unfair again that
the men folk enjoying too free a license themselves, for this very reason,
wish to enclose their wives and daughters in boxes, if it were
possible.
So much for Westernization. The fact remains that in spite of
everything, a Pakistani girl has a bad start in life. From the cradle,
onwards to girlhood and womanhood, she is under unhealthy influences. Her
very birth to begin with is an apology. Parents are generally offered
consolation in the words of an old proverb—“rain of always preceded by a
storm” (rain being a boy, storm a girl.) indeed there are very few
homes where absolute unawareness of any discrimination between boys and
girls pervades its atmosphere. Even the most wanted and beloved of daughters
will soon come to know that she is the source of all evil on this earth. At
every step the theory of Adman and Eve comes in her way. Eve was created
from Adam’s rib, hence she is crooked! Any attempt to straighten her will break her. She is weak
because she was easily misled by Stan to partake of the forbidden fruit
(incidentally, the Satan could not influence Adam!) she is a wicked
temptress because she tempted Adam to commit the original sin. Logically
therefore she is the cause of our having lost Paradise, and logically again
she will constitute the majority in hell. But the logic ends here and
contradictions begin. Although she is the weaker vessel and the source of
all evil( it is also said she has no soul) it is she on whom religious rites
and ceremonies are imposed more rigidly and it is she who is to bear the
greater responsibility of morality and righteousness (boys will be boys any
way!) a very interesting contradiction emerges from another aspect of Adam
and Eve story. Adam who was created first and started feeling lonely, so Eve
was created for him to assuage his loneliness. In other words, the existence
of a woman has no right of its own. The only justification of her existence
is as to how much she can please and comfort a man, and she is stripped off
all other human attributes. Ultimately, her role is restricted to
procreation, all other human creative roles being denied to her. So far so
good. But when the woman dutifully starts playing the roles assigned to her
and flaunts her sex appeal around, the whole society screams out in horror.
And when the woman makes an attempt to become more human with all this
creative possibilities, she is described as an intellectual monstrosity, and
one who is no longer “feminine”.
The Pakistani woman is in revolt against all these contradictions and
such fallacious reasoning. By revolting no doubt she has challenged the
established order that is not only considered right and natural because it
has so many centuries behind it, but also considered unchangeable because it
has the backing of priests who claim to speak on behalf of Divinity. All
this demands tremendous courage, because her enemies can be formidable of
she acts cowardly. Also the impact o f her rebellion tells heavily on human
relationship, and entails many a conflict, mistakes, tragedies and
heartbreaks.
The most grievously effected is the husband-wife relationship. Let us
face it, now that we are on this subject that all is not well with the
majority of our young married couples. Even though our girls are generally
conditioned to be ready to give without expecting to receive, and to be
ready adaptable without a corresponding response from the other side, there
is trouble. Why? The reason is not far to seek.: The woman is changing,
while the man is not. Contrary to the Adam and Eve theory she insists on
asserting that she is not a plaything but a human being with all its
potentialities of free will and self expression, and rights and duties. The
husband is not ready to concede her this. He still harps on the evil role of
Eve, and considers himself a degree above his wife. He is the master, the
“Majazi Khuda” whom she must obey unquestioningly. Her arguments against
this anti-human approach are shouted down by quotations from all kinds of
religious and secular authorities. “A woman has no should,” “she is the
weaker –vessel,”” she is an
uisulaqal,” Vanity, Frailty, “thy name is woman,” “a woman should
never be trusted”, and in any case “a woman was created for man”. This are
the efforts of a woman at mature equal companionship set at
naught.
In fact the man is taken aback at the changing image of his ideal
woman. In the place of the shy,
giggling, jointing, decorated doll, at
best charming, there is one who is becoming more poised,
self-confident, more interesting, well informed and thoughtful. Indeed there
is a new woman in the making and the man I not yet prepared for this
phenomenon. He still looks around for his lost dill and finds a solution by
marrying a pretty little thing, sweetly unreasonable whom he can mould
according to his own philosophy. If man also were to start changing, as a
few here and there have, he would discern in the changing woman a
comradeship and happiness hitherto unknown to him.
The wife would then be
not just the mother of his children, but much more than that. The two
classes of women that the societies all over the world have maintained in
some form or other, may happily be a thing of the part—an obedient,
unthinking healthy wife, the mother of children and the cultured courtesan
as a professional companion.
However, the unchanging man is not the only stumbling block in the
way of mutual adjustment. It so happens that the lives of even highly
educated women being generally sheltered and limited compared to the freer
and move varied experienced of the men results in a mental gap that is bound
to keep them apart. Furthermore it is taken for granted that men have a
fling of life, so to say, before they are married. To them marriage is more
of a settling down as it were, to rest and be taken care of after the
excitement and experiences of all kinds. To a woman marriage is just the
beginning of a new exciting life, a break of some kind from the exaggerated
innocence of a sheltered existence. These two mental conditions are sure to
clash, followed by irritation on one side and frustration on the other. Thus
married life, which even in normal conditions demands tremendous mutual
efforts to succeed, is passing through a crisis. Such are the travails of
the birth is a new way of life.
The changing woman and the unchanging man contend on leafier field
too. The very idea of the women moving abroad and their more active
participation in the national life is anathema to the established order.
With or without “burqa” working as teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers,
executive officers, legislative members, stenographers and air-hostesses,
and even such activities as
shopping, visiting picture-houses and restaurants, although to some extent
now taken for granted, is nevertheless lamented. It is still taken as the
vicious influence of the West, and it is hoped that it may be a passing
phase. We still think it is all wrong; after all, our grandmother and our
great-grandmother never did this. By invoking the path of the forefathers,
especially from the pulpits of the mosques, attempts are made to send the
woman “back home” and make her more “respectable” thereby and misbehavior
towards women is tolerated with impunity as never before for the simple
reason that she has deviated from the traditional
ways.
However, that is how it always is. The process of change is just
another name for conflict, where the past and future grapple for supremacy.
Until things have changes, that is, conflicts have been resolved, Pakistan
shall remain, as it is today, a veritable tower of Babel, everybody confused
and nobody understanding anybody else. The Pakistani woman has her share of
the confusion too. Though she does not want to turn back, yet she wants to
be accepted by the family and the environment. She is keen to venture fourth
on grounds her grand-mother did not dare to tread, and yet she does not want
to loose the sense of identification with the people as a whole. There are
very few who can bear the burden and loneliness of a changing
developing personality. So we see non-burqa, desegregated, free and educated
young women more keen on wearing microscopic copies of the Quran in a gold
case hung by a chain round the neck; expressing faith and devotion to the
tomb of Data Ganj Baksh and other saints, strictly observing the month of
Ramadhan, holding “Milad-Sheriff” sessions, and very spiritually covering
their heads with their diaphanous “doputtas” at the call of the Muazzin.
These are the little shields by which they think they can ward off the
attacks on their changing statues. There are others who surrender and accept
a secondary role, saying that women ought to look up to men, and some even
become a mans plaything again flaunting their sex appeal
around.
Out of this confusion and anarchy one single factor that emerges
solidly in favor of women is their economic independence through careers.
Neither their inner awakening nor their education alone could have given
them the measure of freedom and self-confidence that they may possess today.
To begin with it was primarily due to economic dependence on him that man
was able to subjugate the woman.
The other factor is the Muslim Family Laws. It is both a reflection
of the changing process and a guide to future development. The credit goes
entirely to President Ayub. Before 1958 the Government neither cared nor
fared to defy the priests and make laws more in conformity with the Quran. By
restricting polygamy, making the registrations of the “nikah” legally
binding, by regulating divorce procedures and by fixing the minimum age
limit of 16 and 18 years for boys and girls respectively, a healthy
atmosphere has been created and family life given more dignity. Even
an uneducated woman in the rural area is aware however
incompletely or vaguely, that she has been given more rights that she is
freer than she was before. The impact of the Muslim Family Laws on women
could be an interesting subject for
research.
It is strange that man from the beginning of history has not learnt
to live with woman. This observation becomes all the more strange in the
light of the fact that nobody is born without a woman—respectively called a
mother, but a woman nevertheless. Against her subjugation, the rebel woman
of ancient Greece spoke out those in Euripides “Medea”.
- “Sooner
would I stand
- Three times
to face the battles, shielded in hand,
- Than bear
one child.”
In modern times Ibsen’s rebel woman refused to be a “doll” and live
in a “Doll’s House”.
It is also beyond a Pakistani rebel woman’s comprehensions as to why
a man would want to degrade her role or treat her like a doll, and raise
unnecessary controversies.
The whole issue can be stated as simply as
follows.
A human being, unlike any other creation has a “personality” or
“Self” that is expressed through his free will. He has the freedom to choose
from any number of given possibilities. He is born with powerful latent
potentialities that develop and realize themselves through a total and
active participation in life on this earth. He is also gifted with varied
individual talents that demand creative manifestation through befitting
opportunities and in an atmosphere free from inhibitions. A human being is
the only created being who has these creative urges and is capable of
improvement. All these innate attributes are so powerful that
non-fulfillment of any of them results in frustration and
caricaturist.
Now for the perpetuation of this wondrous specie, the Creator has
designed its procreation through its make and female. By virtue of being a
male of female neither ceases to be a human being. In other words, the make
is a father within the human specie and the female a mother within the human
specie. All these controversies as to whether a woman should be educated or
not, should have a career or not, should move out of the house or not are
such meaningless and wasteful exercises, and so naïve and immature. What matters, in
the ultimate analysis, is the self expression of a human being in this
totality. Each human being must find its own course for its own fulfillment.
That is its birth-right and its denial is to contradict its Creator and by
contradicting the Creator one does not change the situation, it only results
in imbalance and suffering.
So why waste out energies and resources and time on these futile
controversies? It is obvious that in the past twenty-one years the Pakistan
woman could have done a lot more. The call of our poverty-stricken,
custom-ridden, over-populated and diseased society has not been responded to
as it should have, controversy and confusion has misled her energies toward
trivialities and sham shows.
Perhaps the best thing for a woman would be to take her birthright
for granted and quietly and steadily harmonies, whatever little education
and freedom she has acquired, wither individual
self-expression.