Traditions: Reminders of Shameful Inequality and Discrimination
I was seated in the living room of my cozy, single storey home, watching TV and having my breakfast; my usual Sunday morning routine. In the kitchen, I could hear my mom and grandmother arguing about something involving fish and salt. Home sweet home.
Not so home sweet home. To me, at least. A car pulled over in front of the house and to my (morning) annoyance, out stepped four people I would like to refer to as PR (Pesky Relatives). The group consisted of two uncles from my mother's side, one of their wives, and one of my first cousins, who is decades older than me. As you can tell, I do not really have much of a fondness for them. It may make me sound a little bad, but you will see why I have such feelings.
So they come into the house. The usual formalities were carried out unceremoniously and with as little sincerity as humanely possible ("hello, uncle... How are you?", "Hello, aunty, had breakfast?", rinse and repeat). All I wanted was to get back to my plate of heavenly nasi lemak. I could have sworn the ikan bilis were looking at me pleadingly to munch on them.
Anyway, the PR then proceeded to sit down on the comfy seats in the living room. All of them were quite old, even the cousin. My mom and my grandmother came from the kitchen and my dad came out from his room. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Sleep-inducing for you, I bet.
Here is where it gets interesting. Mind you, nothing out of the ordinary happened. It is the fact that it was so typical that caught my attention. I never really thought about it before but perhaps because of recent experiences and revelations, I did not let it slip past me this time
My family (extended) is a pretty traditional, typical Indian one and probably this is the reason for what goes on next. I noticed that, almost instinctively, all three women in the living room got down and sat on the floor. The three men, on the other hand, reclined on the comfy sofas. They were relatively healthy men, I should point out, and my grandmother is 89. My mom is not the fittest of persons and complains a lot about back pains and weak muscle joints. Yet, here they were seated on the floor and these three fine, strapping males were enjoying all the comforts the soft cushions were affording their distinctively male arses. It got me thinking.
It is in fact traditional for such cultures to have these sort of social practices. I am sure that a lot of people would argue that it is part of the customs and identity of Indians, that men be given the higher seating, and women be more submissive. I know that this is the argument that my own mother would use, not to mention my grandmother. I may sound racist or intolerant, but I am strongly inclined to say "WHAT UTTER BULLSHIT!"
Here we are, in the 21st century, fighting for equality, fighting for women to be given the same respect as men, and my own family resolves to old, obsolete, nonsensical traditions. The worst part is that I know that this is not limited to my family, or Indians alone, but to a large number of cultures. It might not seem so serious, but we need to look at the bigger picture and see the deeper meaning of this matter. That simple seating practice, where the men are given positions of authority and women of submission, indicates (very accurately) that this is a culture that still gives women an inferior role. You can tell this simply by studying the way the conversation goes, where the women rarely make any contradictory comments and simply support whatever the males say. Such blatant evidence of how far back our society still is in terms of liberalization and equality!
Extending this into the larger context of a country, we can clearly see that equality remains a far off prospect, something only Westerners would enjoy. I have heard and read of others pointing the finger at politics, religion, power-crazy men, and other things. To me, the main culprit is tradition. The other reasons are extremely valid and I will not dispute them, but I highlighted tradition because we are a country that seems to value it very highly. The people here do NOT like to break from tradition and anything that seems to go against their beloved old ways is immediately condemned, even if it is a good thing.
Take the whole Family Law/Act/Thing. There has been a lot of hoohah over how it discriminates against women and everything. Again, for me it goes back to tradition, but in a slightly less expected context. The law was religiously driven, and hence created by a group of MEN. That is how it is traditionally done and no one has had the guts to question it. That is religion, that is how it SHOULD BE or else WE GO TO HELL. My problem is the same as what many other educated people would feel; how can a group of MEN be given the authority to make laws and rules that are inclusive of women? Is it not one of the defining foundations of a democracy that every group be fairly and equally represented, especially when it comes to making laws? We are a democracy, are we not? Or are we just pretending to be one while we continue to proudly exercise our precious tradition of gender discrimination?
I hope that this is not taken as an insult to our beautiful culture of diversity and harmony. It is merely an argument in support for a change that, to me at least, will help the social development or our country. Women's Day is coming soon, and it is high time that we took a closer look at the conditions of our sisters and help give them their inherent rights, just as it applies for men: freedom and equality.
