:::The Desi Flavor:::

Problem of "eve-teasing" in India

Roop Rai

Today I ended up taking out a couple of minutes to read this article on BBC written by Preity Zinta. It talks about the problem of "eve teasing" in India. I haven't been to India in 6 years and I was only 15 when I moved out but like Preity says, "A lot of women in India have a story of "Eve teasing", I do as well. The term 'eve-teasing' sounds so ridiculously biblical and yet, refers to something that's not only immoral but inhumane in my books. It might not seem like a big deal to those who haven't experienced it but those who have, will definitely agree with me.

Butt-pinching, what me and my friends used to call butt-lifting, groping, heck even pulling up skirts in India was as frequent as weather change is in Calgary. The perpetrators did not belong to any specific age group or social class. Only thing they had in common were that they were males. ha! I remember an incident when it was around 9 PM at night and obviously it was dark. I went to the market with a friend of mine to pick something up for my mom. I had a Vespa scooter then (heh good old days). We parked the scooter, went into the shop, came back out to find a dirty magazine lying on the pillion. I picked it up and threw it down in order to avoid any unnecessary trouble. A couple of 20 year olds approximately (i was 15) approached us and accused us of "mistreating their book". I was shocked to say the least. Everyone else around us went by their business and did not bother to inquire what was going on. Well, I ignored them and we came home. Of course, they followed us home and for the next few days, we were bombarded with prank calls but I guess that's 'normal'. There was no theater, no bus, no marketplace, no lonely road that was free from these rogues but as a woman, you were taught to cover yourself appropriately and behave yourself appropriately to avoid any mishaps. I don't know about anyone else but I certainly felt emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even physically drained before I had to step out of the safety of my house after dark.

The cause of this horrific situation of eve-teasing, according to Preity Zinta, is the images being splashed across the new-age media. I'd say that I will have to disagree with that. Media hadn't reached the lower strata or the middle class of society in India, to the extent it has today, when I was there. I can't agree with Ms. Zinta and I can't give you a reasoning of my own either. I am at a loss of words. Maybe it is the male chauvinist attitude that a majority of the males there are raised with or maybe it is the repression of sexual behavior that leads to men opting for immoral means to satisfy their urges or maybe it is, as widely believed, a consequence of shoddy law enforcement.

My first experience with this not-so-incredible, let's say, phenomenon of eve-teasing was in my school itself. I was in Grade 8 and wore a skirt as part of the school uniform. I always used to notice that the guys sittin in the desks lined parallel to ours (me and my girlfriend's) always had a mirror with them. I never could figure out what it was for until one lunch break, they left it on the desk. I went and sat in their desk and looked in the mirror and as we expected, the leg-view could not get any better. I approached them when they came back and they apologized for it. Next day, the mirror was gone and it never came back into the classroom again. I am sure they probably thought up of a cleverer plan and put that into action. Interestingly enough, I am good friends with one of those guys now; I should ask him.

Either way, the point I am trying to make is that I don't know the exact cause of the problem neither do I have any measures to fix it but the problem surely does exist. It starts on early irrespective of caste, creed, or color and lasts a lifetime for some.

Other related article:
: Bollywood's portrayal of India

The Call of Yama

Jay Gohil

Kamat’s Potpourri is an excellent personal site devoted to Indian culture, history, art and scenery. Worth reading!

The Call of Yama is a page about death and dying in Hinduism and the piece “How I sent my father to heaven” looks at a typical Hindu funeral.

Thanks to MetaFilter for the original link.

Raising children in the West

Roop Rai

It sends my blood rushing, makes my head spin when I hear any one of my colleagues (mostly male), who have recently moved to Canada from India for education, make a statement like "This place is nice and has a lot to offer but I will not raise my kids here." If asked "why?", response is usually "Oh just look around! I wonder how the fathers of these East Indian women who have boyfriends and sleep around handle it? I don't want to be one of those fathers." I usually don't know how to respond to that comment because it is rooted in sheer ignorance and I do not know how to convince anyone so ignorant otherwise.

I have had the opportunity to live in India. I have had the opportunity to live in Canada. I have friends in Canada that sleep around. I had friends in India that slept around. I have friends in Canada who are involved in the unfortunate world of drugs. I had friends in India who were also unfortunately involved in drugs. If the so-called-immoral social norms such as womanizing are considered to be an integral part of the western culture, they exist in Indian culture too! The only difference, I believe, is that the middle class society in India chooses to hide what is deemed morally wrong whilst the middle class here in the west is more open about their actions. What am I getting at with this? Well, I am just trying to make a point that contrary to the common belief held by the most of my Indian colleagues, people born and raised in India are not necessarily better moral agents than people born and raised in the West.

I'll agree that raising an East Indian child in a western environment can be an arduous task but isn't raising a child anywhere in the world an arduous task? If two people choose to bring a new life into this world, it is their responsibility to provide their creation with the best they can offer, and to make that possible, it requires a great amount of effort and labor on the parents' part no matter what their geographic location in the world is. Instilling the morals and ethics that parents believe are correct in their children can be done just as equally well in China as in Peru. An argument that would arise here would be that the effects of the "surroundings / society" are unavoidable - one bad apple can ruin a whole bunch of apples, and that the western society de-brownizes "brown" kids. I'll argue against that. If parents teach their kids to be proud of themselves, believe in themselves, be confident and to accept being unique and different, I certainly do not think de-brownizing is a problem.

When I see kids/friends who end up doing stuff which is not culturally acceptable by brown culture, I see kids who are unclear about what they want ... I see kids who are trying to break free from what their parents are imposing on them ... I see kids who don't have a balanced lifestyle ... I see kids who are not proud of what they are ... I see kids who are trying really hard to fit in ... I see kids who are trying to carve a niche for themselves ... I see kids who just want to be accepted by everyone .... BUT the key point being, does that NOT happen everywhere in the world? Isn't there always a certain group of teenagers everywhere that would fall in this culturally unacceptable category despite their color and despite the type of the society?! On the other hand, there are kids who are confident and proud of their identity, and they end up doing great things for themselves and the society! These types of people exist in every society, every city, every country as well.

I'd say it eventually comes down to the sort of parenting you are able to offer to your children. If you are open minded, willing to accept your children's ideas, come to a compromise with them, and teach them to be strong, independent human beings, I am sure they will be successful anywhere in the world. I don't want to hear from anyone that they prefer raising their children in India than Canada because they wouldn’t want their daughter to lose her virginity at 15. That's bullshit! If your daughter is raised to lose her virginity at 15, she WILL lose it even if you put her in a dungeon with nothing but darkness to accompany her. She will find a way! haha ah! ur dirty mind is already at work. I had no intention of making that sound dirty because I am serious .. She will find a way! It's true that typically Indian parents find it harder to raise their children in the west but with the right amount of effort and perseverance, I'm sure they succeed in assisting their children make success of themselves!

- R

Suburban Sahibs

Jay Gohil

New Jersey is the home to one of the largest Indian community outside of South Asia and according to a new book - Suburban Sahibs - Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America, these immigrants have changed their adopted home as much as it has changed them. The author recently gave an interesting interview to the NPR.

Here is an excerpt of the book:

Suburban Sahibs tells us that still might ring true. As immigration has continuously redefined America, it also has radically transformed the American suburb. Through the migration of three families from India to Central New Jersey, this book delves into how immigration has altered the American suburb, and how the suburb, in turn, has altered the immigrant.

Middlesex County houses one of the largest Indian populations in the world outside India. Their mark on the region has been gradual but increasingly definitive: auto-repair outlets named after "Deepa" and "Singh," a thriving commercial strip of sari stores and sweets shops, valedictorians named Patel and Shah. To be sure, the reception from long-time residents has not been an entirely warm one as Indian-American shopkeepers regularly contend with broken and egged windows. Yet as Indians achieve economic success, their desire for political and social parity grows stronger; their acceptance becomes less a question and more a reality.

In a captivating work of narrative nonfiction, journalist S. Mitra Kalita traces the evolution of the suburb from a destination for new arrivals to a launching pad for them. She focuses on three waves of immigration in the post Civil Rights era through the stories of three families: the Kotharis, Patels and Sarmas. Their experience offers a window into the America that has become: a nation of suburbs, a nation of immigrants.

In the late 19th century, tourists descended upon Edison to gawk at its Christmas lights displays. Today, thousands of Indians from all over the United States arrive in the same bedroom community to celebrate their own festivals of lights and colors. Suburban Sahibs attempts to answer the question of how and why they arrived -- and how Edison, once again, might be the community that has shown us the future.

Abbendum: The NY Times recently reviewed the book.

Caste System in India

Jay Gohil

Although many other nations are characterized by social inequality, perhaps nowhere else in the world has inequality been so elaborately constructed as in the Indian institution of caste. Caste has long existed in India, but in the modern period it has been severely criticized by both Indian and foreign observers. Although some educated Indians tell non-Indians that caste has been abolished or that "no one pays attention to caste anymore," such statements do not reflect reality.

Caste has undergone significant change since independence, but it still involves hundreds of millions of people. In its preamble, India's constitution forbids negative public discrimination on the basis of caste. However, caste ranking and caste-based interaction have occurred for centuries and will continue to do so well into the foreseeable future, more in the countryside than in urban settings and more in the realms of kinship and marriage than in less personal interactions.

Castes are ranked, named, endogamous (in-marrying) groups, membership in which is achieved by birth. There are thousands of castes and subcastes in India, and these large kinship-based groups are fundamental to South Asian social structure. Each caste is part of a locally based system of interde-pendence with other groups, involving occupational specialization, and is linked in complex ways with networks that stretch across regions and throughout the nation.

Click here for the rest of the article.

The caste system has never been a big deal for the Indian diaspora, especially for the second generation. But sadly, it's always an important element in rural India, especially when it comes to issues such as marriage.

Mike Bamshad offers another perspective of the caste system in India:

...Each caste represents an endogamous. Marriages occur primarily between individuals of equal status. Men from a higher varna may occasionally marry women of a lower varna, and this is an accepted marriage. Marriage of men from a lower varna to women from a higher varna is strictly discouraged. This sets up a specific model of gene flow through the caste system, such that women are much more likely to move from a lower caste to a higher caste, with more gene flow occurring between castes which are adjacent to one another. However, men are relatively fixed within each of their caste levels. This model has been of longstanding study by many social scientists, and given that Hindus comprise approximately 80 percent of the population of India, or nearly one billion people, it was also of interest to population geneticists like ourselves. Thus we set out to test whether this model was consistent with empirical molecular data.

"Pride and the Indian"

Jay Gohil

India today is a country that personifies hope. A country which is fast shedding its dark past to emerge as a large player on the world platform. However, we Indians still lack the pride in our accomplishments, which could be attributed to our recent history. Are we really aware of it? Do we really know how our history has shaped us? Anil Gokarn investigates.

Click here for the full text.

Anil Gokarn makes some good points. Most of what he states is very true, almost all societies under colonial rule have suffered, not only India.

Furthermore, the caste system is always shot down by contemporaries stating that it is an evil spawned by the India, but in reality early India benefited greatly, especially during the emergence and formation of states. Indians should take pride in their country’s history and learn from the mistakes made from the past. I personally feel that educating more and more Indians about the issues that are at hand will allow for more change and reform in India.

Movie Review - A World Without Women

Jay Gohil

The groupthink blog has a detailed review of the controversial art movie - A Nation without Women.

Honor Killings

Roop Rai

Families from the third world countries (ex. India, Pakistan) move to the first world in search of better opportunities in life and a better living standard. They might physically move to an entirely different world but they are culturally still guided by the social norms and set of standards from "back home".

It is general knowledge that one of the most prominent reasons for the common parent-child clash is the generation gap between the parent and the child; it, unfortunately or fortunately, exists in every parent-child relationship. If this generation gap is combined with the cultural gap between the first and the third world, the combination can be lethal! This article gives a glimpse of one situation where this combination proved lethal for some second generation young adults, especially women.

Honor Killings have been prevalant for centuries in various parts of the world. It's just that they're getting more media attention as the time goes by. The term 'honor killing' refers to the killing of a woman/girl by her own family/husband/relatives if she rebels against the social norms. This phenomenon is on a rise in the west now since there are a lot of third-world families here and the children do not have the same cultural viewpoint as the parents since the children have been born and brought up in the west and, hence, are westernized perse. Sometimes, having a "westernized" attitude is enough for an extremist to take a life of his/her own child as it's shown in this case:

What really saddens and stuns me though is the fact that the "killers" try to justify their actions by saying that they kept the honor of their family by killing!!!!!!

"It is better to have one person die than to have the whole family die of shame or disgrace."

WHY? Why does the woman have to die? If a father is really that ashamed or disgraced of his daughter's actions, why doesn't he kill himself and end his own ordeal? Apparently, daughter made a choice for herself that would most likely make her happy .. so why should she die? She doesn't have any reason to die but the father sure does if he feels he is disgraced - he should definitely kill himself. Ok, that's me venting anger.. but like Jerry Flattum says,

wherever honor killing prevails, and whatever the definition of honor may be, there is no justification on any level for such continued brutal assaults directed toward women...

...or anyone for that matter.

- R

Sex Trade in India

Jay Gohil

Sex Trade has always been a big business in India. Now for the 1st time it's been caputred on film.

He’s presented the disturbing picture of the Indian sex trade to a global audience. Andrew Levine, whose film The Day My God Died was recently screened at the Amnesty International Film Festival, tells Lisa Tsering that he made this film because he loves India.

Most documentaries on India highlight its beauties – both natural and manmade. But a disturbing new film reveals a side of India, fraught with shame and horror. Filmmaker Andrew Levine has delved into Mumbai’s red light district and emerged with a series of stories that fearlessly detail the rape, torture and slavery that go into sexual trafficking, what he calls “the world’s worst human rights violation”.

Click here for the full account.