The Sexual Divide

Gender discrimination (which includes harassment, abuse and violence) was at the top of our list of the most unacceptable things in South Asia. How bad is the situation?

Some time back we had mentioned the introduction of the ‘Ladies Special’ trains in major Indian cities to counteract the harassment of women using public transport. Recently there was an update to that story titled ‘Joy of India’s women-only trains’ mentioning that the service has been a big success.

In reading this update I was particularly struck by the remark of one user of the service: “We can laugh, we can sit where we want, we can do whatever we want, we feel free. We can sing a song, as loud as we want.” The sense of freedom that this conveys is almost beyond belief – women feel they cannot even laugh or sing a song in the presence of men.

There is no reason to doubt this sentiment and it raises a whole host of questions that need to be considered:

First, how did things get to be this way? Have they always been like this in India (not if one reads William Dalrymple’s account of pre-modern Hinduism that we had summarized earlier)? If not, what triggered the change? Dalrymple traces changes to sexual attitudes in India to the Victorian morality of evangelical Christian missionaries who arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, attitudes that were internalized by British-educated Hindu reformers who felt embarrassed by their own culture. If this interpretation is correct, it mirrors the perceptive observation of a Native American Indian about the encounter of his own people with Europeans: “We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.” And this would raise a further question – where else do we see the consequences of this double colonization?

Second, does anyone have an explanation for why this practice is labeled ‘Eve Teasing’ in a country in which the majority of the population does not subscribe to the story of Eve and Adam? Are there more relevant labels in use in local languages that might provide clues to the origins of the practice? How is this treatment reconciled with the powerful imagery of female goddesses in Hinduism?

Third, how widespread is this male attitude towards women? The news story suggests that men are not supportive of the ‘Ladies Specials’ and that it took a female Minister of Railways to initiate the service. We can explore this question across class and space. Is it largely a middle-class phenomenon triggered by the rapid increase of women in the labor force? And are there significant variations across states in India? If yes, what may be the reason for such variation? As an extension, what is the nature of variations across South Asia?

Fourth, as bad as the situation seems to be, one must commend the fact that a progressive measure has been chosen to enlarge the space for women as they join the workforce in India. This is far better than the retrogressive advice that would be given to women in Pakistan – to stay at home in the protection of Chadar aur Chardeevarii or to make themselves invisible under a burka.

Fifth, does this retrogressive attitude in Pakistan have anything to do with authoritarianism in society? Recall that the German slogan ‘Kinder, Kuche, Kirche’ (children, kitchen, church) is attributed to Kaiser Wilhelm II and is descriptive of the male perception of women’s role in society in the nineteenth century. But this slogan was revived by Hitler in the 1930s when he stated that for the German woman her “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home.”

Sixth, can we conclude that the democratic space in India offers hope for a progressive decline in gender discrimination? To what extent would Indian women have to replicate the feminist struggle that was needed to overcome the most blatant forms of discriminations in the West? And how long is the struggle going to take? Gail Collins mentions in her new book that even till the early 1960s it was a great time to be an American male – harried executives could expect to return home to wives who existed solely to cook their dinners, raise their children and look stunning at parties!

It is unacceptable that women do not find it possible to be themselves in the company of men. It should be particularly unacceptable to men. Why isn’t it so?

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On Sentiments – Individual and Collective

Ibn-e Eusuf’s reference to the fable of Boris and Ivan to characterize one dimension of the relations between Pakistan and India (Pakistan’s Favorite Indians) has elicited comments trying to identify the sentiment implied by the characterization. Let me repeat the fable before attempting to address the comments.

The Russian fable is about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them is that Boris has a goat and Ivan doesn’t. One day, Ivan comes upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubs it, a genie appears. She tells him she could grant him just one wish, and it could be anything in the world.

Ivan says, “I want Boris’ goat to die.” 

In Ibn-e Eusuf’s telling Ivan is Pakistan and Boris is India. The question posed is whether Ivan’s attitude could be characterized as jealousy and how does individual jealousy translate into collective jealousy?

There is an entire spectrum of sentiments that could be considered in this context. They are related in that they shade into one another and yet distinct because the motivations can exhibit significant variations. Personally, I am unconvinced that jealousy is what is involved in the case of Ivan and Boris.

A good place to start would be our discussion of humiliation some time back. Humiliation is triggered in Ivan by what Boris does to Ivan. We are concerned with a different context in which, let us assume, the achievement of Boris is independent of anything that Boris has done to Ivan. Now assuming further that Boris and Ivan started out with similar endowments, what are the ways that Ivan can look upon Boris’ fortune?

We could consider the gamut of emotions that begins with shame/embarrassment at one end, moves through jealousy/envy, and ends with resentment/hate at the other. Of course, Boris’ success could also inspire Ivan but let us disregard that and focus only on the set of negative reactions.

Much would also depend on how Ivan sees the reasons for Boris’ success – whether they are attributable to hard work, good luck, or unfair advantage. But let us ignore that too for the moment and assume that Boris merits his success.

We can rule out embarrassment/shame because such an emotion should generate the feeling in Ivan that he ought too or could have done just as well, a feeling that should give rise to a positive effort – a positive-sum outcome. Jealousy/envy captures the sentiment where Ivan looks positively upon Boris’ success and wishes that the success had gone to him instead – a zero-sum outcome. Resentment/hate, on the other hand, captures the sentiment where Ivan doesn’t really care whether he gets anything or not; he just doesn’t want Boris to do well – a negative-sum outcome.

My reading of Ibn-e Eusuf’s reworking of the fable is that he had hoped India’s success would trigger a sentiment of embarrassment/shame in Pakistanis causing them to demand similar results from their own leaders. And he is quite surprised to see that the actual sentiment is closer to resentment/hate – Pakistanis just don’t want India to do well even if they have to sacrifice their own welfare in the process.

Is Ibn-e Eusuf right? As we have mentioned in other posts, it is unwise to generalize broadly in South Asia with its many dimensions of diversity. We know very little about the feelings of our rural populations that constitute the majority in most countries; we haven’t tested regional variations; and we haven’t polled by gender or by age. If I were to take a guess, I would say that Ibn-e Eusuf captures the sentiments of a vocal minority that is young, male, urban and concentrated in the Punjab and perhaps in Karachi. However, this is a minority that gets disproportionate exposure because a majority of media persons belong to this group.

We are still left with the question of how individual sentiments translate into collective emotions. I think of the theory of market demand as a useful analogy. Market demand, in text-book versions, is nothing but the simple and mechanical aggregation of individual demands. Into this picture come the big advertising machines proactively shaping individual tastes and generating buying frenzies for one commodity or the other.

In the same way, sentiments of humiliation or shame or jealousy exist at the individual level based on the interactions of one person with another. These take the shape of collective opinions giving rise to the identification of in- and out-groups. Political forces enter into this milieu to channel some particular opinion for strategic purposes and in doing so find ways to artificially strengthen that opinion till it turns into a powerful force for action

Hitler played on anti-Semitic feelings in this way to create the monster of Nazism. There is little doubt that leaders in Pakistan have used their monopoly of the media and of education to heighten feelings of resentment and hate against India. At the same time, both Pakistan and India have worked hard to stifle any contact between citizens that would dampen this kind of false and one-sided indoctrination. Thus collective opinions are formed less through a process of the aggregation of individual sentiments based on personal interactions and more by myths that cannot be refuted propagated by political forces

As soon as people get an opportunity to meet and talk many of the myths begin to fade away – we have seen this happening again and again in neutral locations. Unfortunately the majorities are denied such opportunities. That is one reason why forums like The South Asian Idea that leverage technology to leapfrog state-imposed restrictions on contact and dialogue offer us an opening that we need to exploit to the maximum.

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On Cooperation and Team Work – 5

We concluded the previous post in this series with the question: Are we what we eat? This is not a facetious question. Rather, it is an attempt to explain significant variations in human behavior. We approach this explanation by exploring the extent to which our physical conditions and the imperatives of survival might have shaped our social and psychological responses.

We speculated that existence as small and constantly warring bands during the hunting and gathering era must have engrained the importance of the distinction between friend and foe. Survival in these conditions must have depended upon the socialization of altruism within groups and hostility across groups. We still see this in the Us/Them syndrome that is often quite mindless in the present environment – a visit to some blogs would be proof enough.

We then asked whether growing crops based on very different labor needs could give rise to differences in behavior. In this context, we focused on rice- and wheat-based agriculture and made the case that the former called for cooperative behavior while the latter had no similar compulsion. Thus increased cooperation amongst people and greater deference to political and social authority in rice-growing societies had a plausible explanation. By contrast, one witnessed a lot more individualistic behavior and lack of acceptance of political authority in wheat-growing societies.

In accounting for the influences of hunting/gathering and agriculture on behavior we have by no means accounted for all the factors that impinged on the survival of human beings in the distant past. Recall that in discussing the variations in agricultural crops we had taken India and Malaysia as our case studies. Both fall in the temperate zone where climate does not have much bearing on survival barring droughts that are unpredictable.

But think now of Northern Europe with its harsh and cold winters. Even if these societies were growing crops (like rye or barley) with the labor requirements of wheat, the winter climate would have imposed new challenges of survival quite distinct from those in the temperate zones.

First, and most obviously, the need for cooperation would not have been confined to a very brief time interval as in rice-based agriculture of temperate zones. Rather, this must have extended all through the winter season. Gathering food, seasoning it, arranging for its storage, collecting firewood, protecting the livestock, all these would have been tasks needing collective inputs. Second, the preparation for sowing of fields frozen over during the winter would have been beyond the capacity of individuals working by themselves.

On can imagine that this kind of survival challenge would have called for the assignment of varied tasks to teams to be carried out before and during the winter months. And this would have socialized a different kind of behavioral pattern – one that would have elements of cooperation in the form of teamwork and of competition across teams assigned similar tasks.

Once again, we reiterate that this kind of speculation cannot be used to explain everything. However, it does provide an intriguing starting point for reflection on behavioral differences that moves beyond attributing them to mere accident.

For purposes of discussion we can use the example of cricket. The English and the Pakistani sides are both very competitive but one often hears it said that the English play like a team whereas the Pakistanis play as a collection of individuals. Can we now look at this phenomenon through a different lens?

There are some radical implications of this line of enquiry. If correct, it would imply that broad behavioral tendencies are not really a matter of free will or even of genetics. Rather, the imperatives of survival in different physical environments predispose some psychological responses over others.

This does not mean that individuals today are completely held hostage by their evolution. But it would certainly help to recognize one’s predispositions in order to be conscious of the need to behave differently in specific circumstances and also to design one’s institutions appropriately with the predispositions in mind.

Pakistani cricketers clearly need more than the usual dose of counseling to make them into a more effective team. Either that, or they need a truly dominating leader like Imran Khan who could command (at least some of the time) the loyalty of the others to his personality. Note also that given the predispositions of the Pakistani players, the shorter the version of the game the better their chances of keeping up with the others.

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