Western feminism, exported to India and many other third world countries in recent decades, has brought with it serious problems. It’s not that we don’t know what to do with it, that women’s significance and dignity are alien to us. In fact, we Indians have a much longer history of individual women’s assertiveness than the West and a well-established tradition of making space for women whose aspirations draw them beyond stereotypical paths.
Rather, the problem is that feminism has acted as a tool of cultural imperialism. In its Indian form, it has clouded issues and advocated harmful tactics rather than served as a liberating force.
Many ideologies emanating from the West adopt a proselytizing role. Their underlying assumption is that all those who refuse to be converted are steeped in ignorance or stupidity. Western feminists display missionary zeal-they’re eager to save souls and tend to look down upon, be hostile to, or at least pity those not already converted.
I personally find the term an avoidable burden. It means nothing to most Indians. Neither feminism’s history nor its symbolism evokes any response whatsoever among the majority of Indian women. For instance, most feminists – Western and Indian alike – react with hostility to my refusal to be labelled as such. It took me a long time to understand the reason: Anyone refusing to be counted as a convert seems to be challenging feminism’s own tenet that it has universal applicability, that it’s a superior state of being, and that only feminists stand up for the rights of women.
As products of more homogenized culture, most Western feminists assume a woman’s aspirations the world over must be quite similar. Yet a person’s idea of a good life and her aspirations are closely related to what is valued in her particular society. This applies to feminism itself. An offshoot of individualism and liberalism, it posits that each individual is responsible primarily to herself.
At the same time, most feminists view the state as a vital agency for the protection of their individual rights. This view has served to atomize Western societies, often leaving people with only the authority and support of the state (and not even their family) for protection of their rights when they are violated by others.
In societies like India, most of us find it difficult to tune in to this extreme individualism. For instance, most Indian women are unwilling to assert rights in a way that estranges them not just from their family but also from their larger community. They want to ensure their rights are respected and acknowledged by their family and prefer to avoid asserting their rights in a way that isolates them.
This isn’t slavery to social opinion. Rather, many of us believe life is a poor thing if our own dear ones don’t honour and celebrate our rights if our freedom cuts us off from others. In our culture, both men and women are taught to value the interests of our families more than our self-interest. (Most feminists consider this world view a product of low self-esteem.)
Cultural issues aside, my most fundamental reservation regarding feminism is that it has strengthened the tendency among India’s Western-educated elites to adopt the statist authoritarian route to social reform. The characteristic feminist response to most social issues affecting women in the workplace, in the media, in the home is to demand more and more stringent laws. The results in most cases do not better women’s lives but rather facilitate a whole spate of vicious and harmful legislation which has put even more arbitrary powers in the hands of the police and government-powers that are routinely abused.
Most of the feminists’ energies are spent appealing to governments to enforce the social reforms they’ve proposed. But dearly held and deeply cherished cultural norms cannot be changed simply by applying the instruments of state repression through legal punishment. Social reform is too complex and an important matter to be left to the police and courts. The best laws will tend to fail if the social opinion is contrary to them. Therefore, the statist route of using laws as a substitute for
creating a new social consensus about women’s rights tends to be counter-productive.
The final problem with Third-World feminism is that its aspirations are largely directed Westward. Most feminist organizations in India and in other developing countries are dependent on Western funding agencies, and accountable primarily to them rather than to the society they claim to serve. Their priorities and agendas are prone to change from year to year depending on the availability of funds. The moment the United Nations declares the year of the girl child, everyone gets busy planning seminars, writing, researching and making films on the girl child. If the next year gets declared the year of the media, the girl child is forgotten and the focus shifts to media representation of women.
It is the same in the academic world. From structuralism to deconstructionism to post-modernism, the compass needle keeps swinging, depending on what brings in easy grants, jobs and recognition. This occurs even as it leads feminists towards such an esoteric vocabulary that regular women don’t comprehend a word of it. It also leads feminists toward irrelevance.