The International Women's Day was celebrated and in a couple of days, will be vanished from memory. Year after year the same trite, tired stock phrases of feminist ideology are parroted at every public forum. There has been news of an alleged sexual harassment case at a University with the victim attempting suicide a few days ago and there was also a report of a four - year old being raped. Who knows how many such incidents occur and are never ever reported? It makes one sit back and wonder if any change is going to take place at all whether in our perceptions of women and whether the plethora of laws enacted for their protection have had any effect at all.

All this goes to prove that even in this day and age a woman is still defined in terms of the female body even as all other measures of male domination and exploitation are brought to bear on the desecration of the female body. A woman’s identity as a person, as an individual with no gender tag attached, remains as elusive as the Holy Grail.

Surviving in hostile world and in a constantly insecure state of mind, a woman is burdened with the responsibility of “safe guarding” an easily - damageable body “purity”, which the forces around her are bent on. If ever one has attended any of those feminist meetings where privileged ladies spew fire and brimstone and then depart to the nearest restaurant to have a cafe au latte while the largely poor working class women go back home to face new nightmares, one is bound to wonder why no change has ever taken place. But then Indian society is largely a petite bourgeoisie middle class society where any feminist discourse continues to be viewed with suspicion, fear and more often than not, hostility. The last thing that this petite bourgeoisie society wants is a feisty woman standing up for her rights and asking the rest of us to cross - examine ourselves about our perceptions.

So far no feminist discourse at any public forum has ever succeeded into provoking society into self - examination, let alone self - criticism. This may be because all feminist discourse is viewed as elitist, which it unfortunately is. Every one of these discourses has always focused on social injustice and on torture inflicted on women. They have brought about the passing of several legislations to ‘safeguard’ women but in reality, have done nothing of that kind. The legislations have been proven to be inadequate as they cannot be implemented properly. They have been misused and subverted. They have not empowered women. It is only the privileged few amongst women who have access to legal redressal through these legislations. But the vast silent majority of women in rural and urban areas have no recourse to legal empowerment. There are millions more who are not even aware that there are laws to protect them.

Man has through a simple subterfuge shackled women. What he has done is deify women. There is nothing like putting women on a pedestal so that he can better stone her. She presents a better target! The regular manifestations of violent crimes against women - right from female feticide to bride burning, from acid attacks to rapes which are increasing alarmingly, from sexual harassment to domestic violence – are merely a reflection of the domination of women by patriarchal stereotypes.

The patriarchal mindset moulded and reinforced by past generations has managed through a mixture of specious wisdom and sheer brute force, to effortlessly embalm women into a state of immobility, so that more indignities can be heaped on them.

All this brings one back to the point that there can be no legal empowerment unless there is an awakening of an enlightened consciousness in women themselves. An occasional flash of this enlightenment, when it happens, is always at the individual level and never on a larger scale. A woman's struggle to be considered an individual begins in her home. This struggle is also a conflict with her since there is also the realisation that her struggle cannot be kept alive without making necessary compromises with her tradition and entrenched patterns of behaviour, both within her family and society. These compromises occur at different stages and at different times. Given this scenario, how can one expect any change in woman's consciousness to be considered as an individual?

But all liberation begins with the liberation of consciousness, even before liberation from family and social security, even before economic independence. Liberation is the freeing of herself from man’s ability to “blackmail” her into compromising at every phase of her life. But the trouble is that men cannot imagine the deep internal and external struggle that a woman undergoes merely to achieve the courage to speak of her commitment to independent consciousness. It is a kind of Catch 22 situation with no solution except wait for the next International Women's Day and another round of feminist discourse. And, of course, a cafe au latte at the chic restaurant!

Courtesy: Star of Mysore

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