Finished reading [tag]Vrinda Nabar[/tag]’s excellent "[tag]Caste as Woman[/tag]".

It looks at women in India not from the point of western [tag]feminist[/tag] theories, but more in terms of looking at India’s own unique socio-cultural systems, which essentially serve to keep the woman as an uncomplaining victim to many ills. As she puts it:

"… in India, the discrimination against them (women) would be by and large three – fold: Sex based (Stri Jati), caste based (jati) and class based. To be caste as woman in India is to live out this triple layered existence."

Starting with a look at our women and their women – a broad literature review of western feminism and Indian sociological thought regarding women (Nabar does not believe that Indian feminism as such exists) the book moves onto look at the various staus that women occupy- from the girl child to the widow,to the roles that she plays – daughter, wife, mother – in modern society.

In the week that the UNICEF report has shown the extent of murder of girls, Nabar’s statement on the girl child is telling:

Discrimination between the sexes in India begins at birth, or even before it. It starts before the child is born, in the mother’s womb. None of the conventional blessings showered on a pregnant woman mentions daughters. ……exhort her to have atleast one son, prefrebly the first born. No well wisher, it would seem, would admit to wanting anything else.

On the great Indian Marriage – Nabar is equally caustic. Her little ballad had me in splits.

View Point ( A modern Indian Ballad)

Bring out the silver & polish the brass,
Brush off the cobwebs, and clean all the glass
Unlock the pantry, lay out the food
Keep away grandma, her manners are crude.

We’ve got a daughter we are willing to sell
He is the bargain, the profit as well;
He’s coming to see for himself, so he said
How she and our money would look in his bed

Our daughter’s a graduate, he’s no cause to moan
She’s a well brought up girl with no mind of her own
She speaks English well, has a fair pretty face
And is Five foot four inches by Lord Bhagwan’s grace

Of course she’ll be happy, I’ll tell you that flat
She’ll have her own home, produce brat after brat,
Forget all her youth, as she spins out her life
In waddling behind him, a good Indian wife.

And she’ll long to have sons; they’re boons from above
Take it from me that they’re proof of God’s love
And when all her daugthers are suitably grown,
She’ll marry them off as we’ve done our own

The book is surprisingly a lightish read. Neither too academic nor too soap boxy. In fact I think that Nabar approaches quite a few issues with almost a bizzare sense of the ridiculous. And if you read some of the strictures about women, the only response is laughter. If you took it seriously it would be far too depressing.

Definitely worth a read.