There is no way NOT to take that personally.
Yes, you are perfectly fine making criticisms yourself, but let an N.R.I. say anything and you say “Indians these days couldn’t care less about the NRIs.” Let the United Nations say something and you say that it’s “more criticism than deserved.” That is your reflexive defensiveness
Well, consider for a moment that you might be wrong about that. And this is another example. Data offered by an N.R.I. is reflexively dismissed solely on the basis that it it comes from an N.R.I.
Well, you know what, the very experiences that these N.R.I.s are “blowing out of proportion” are exactly mirrored by my relatives who have never left India.
See, there you go. You can’t resist making an irrelevant and gratuitously insulting remark – “nobody here is waiting for your cousins.” The only possible motivation you could have to say that is to discredit and dismiss a viewpoint without taking it on its own merits.
It doesn’t matter whether Indians could “care less” or is “waiting for” N.R.I.s. The point is that N.R.I.s can see with their own eyes what goes on in India. And Indians reflexively dismiss any such observations a priori as worthless. That doesn’t harm N.R.I.s. That harms Indians.
Yes, a post bursting with ad hominem fallacies shouldn’t be taken personally. How droll.
The basic fact is that Indian society – certain sectors of it, many sectors of it? – has a huge problem with women. Women find it difficult to engage in certain kinds of business or official transactions unless they bring along a man to facilitate for them – they’re treated rudely or subject to blatant cheating, or just simply ignored.
My mother-in-law went to her favorite potato merchant. He was missing from the market, for months and months. Finally, one day, he reappeared. “Where have you been?,” she asked, delighted at his return. “Oh, I was in prison.” “In prison? For what?” “Oh, for killing my daughter-in-law.” No shame, no embarrassment, nothing. Just matter-of-fact.
This is not ancient history. This is India today. It is not India everywhere and all the time, because nothing in India is everywhere and all the time. But it’s there, and it’s there enough that it’s a social problem. Not every woman in India lives in a societal cage, but the majority women in India, as well as their spouses, siblings, and children, feel the effects in one way or another.
Maybe they haven’t been assaulted or raped themselves, but they do hear their relatives say “so-and-so says this happened, but she should keep her mouth shut” – they do hear politicians say “oh, well, this rape victim shouldn’t have been dressed like that or out alone in that place at that time.”
Non Resident Indian. You know, those of us who have moved away from the mother country and thus betrayed her, or that is what I hear anyway.
The only thing I will add to this discussion is as a woman, I will never and would never move back to India. Not because I fear being raped, or anything like that. But because in India I am and would be most likely confined to my gender role.
Here in America I can live with my partner of fifteen years and never have any children and not wed him. I get a few raised eyebrows but mostly I am left alone. In India that would not be the case. I would not be left alone.
Totally agree. Since we in the US rape more people than in India it is totally fine and cool that Indians are raping people.
Also how fucking dare we in the US dare to open our mouths about rape in a country that has less rapes than here. We’re totally a bunch of hypocrites and douchebags.
yeah and pls stop the BS. People go back or stay abroad for their own personal reasons but never because they fear their daughters will get raped here.
If by chance tomorrow, the crime rate in India drops to zero, I doubt your cousins will be packing their bags.
NRIs are returning in bulk these days and feel more secure and richer in India. These numbers are only gonna grow massively.
I’m not the one shoveling BS into this discussion.
First of all, I didn’t say that it was “because they fear their daughters will get raped there.” It’s because of the overall limitations on the freedom of women to make their own choices in Indian society.
And, I suppose there might be some people who wouldn’t go back because they fear their daughters would be raped. I don’t know.
In any case, both those reasons are within the category of “their own personal reasons,” so all you’ve offered is a tautology.
You have no idea what my cousins might or might do and not only is there no basis or reason for you to speculate regarding that, it is irrelevant as well. (Again, correcting the error that the “crime rate” has nothing to do with it.)
Gosh, here we go again with an irrelevant ad hominem claim based in reflexive defensiveness and pride. Is it a wonder that these issues are so difficult to discuss rationally? And no surprise that Anaamika is hesitant to wade into the fray, considering the unpleasant mire that this has already become.
This seems uncalled for. The OP admitted his limited knowledge, reported that his observation doesn’t mesh with the information he grew up with, and you come in and assume he is some kind of boorish, insensitive oaf?
In fact, to untrained eyes (but I’m sure you’ll train us if you’re in the mood), India seems like a backwards cesspool where the smart leave the country and most of them still can’t figure out the connection between feces and disease, bathing in their “sacred” river where they dump bodies. In fact it does seem like Arabs treat their women better, at least they are not gangraped in public, and India has a lot of centuries of catching up on to match the enlightenment of the Taliban
one of my best friends had a live-in relation with a girl when he was doing masters here in Delhi. I am friends with the girl as well. this was around a decade back, they have now broken up. Another unmarried colleague is in a relationship with a divorced woman in a different city.
so if its fine with the people who matter to you, there is an excellent chance that you will be left alone especially in bigger cities.
Are your cousins like parasites(sorry about this) who do not want to contribute to their own country and society and just want to flit around from trees to trees sucking them dry?
Anamika isnt even brought up in India so she may not know but your cousins apparently were.
Watch this video about immigrants returning to India:
I assume you’re being hyperbolic with this.
But, still, I’m not sure whether we get anywhere by comparing Indian society to Arab society or fundamentalist Islamists.
I commend the OP for seeking a degree of nuance. Unfortunately, it’s having a hard time coming out in this thread.
I can’t emphasize how difficult it is to generalize. There are women in powerful positions in Indian politics. Middle-class Indian women are presumed to be entitled to education, and it’s almost assumed that they will at minimum get bachelor’s degrees. Women work in professional and creative professions. There are prominent women activists and writers and artists. Life for a woman in an educated, affluent family is definitely not like living under Taliban rule. Women are achieving even more personal freedom in the context of offshored jobs – women working for multinationals are more likely to assert freedom in their personal lives, their relationships, how they choose to dress.
But, but, but, but … There are so many buts. Where do we start?
Women must be educated, but they can’t be more educated than their husbands. Women can be professionals, but their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters-in-law must be given priority. Women who stay single late into their 20s are significantly disadvantaged socially. Married women who don’t have children are looked on with suspicion. There are few women in management roles in the public or private sectors.
For every advance, there’s a backlash, a backlash against Valentine’s Day, a backlash against women who go to discos, a backlash against women who are not virgins until they are married, a backlash against women who dress provocatively, a backlash against women whose work actually supports their families (which is often true especially amongst the less affluent or poor).
Women are not completely disenfranchised in Indian society. But there are so many ways in which their choices are bounded by the constraints of propriety.
I don’t even know how this interacts with rape – we haven’t yet discussed the fact that there is a whole genre of movies that’s all about rape, and it is the rape scenes that are the most popular – these aren’t mainstream Bollywood movies, but appeal to a certain sector of young men. Even in mainstream Bollywood movies, there was a tradition of separating the female protagonists into “heroines” and “vamps,” and it was quite common for vamps to be the victims of sexual assault, if not rape.
You’re not helping your case here, buddy.
But there are always costs to these sorts of decisions. I don’t tell my family in India I am unmarried. I tell them I am in a relationship with an American man of Chinese descent and let them draw their own conclusions. Even this has a price. I will always be an outsider…I will always be different. Ok, fine, such is the choice I have made, but that’s the key. I had that choice.
When I was at prime marriageable age, I watched my cousins marry into what I call semi-arranged marriages - they had some flexibility, and got to know the man a little, but not completely. Rich and poor, educated and uneducated, all married in essentially the same way, except the poor girls had even less choice. This did not convince me that I wanted to return.
Living in India and being who I am would inevitably have a cost. My own grandmother told me to my face that I would never be a real woman until I had kids, and I know my family feels the same way. I love my family, despite their flaws and their thinking. It’s better if I live here and they live here - everyone is happier.
The thing I wanted to bring up earlier and was hesitant to was that I have been on the receiving end of eve-teasing. I am particularly light-skinned for being an Indian - most people don’t even recognize me as Indian. Which made me particularly susceptible to being teased. I visited India four times in my life, three times as a teen, and all of those latter times, I was teased. Men sing to you, or they cross the street to block your path, or stuff like that. If you even make eye contact, they try to grab your hand.
It’s not exactly scary…but it’s the implications that are frightening. I was told I should not stand up for myself, but let my brothers (cousins) do it - not because I couldn’t handle myself, but because standing up for myself would give me a bad reputation, that there was no one there to protect me. I would go to market holding my cousin’s hand.
I remember one Lodi (winter festival) we had the fire burning and I was dancing with the other girls. Some boys came by and we were immediately told to sit down lest we attract attention to ourselves. The married women could continue dancing.
This is all due to a culture where sexuality is repressed, and TBH I don’t know how the culture that wrote the Kam-Sutra can be so repressed nowadays. I sometimes think it’s due to 400 years under the British and their notions of purity, but then it is in our ancient books too - look how Ram treated Sita after she was abucted, on the mere poisoned barbs of his villagers! And she is held up to us as the ideal woman!
And lastly. My mother had me out of wedlock. This destroyed not only her life in India but my aunt’s life too. Her fiance’s family broke off the engagement because in their words, they didn’t want their son to marry into a whore family. I was brought here, at age four, because my family did not want that stigma to hang over me, too, and here there is no stigma to being a child born out of wedlock. So I deeply and highly resent the implication that I am an NRI because I don’t love my country, am not loyal, whatever. I am here because my country didn’t really want me! Because they don’t want illigitimate daughters. Sons are a different kettle of fish.
I guess what I am saying is like Ascenray - it is so complicated and complex that I don’t even know where to begin. India is actually very modern on women’s issues to a point. But being a mother and a wife is still the highest calling, and there’s no mistake why, in bollywood movies, when a nice girl meets her prospective father in law, he covers her head with a veil and she blushes prettily. It’s all about the place you maintain. The good girl never chases sex, she is always passive and she is the one to tell him to wait until after marriage, never her. But I also believe things are changing. I don’t know.
I don’t know how much of it you’ve read, but there’s a lot more to the Kama Sutra than sex position diagrams, and some of it is pretty vicious.
For example, the Kama Sutra’s advice on conducting a marriage by abduction:
Even the parts about straight-up sex spend a lot of time outlining what the woman is and isn’t allowed to do (The one I remember is woman being slapped=okay, woman doing the slapping=not okay). There’s even a section detailing what kinds of sounds you’re allowed to make.. (SPOILER: sounds like those of the dove, the cuckoo, the green pigeon, the parrot, the bee, the sparrow, the flamingo, the duck, and the quail.)
Overall, it struck me as an extremely restrictive and legalistic text. But to be fair, pretty much every ancient sex text from every culture is probably just as bad.
I read it, but many years ago, and it really wasn’t as interesting as people think. But yes, parts of it are certainly indicative of women being an inferior species.
But if I am to be 100% honest, it doesn’t make me think “Indians are woman-hating animals”. I see something like this in almost every culture and it really makes me wonder - what’s in our genetic makeup that makes so many culture think men were made to rule women and to use them and abuse them as they see fit? It sucks to be a woman. We are limited to using words and verbal cuts and then criticized and abused when we use the only weapons we have. We’re called sluts and whores when we exhibit the same behavior as men. Rape is sadly common in every portion of the world. Men get raped too but it’s not anywhere near on the same scale.
Do all men have it in them, then? A capacity of rape and sexual violence towards men? A deep seated desire to keep them down? After all it’s happened in every culture and is written into the very holy books and scriptures of many of them.
I just don’t know. It’s a sad, depressing state of affairs and anyone who thinks on it overlong will become cynical and angry.
Yeah, this shit exists everywhere and in every time period and it always really sucks. One bright spot is that at least now people are talking about it publicly more than they ever would have in the past. As alarming as they often get, without these kinds of dialogues nothing will ever change.
General note to remember to keep our heads when discussing this very emotional subject. Please be cognizant that cross-cultural understanding is the stated goal of this thread. If you want to debate inherently misogynistic cultures, for example, the place to do that would be Great Debates.
Yes I was. I think AK84’s “response”, if you can call it that, was an ignorant stream of piss that rolled out of the wrong hole and congealed into a post offensive to nature.
I agree with the OP in that it does seem from a cursory glance that India has severe problems with how it treats its women. Some of the extremes that it has descended to in recent times are not matched by other, traditionally considered more women-hating cultures. Why is that, is what the OP is wondering. And I agree its a question that needs to be asked and debated intelligently, not a quality that exists anywhere in AK84’s post
As an oft-touted democracy, the biggest one in the world, India is and should be held to a higher standard. A democracy with brilliant engineers, a robust economy, and increasing standards of living should not have widespread dark chasms of intolerance that seemed to have permitted and even encouraged this type of crime to happen not once, but twice in as many months. Something is wrong in India and that is what should be debated. No ire does the OP deserve for starting that dialogue. Where there are misrepresentations and misunderstandings, people like AK84 should ask for clarification, not go on pissing out of the wrong hole at their keyboard. That is why my post is like that
It seems to me that instead of moving forward as a whole, as a rising tide lifts all ships, segments of the Indian population is becoming more modernized while an equally large segment is left behind or refuses to move forward. With so many people, it may be more difficult, more time consuming before the progress of one population trickles down to the rest, and to me it seems that where these two dichotomies intersect, there is lots of tension that is magnified by India’s global position and huge population. Let’s face it, when this happens in Afghanistan, it makes less news because the country is tiny, poor, and irrelevant. If something happens in a bigger, more important country, that creates news
Or maybe it’s that progress, which was once limited to the top of the society, is now trickling down because of economic changes, and it’s the effect of modernization at levels that have not experienced modernization at this pace before that is resulting in growing pains of a sort.
But, yes, I expect a lot more from India than I do from China or Afghanistan.
[Unlurking for a moment]
I realize the OP’s intent wasn’t as clearly laid out as could’ve been. It was late and I was tired, and I thought the discussion itself would be worth the potential flak. Thank you for understanding that this was intended to be an educational discussion, not a “let’s hate on Indians” thread. This is the SDMB, after all, and the only reason this thread exists is for ignorance to be fought.
I appreciate the topic-relevant responses, and am learning much about India. Thank you.
[/lurking again]
This may be true for some parts of India (and maybe more so for your personal situation), but it certainly isn’t necessarily true. One of my friends is living with a German guy in a large Indian city, in a long term serious relationship, they have no intention of having kids, and they have no problems. There are a number of my female friends who openly live with their boyfriends. I think you’d be surprised at just how fast attitudes are changing/have changed.