Water, Widows, and My India

Today, The New York Times has an article right on the first page about the release of Deepa Mehta's Water and the protests from Hindu fundamentalists. The article points out - lest we forget - that within the outsourcing aura and Tom Friedman's India, the reality of dark ages still lurk and shows up its ugly head time and again. This time showcasing about the widows in Indian life as depicted in Deepa Mehta's Water.

We Indians know all about that. I don't think any Indian disputes these realisites. My great grandmother became a widow when she was 17 years and lived on with us until she was almost 90. An appaling life! No meat, no fish, no sex for all this time. In return, she served others just to survive. She used to say that she is lucky in many ways. Because of all of her relatives were generally nice to her and allowed her to live with them. Otherwise, the norm was to spend her life on alms and benevolence in the shanties of Mathura or Varanasi.

We have all faced the brunt of social conditions in India. For every good thing that India has to offer you will find exactly the opposite. That is the diversity of the country - so, to argue one way or the other will eventually end up in a deadlock. Outliers are as ubiquitous as the primary substance under examination. You have extreme poverty and the evils that come with it. There was and in some rare cases sati, caste wars, people fighting in the name of religion - you name it - and it is there. But there is also the other side of India which is equally powerful - tolerance, openness, pockets of wealth, intellectual curiosity, and survival of an ancient way of life which does not believe in proselytising. As someone commented, India is unique in that it has a Muslim president, Sikh prime minister, Christian leader of the opposition; and they are running a country of 85% Hindus. While widows are mistreated on one side, a widow was the elected Prime Minister who ran the country for several years. Such juxtapose facts give a glimpse about the complexity that's synonymous with India.

Why I am saying this? Because the western intellengtia has always gone after the negative issues more actively compared with the good side. Ask any average westerner about India few years back - before outsourcing. And even if he or she does not know where the capital of the country is, they will know that caste system exisits, a place where virgins are burnt, and where there are myriad goofy ways people get married.

This is a phenomena that started since westerners started coming to India few centuries back. Included among them were the missioneries. From a Christian view of looking at India, it appeared nothing more than a hodge-podge of tribal culture. And that's what they construed and wrote back to their fellow brethren- too many gods, too many customs, worship snakes and cow, and so on. The term "Hindu" became a popular term to group this complex collection and then a way of life suddenly became charecterized as a religion. Bhagavad Gita became Bible's counterpart and so on. From the narrow spectrum of Biblical interpretation, Indian customs and tradiotions began to be graded by the Christian examiner. And obviously "Hinduism" failed in areas of organization, system, and burreaucracy - where Christianity was way ahead. While the missionaries took upon themselves to bring light of Christ to this dark world, the political machinery saw its benefits and allowed this to happen - bringing about division and schism in the society. Well, I agree this is an oversimplified representation but the crux is what matters to me here. And the crux is in the western world, India has been only been slightly greyish compared to dark Africa. It remained a land of backward beliefs and unfound mysticism. Even with Beatles, Yoga, Osho, and the Hippies of the 60s, India remained a land of snake charmers. Books and hsitorical reports all represented this view of India, at least in the popular literature. I am not saying this was always intentional because even today, if you come from a Judeo-Christian world, India will appear this way. But that is looking at blue light with a green filter.

I also hold certain Indians responsible who have played their part in presenting a skewed image of India. I am earmarking those whose sole aim in life has been tradionally to get books published or papers published or looking for a tenure in a UK or US university. When research and writing, especially from a native, feeds into an already established belief in western world - it intensifies the curiosity. And these writings end up giving back-handed compliments and indirectly upholds the supremacy of west over east. After all who does not like flattery especially if it relates to culture, heritage, and roots. Obviously, chances are people will like to read it, and it will get easily accepted as mainstream facts. I am not saying that this is always wrong. But if you put forward only one side of the picture and not represent the other side as well, people will get a wrong impression. In other words, not saying the whole truth is equivalent to lying.

Coming back to this topic on overall social evils. Certainly, I do not support them, but instead of saying this is the way it is and highlighting these issues just for the sake of letting the world know they are there, is doing a disservice. I wish the purpose of the movie is to promote activism to eradicate these issues, not to create sensation to get an agenda through. I hope that's not the intent here with Deepa Mehta's Water - to create a controversy, since as they say there is nothing called negative publicity. So I will take her word for it. She has moved enough stones to complete this movie and she deserves credit. As for the Hindu fundamenatalists I don't care. I don't think their agenda qualifies my basic criteria to even spill ink over to argue one way or the other.

I just want to end saying that India is dealing with institutional reforms here. Questioning belief systems, culture change, and altering something so deep rooted in an organic culture like India will take its time. Don't forget that for Europe to come out of its dark ages - it took 6-7 centuries before 1700s. With only 60 years into independence, progress is happening. For many of us, we will hardly see any change in our life time, but let's face that's the way it is. Until then let's look at how we can expedite the process rather than saying it's there. We all know it's there! We need don't need a Nirad C. Chaudhuri (with all due respect to his contribution to history) . We need more of Amartya Sen. If someone brings up a dark side of the condition of widows, we also need to present the other side, where widows in India are also living in the mainstream, working, going to pubs, and living a normal life. Kudos to Water and Deepa Mehta.