Vulgar display of ‘neo-feminism’ at Rabindra Bharati University! Are we losing the core ideology?
Feminism, Women Empowerment, Women’s Rights Activist – words that have never registered and every time I see ‘Page 3’ women activists shouting these words from some festival podium or on the streets, I shift my attention to my 60-year-old maid who raised two children after her husband left her in her teens, married them off, is a proud grandmother of two grandsons who go to school and still works hard to earn her own livelihood living on her own terms! She did not need any activism to prove that she is equal to a man, nor does she claim to be so. She is happy that her son and daughter are raising one child each, trying to educate them and takes pride saying one grandson will even go to college. Such women like my maid again make me believe how fake the present day ‘feminist movement’ is all about, or rather how misguided a generation is, trying to seek attention in the garb of feminism.
Else why would a bunch of young college female students paint choicest of Bengali slangs about men’s private parts, display it on their backs and play Basanta Utsab within the walls of Rabindra Bharati University, that was established on ideals of none other than Rabindranath Tagore? Why would obnoxious parodies of Rabindrasangeet with blatant sexual words blare on the campus as part of the festival? Why would women need to get drunk and lie on tramlines of a city or smash a car and die in an accident just to prove they are equal to a man?
I never as a woman brought up in an extremely liberal family needed to prove ‘I am a woman.’ I have seen a dad who used to help me with hot water bags to reduce my menstrual pain when I was in school, I have seen a mother and aunts who used to smoke not to prove what big feminists they are, but as part of a club party or back home, I have seen a husband who never asked me why I did not wear sindoor even on my wedding day or changed my surname to his, I have male friends, some of who I know love me too just like my husband does, who never asked for sex if I did not wish for the same. May be that’s why feminism came so easily to me, for me it was not a word or an ideology that needed to be forced down by vulgar display, or by getting drunk or smoking just for the sake of show off or by wearing a bikini dress to a shopping mall to draw attention.
May be our generation’s ideology of feminism is lost, or was it bred on stories of women like Sarala Ray, Mahasweta Devi, Ashapurna Devi, Leela Majumdar and even on men like Rammohan Ray, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and so many who felt we are all humans and equal. Rights can never be snatched or just to prove a rebel disrespecting elders, shouting them down, misbehaving with each and every man just to prove ‘I am superior, I do not need a man!’ Frankly, I always needed men and for me their private parts were a biological tool for sexual pleasure and not meant for a vulgar display on my back that too in Bengali, a language that I have felt always as one of the sweetest this country can ever boast of. Would sign off with a small story of Tagore’s poem Swapno that my dad used to recite quite often when I was a child. The scene where the man and the woman kiss at last, and they do as the flame burns out in the most intimate darkness expressed like a sing-song through the Bard’s words. To express that feeling of being a woman or a man, to express love and even sexuality, you really do not need to be so crass! So low! I pity you all, the neo-feminists of colleges and universities of today. You have really missed the true essence of a relationship and even your own personality and identity of being a ‘human.’ Better find that out first and then go on to prove that you are a ‘Feminist!’
