Men in Haryana have horns, girls have empty pockets

In this world full of deathly possibilities, what scares me the most is terrorism. Because you get killed for no reason at all. You are a target in public transport, shopping malls, temples and mosques. The enemy doesn’t know you. You don’t know the enemy. You have never quarrelled over anything. The enemy doesn’t want to kill you, but you die anyway and become the headlines, and later, statistics. That’s what scares the crap out of me. So, when I see a hashtag, “The new Indian Taliban”, trending on Twitter, my worst fears flash in front of me.

Bearded men with rocket-launchers roaming the streets and firing their weapons at will. The hashtag was promoted by a TV channel whose anchor insists every bit of his show is prefixed with super. So, when I missed the show, I stayed awake to catch the repeat, while cursing Taliban and its mentors, Pakistan. Images of women being stoned to death and men being beheaded for possessing alcohol.

What I saw was a man in a white kurta, a man in an unstitched saffron robe, two women in kurtas and a man in a forgettable something. The discussion circled around a group called the Hindu Mahasabha in Haryana. It’s not a nondescript bunch, but it would have roughly about 18 serious followers. That mahasabha apparently issued a statement saying girls shouldn’t be wearing colourful clothes, especially denim. How dare they! How dare gurukul-types dictate what girls should wear when people in studios can decide for them? You don’t speak like us, dress like us, you aren’t people like us. Then how dare you decide for them? This is our job, you Taliban, er... the New Indian Taliban.

Since he could not identify the old Indian Taliban, the anchor called them a Khap panchayat, which they are not. I doubt many of our debate-happy anchors know what a Khap looks like. My friend said that the super anchor wouldn’t know if he ran into one. Because the anchor and all the accompanying reports pronounced Khap as if it rhymed with pup, while it rhymes with baap and paap. Why let Indian names and places come in the way of a good debate?

And that should be fine; no one needs to know these bunch of panchayats and we shouldn’t care about their regressive elements. Publicity only gives them a sense of relevance, and sustenance. Politicians care about and keep them propped up because they need votes, and the last Assembly elections in Haryana proved that they may be flogging a dead horse.

So, why was the super anchor going berserk about other TV channels not paying attention to his cause and standing behind him in this fight? He kept asking Narendra Modi, who was not anywhere to be seen on the screen, what action has he taken against these Taliban. He also scared the viewers by saying, "Don’t think that it won’t impact you because you don’t live in Haryana." That scare tactic did work, because I don’t live in Haryana, which the anchor thinks has been left behind by civilisation, untouched. That’s how disconnected some people are sitting in studios in Mumbai!

I have worked in Haryana for five years, visited nearly every panchayat and can confirm that people there do not have horns. They wear the white turban to protect their heads because it is incredibly hot most parts of the year and bone-chillingly cold for a couple of months. Also, because it’s a tradition and a part of their culture. Attire comes from culture. There’s a reason why women in Japan wear different clothes than what women in Bihar do.

Girls in Haryana, too, wear jeans, and if you check their pockets, you wouldn’t find a single damn. Because they don’t have one to give to the Hindu Mahasabha and its ilk. They wear what they like. There are places where they wear white salwar-kurta and cover their heads with a chunni, not because the Hindu Mahasabha asked them to. But because that’s what they wear. They are feisty, powerful and kick ass. They bring half of India’s medals in international games. They wear shorts, too. They are more independent than you think.

With them also live the women who are oppressed, work harder than the men, suffer in silence and have their faces seen only by close relatives. That’s how they have lived for centuries. They will never have the clothes or sensibilities of South Mumbai divas. That’s how India is. It’s not about Haryana. And some cheap publicity-seeking Hindu Mahasabha has next to no role in this. This is how women in Madhya Pradesh live and this is how women in Maharashtra die.

So, why aren’t women from two villages equal and why don't they dress similarly?  Well, two neighbours don’t dress alike. Too many reasons there, but let us focus on the first and biggest two.

Economic development. It depends on the financial well-being of a girl’s family. Girls from families that can afford to send their children to modern schools dress less conservatively than girls who go to the village government school. The better-off girls go on to study and work in cities. They change their lives and of those next to them. Those who remain stuck in the village are, well, stuck with its way of life. As more families join the well-to-do list, more lives change. And this change is a constant in rural and semi-urban India. Girls wear shorts at home, jeans to parties and salwar-kurta to the puja. Because they aren’t comfortable wearing shorts in a temple. That they do not trust other devotees is one of the reasons as is their choice.

Secondly, and more importantly, patriarchy. Haryana is not the only state where patriarchy still rules. Men decide what women should wear because women are owned by them - so runs the patriarchal diktat. She is either a somebody’s sister, mother, daughter or wife. She is not her own. When a girl is said to be a precious jewel of the family, she is not to be flaunted, but kept safe, hidden. No matter how precious a jewel is, it’s property. It’s not a person. The girl we are being patronising about is a victim of patriarchy because she was born into it. It’s her father, her uncles, her mother, her brothers who keep her in chains of regression because she is the honour of the family.

Also because she is a property of someone else and her parents are just caretakers. All the wedding songs treat her as "paraya dhan". I am talking about wedding songs prevalent from Bihar to Gujarat. Almost all of them talk about Babul handing over his own flesh and blood to the hariyala banna who she really belongs to. It’s not Hindu Mahasabha. It’s an illness we have inherited from our culture; a disease we preserve in the name of tradition, and if you have to blame someone, blame Hinduism for the same. Don’t choose an enemy who is weak and slap him around on prime time TV in English. Take on the evil that gives birth to the mahasabha. Can you?