Why comparing Deepika Padukone with Saina Nehwal is a #BadChoice

My Choice: Two words that triggered a furious battle of opinions last week. Working within the binary framework of this or that, the much talked about video featuring Deepika Padukone has elicited a range of responses including alternate and spoof videos.

The release of the video coincided with Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal’s rise to No 1 position in World Badminton Rankings. Who has the right to be a role model for Indian women: Padukone or Nehwal?

Feminism

The debate is an extension of the binary battles that kept emerging on the peripheries of women’s movements with a stated or insidious aim to discredit them. The anti-feminist insistence that feminists want a world free of men, that they are a bunch of bra-burning man-hating women who refuse to shave their armpits, tried to obfuscate the real aim of feminism: equal freedom of choice. From Penelope’s choice to remain a chaste wife in Homer’s The Odyssey to Padukone’s assertion that pre or extra marital sex is indeed a matter of choice, feminists’ biggest battle has been to secure an equal footing with men while choosing. A look into the history of women's writings alerts us to their ordeals. Today, while the situation has improved, the debate lingers on, even as it has shifted to platforms like social media.

Countering the class/religion/regional/linguistic/caste/professional collaborationism is difficult and more so for women. Identity formation in the real or virtual world on the basis of the above parameters often culminates in a majoritarian monolithic worldview with a thrust on conformity. Thus a woman actor/model posting a risqué picture of herself is accepted, but a "regular" woman doing the same inspires the online equivalent of stares and nudges.

Empowerment

Conversely, intellectual discourses are considered to be the domain of the ones in the same business. So why should we listen to Padukone, an actress, when she talks about women empowerment by focusing on choices? And who is she to tell us that pre-marital sex is not a taboo? How do we know that her choices are good since she just came out of closet on depression? Let us leave such matters in the hand of professional feminists and let Padukone stick to acting.

With Nehwal’s achievements pitted against those of Padukone, we seem to have forgotten that the former too exercised her choice by becoming a badminton player, a difficult one in a country where mass consciousness is still ruled by traditional careers. Overcoming odds and becoming a world champion, Nehwal is therefore a natural role model. Interestingly, she features in a Women’s Day special video by Star Sports titled “Check Out My Game” where Indian women of sports are urging to shift attention from body to game. The "good" girl Nehwal, is the perfect antithesis to "bad" Padukone. And yet we need both.

Interpretations

By prioritising one over the other, we seem to be getting embroiled in a dangerous game of silence. Throughout the 20th century, women’s rights activists expressed their anger against the practice of silencing the woman through various tools. Simone de Beauvoir’s scathing attack on capitalist institutions for instilling a false sense of empowerment in women is a vital starting point in reimagining women in our country. The glamour industry is a den of exploitation and objectification of women, so why worship a false goddess? Why not just let Nehwal inspire girls to chase their dreams?

The answer lies in the very word that caused this furore: choice. Empowerment means freedom to pursue whatever dreams one may have regardless of social approvals. Absolutism in choice unless laws are being broken. It may be useful to remember that even our Supreme Court takes a progressive view of extra-marital sex, the only take-away from the My Choice video for some, and refuses to categorise it as "cruelty".

To conclude, Nietzsche had told us that sedimented interpretations of the world, often touted as truth, must be countered by individual imaging and imagining. The notions of self, unfolding through the individual reimaginations, attempt to do precisely that. In a country where violence against women has assumed gargantuan proportions, both a symptom and an outcome of denial of choices, every single imagination counts. Indian feminism cannot be a monolith: It needs both Padukone and Nehwal as much as Arunachalam Muruganantham, the man behind rural sanitary napkin revolution or the students sticking napkins all over their university campuses. It is all about autonomy, reclaiming the agency that has been long-denied and assertion of a will that refuses to die.