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Nithya
Chennai
behindw@behindwoods.com
Khushboo,
the female superstar of Tamil film industry, took a
lot of flak lately, when she got the guts to throw muck
at the chastity of Tamil women! She did a blasphemous
act by giving sound advice to the mature young Gen X
women to practice safe sex and use condoms. Freedom
of speech – a topic most of us study in our primary
school, as part of our curriculum, forget it as soon
as the exams end. But does it serve any purpose? Do
we really have the use of such laws? I don’t think
so. |
Khushboo
got a verbal barrage of bricks and insults after voicing
her opinion on the subject. She made a statement about
pre-marital sex and women, when the Tamil version
of India Today, asked her to write a column
in their magazine. She voiced her thoughts on the
matter. But she had no right to do so. Oops! She was
a celebrity. Moreover, she was an icon and a representation
of the women who have been accepted into the Tamil
society and catapulted to stupendous success.
Khushboo’s comments on the chaste, pure Tamil
women notwithstanding, the real issue at hand here
is, why a woman who spoke her mind was attacked so
vehemently. If it were a man who had said this, the
media would have had a field day covering major sections
of the society and asking every Tom Dick and Harry
his opinion about Indian women and their rights over
their bodies! A woman making a comment on a subject
so taboo like pre-marital sex truly inflamed the flimsy
ego of the Tamil people, whose daily dose of morality
and ethics are the soaps like Kolangal, Anandam
etc.
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What
would the masses do if they have to give a vent to their
views? Especially on sacred subjects like religion,
God or taboo subjects like sex or even pre-marital sex.
Probably the safest option would be to crib about it
in the safety of one’s living room, have a happy
dinner, and watch some more TV and sleep. But there
is another way to give some air and popularity to what
you think; provided you are ready to bear the brunt
of your neighboring maami or even agree to become the
bone of contention for some hundred strange women, who
wouldn’t have bothered even if you were raped
on a passenger train! But they really would be very
much bothered if an actor airs her view on what she
thinks is good advice for a mature public.
Rather than thinking why the actor said the things she
said, probably the brick brigade and the guy trying
to pull the donkey (a major daily carried a photo of
a demonstrator who was trying to pull a donkey as a
gift for Khushboo), would be better off to look into
their lives and ask the women in their homes, what they
actually feel. Women of 2005 are more matured and sure
about themselves, their sexuality than their counterparts
from 1990s. It is high time that the Indian man stood
up and tried to accept the fact that women and sexuality
have come of age and pre-marital sex might be a reality,
more than they think of it as a westernized concept.
As a nation, we are cowards. Indians have the famous
mentality to hide away from things that they feel are
against the “traditional picture.” They
agree to getting married to men/women who they don’t
even know, just for the sake of the couple living across
the street who are part of the so-called society, which
doesn’t even bother to raise its voice, when a
hapless girl was thrown from a Mumbai train, after being
mercilessly raped!
Why
the double standards? Why don’t we as a society
accept that we are not what we think we are and that
we try to run away from things that seem to hot to handle.
We also shy away from situations that do not have any
answers in our conditioning. Nothing can change our
mindset for the future. We as a nation would remain
in the muck we are in now. Raise our voices and shout
slogans against a hapless woman who would be now hating
the day she came to Chennai, but doing nothing to improve
the basic amenities provided to the victims of the Kashmir
quake.
Politicians
and the beholders of the destiny of the nation, think,
giving 33% reservation to women in the Parliament is
enough to make the fairer sex feel safe. But don’t
they forget, Oh! So easily, that the constitution has
given the power of free speech to all the citizens of
the nation. By a citizen we mean anybody who votes,
has a job, pays tax has the right to say that, “hey,
I don’t think I agree to being nudged when I am
walking on the roads” or talk freely about their
views on pre-marital sex, religious conversions, using
contraceptives and much more.
Freedom
of speech is just a word in today’s India. A state-centric
comment would be to say, Tamil women might be forced
to behave like the Abhi of Kolangal than be
a independent creature with her own set of ideas and
mindset. They have simply no freedom to speak anything
that the neighbor might not feel comfortable hearing
or something that might earn her a year’s supply
of condoms! So much for freedom of speech, being a woman,
it might be time for me to go home to find a group of
people yelling at me to tone down the words I use in
my articles!
Freedom
of speech for women - Free to speak, but only what the
others want you to speak.
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