feminists-from-india

"It is important for you to realise that it is okay to go through what you are going through"

"Understand what you are going through. Share it with people you trust. Even if they judge you, so what"

"Depression is not the same as sadness. Depression is an illness like any other illness such as cancer and diabetes"

"February 15th, 2014, I remember waking up that morning with a strange pittish feeling in my stomach. I had no idea what I was feeling. Life all of a sudden just felt meaningless"

"There is hope. We’re all in this together"

"Lack of education leads to lack of wisdom; lack of wisdom leads to lack of morals."

"We shall overcome and success will be ours in the future. The future belongs to us."

"There are so many antecedents alongside the usual postcolonial triad of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Important as they are, we have to remember figures like Frantz Fanon, Aime Césaire."

"I am at the moment a Fellow in the History department at a famous US University. And there are historians of colonialism who know more about this stuff than I could know in two lifetimes. But all through this year, the thing that have fell most strongly and have said, to general embarrassment, is that it is almost as if we didn't exist...."

"They Will Get Voting Rights. That’s How It Will Affect."

"...In the writers’ world there is much fun and frolic, and spite and praise..."

"...Along with all this, today’s world, dominated by the ruthless grasping market and the questionable politics making inroads everywhere, has surrounded me in ways like never before. I have to confront it more directly and also protect my literary space from its pollution..."

"...So many things go into the making of a creative work – a linguistic-literary tradition, an entire cultural lineage, history, one’s own experience and that of others distilled through observation, new readings and lessons learnt, hope and despair and playfulness and sadness, all feeding the writers’ imagination in tangible and not-so-tangible ways..."

"...The follies of mankind from times immemorial have led to broken homes and illogical political identities, severed selves and truncated stories, dislocated populations and homeless refugees..."

"... Writing emotionally-charged scenes – independent of whether they resonate with my own life – may leave me with some sort of an enervating feeling and may also produce a compensatory aesthetic satisfaction, but they can also sap me, filling me with an incredible exhaustion..."

"... I do not care for writing with a worked out plan of beginning, middle and end. Creativity can be an unexpected journey for the writer also..."

"...Self-critique is always there, as part of my intuition. It is this that produces, in the event of certain outcomes, that thrill of what you call ‘surprise’. It is also the pitiless slave-driver that keeps tormenting me, saying ‘no, not this, not this.’..."

"... So for me Partition has specific subcontinental implications, but it also spans the larger world..."

"Our very limited interaction with NGOs active in this field in Tamil Nadu reveal that a large number of abortions take place outside the formal system since very often the state through its family planning outlets tries its own morality on women seeking abortions."

"There will always be a gap between the goals set down and scheme of implementation. Women's groups by now have enough data to know where the policies have gone wrong. The whole question is gathering enough political clout to make a change."

"Twelve million people were displaced as a result of Partition. Nearly one million died. Some 75,000 women were raped, kidnapped, abducted, forcibly impregnated by men of the ‘other’ religion, thousands of families were split apart, homes burnt down and destroyed, villages abandoned. Refugee camps became part of the landscape of most major cities in the north, but, a half century later, there is still no memorial, no memory, no recall, except what is guarded, and now rapidly dying, in families and collective memory."

"Such good relations we had that if there was any function that we had, then we used to call Musalmaans to our homes, they would eat in our houses, but we would not eat in theirs and this is a bad thing, which I realize now. If they would come to our houses we would have two utensils in one corner of the house, and we would tell them, pick these up and eat in them; they would then wash them and keep them aside and this was such a terrible thing. This was the reason Pakistan was created. If we went to their houses and took part in their weddings and ceremonies, they used to really respect and honour us. They would give us uncooked food, ghee, atta, dal, whatever sabzis they had, chicken and even mutton, all raw. And our dealings with them were so low that I am even ashamed to say it. A guest comes to our house and we say to him, bring those utensils and wash them, and if my mother or sister have to give him food, they will more or less throw the roti from such a distance, fearing that they may touch the dish and become polluted ... We don’t have such low dealings with our lower castes as Hindus and Sikhs did with Musalmaans."

"Broad views about life have shrunk into religions, and we have been turned into their symbols. They regard us as empty symbols. Symbols of a religion, a nation. We mustn’t be trapped by that. In this war, let that be the ground of your contest. A ground that cannot be reduced to definition and detail."

"Begum Rokeya had dreamt of a society where women would be magistrates, judges and barristers and that has come true as many women are already there in such posts."

"Why did I come, oh! to this burning world, why was I born in a house with a curtain-veil!"

"She was much ahead of her time and society in understanding the causes of its degradation and in setting up a correct approach to address them. She rightly realised that without empowering women, a society can never flourish. Hence, the thematic thread that runs through all her intellectual efforts is a concern for equitable gender relations – feminism."

"[That woman] once came to Calcutta. When four or five of them went out in an open motor with burqas, the boys on the street would say, "Oma! What are those?" They would say to each other, "Be quiet! They can't help but become ghosts at this time of night." When they saw the burqa's veil fluttering in the wind, they would say, "Look, look. The ghosts' bodies are moving! Father! Run away!""

"The more veiled and hidden like a snail in the corners of the house, the more noble he is."

"In order to silence the crying children, the people on the street would point their fingers at them and say, "Shut up, look, Mecca is going to Medina, oh!" - The besieged Jujuburis, they are Mecca and Medina!""

"If today I get back with you, our conservative grandmothers will say to other women rebelling against gender injustices, Look, even a rebel like Jainab has also surrendered. I don't believe that only married life can be the ultimate success for women."

"'Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?' 'Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.' 'A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests."

"The opponents of the female education say that women will be unruly...fie ! They call themselves muslims and yet go against the basic tenet of islam which gives equal right to education. If men are not led astray once educated, why should women?"

"Although I am grateful to you for the respect that you have expressed towards me by inviting me to preside over the conference, I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry."

"Had God Himself intended women to be inferior, He would have ordained it so that mothers would have given birth to daughters at the end of the fifth month of pregnancy. The supply of mother’s milk would naturally have been half of that in case of a son. But that is not the case. How can it be? Is not God just and most merciful?"

"The main reason why I have never been able to raise my head against slavery is that whenever a sister has tried to raise her head, her head has been crushed by a blow in the form of a weapon in the name of religion or the words of the scriptures. What we did not accept easily at first, we later considered as the command of religion and made it a matter of honor."

""Now let us enter the Muslim society. According to the Muslims, we are 'half' of a man, that is, two women are equal to one man. Or if two brothers and a sister are together, we become 'two and a half'... You will find in the 'Muhammadan law' that there is a provision that a daughter gets half of a son's share in the ancestral property.... But we are not half of brothers in the eyes of God and mother. If that were the case, the natural arrangement would be that where a son gets ten months, a daughter gets five months!!... We enjoy the love and affection of our mother equally with our brother. There is no partiality in the heart of a mother."

"When the train arrived, an English employee said to Haji Saheb in broken Hindi, "Munshi! You should walk with your shoes. When the train arrives, there will be no empty seats on the platform." Haji Saheb said with folded hands, "Hujur, all those shoes are not covered." The employee again tapped his shoe on a "bag" and said, "Ha, ha - all those shoes should walk." The women did not utter the word "shoe boot" at the request of the veil."

"[A woman] had gone to the house of a Bengali gentleman for a wedding invitation. As soon as they saw her [with a burqa], the boys and girls there would scream in fear and run away, not knowing who would."

"Your kitchen is not inferior to a queen's boudoir!' I replied with a pleasant smile, 'but we must leave it now; for the gentlemen may be cursing me for keeping them away from their duties in the kitchen so long.' We both laughed heartily."

""In order to deceive us, men have published those religious scriptures as "God's commandments". In ancient times, the person who was known among the ten for his talent, he tried to rule the barbarians by declaring himself to be an angel or a god sent by God.... As the world gradually became more intelligent, clever and talented men saw that people no longer believed him when he called him a "prophet". Then the great Jesus introduced himself as a part of God (the Son of God) and wrote the book of the Gospel. In it it is written, 'A woman is completely subject to a man, and her husband has full rights over her property.' And the woman, who was devoid of intelligence and conscience, accepted this. Then the great Mohammed made a law that, 'A woman shall always be subject to a man, before marriage to her father or brother, after marriage to her husband, and in the absence of a husband to her son.' And the foolish woman bowed her head and accepted that law. Sister, you see that these religious scriptures are nothing but rules and regulations written by men. What you hear in the laws of the sages, you may find in the laws of a woman sage the opposite of that. The religious scriptures are not inspired or directed by God. If God had sent an angel for the purpose of ruling women, that angel would not have been limited to Asia only. Why did the angels not go to Europe? Why did they not go from America and from the poles to the poles and proclaim this command of God: "The women shall be subject to men." Is God the God of Asia only? Wasn't America his kingdom? God-given water and air are in all countries, but why haven't the messengers spread throughout the land? If the civilized people of today believe what the barbarians believed in ancient times, then what is the difference between civilization and barbarism? Whatever the case, now we will no longer bow down to the rule of men in the name of religion."

"I was in Aligarh till last year. Since the station there seemed to be unique in its splendor on the E. I. R. line, I used to go there every day on foot. Among other things, I saw many 13th-century burqas there. And God knows, every burqa was funny in some way or the other."

"I saw the first signs of famine in April 1943 - the so called "Great Bengal Famine" which would kill between 2 to 3 million people. Food prices had started rising quite sharply during 1942, the year before the famine. (pg. 114)"

"We investigated the working of a number of elementary schools from three districts of West Bengal… The problem is, in some ways, compounded by the fact that school teachers are now comparatively well paid – no longer the recipients of miserably exploitative wages... The salary of teachers in regular schools has gone up dramatically over recent years. This is an obvious cause for celebration at one level (indeed, I remember being personally involved, as a student at Presidency College fifty years ago, in agitations to raise the desperately low prevailing salaries of school teachers). But the situation is now very different. The big salary increases in recent years have not only made school education vastly more expensive (making it much harder to offer regular school education to those who are still excluded from it), but have also tended to draw school teachers as a group further away from the families of children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. There is considerable evidence that the class barrier that deeply impairs the delivery of school education to the worst-off members of society is now further reinforced by the increase in economic and between the teachers and the poorer (and less privileged) children"

"The continuous cries for help - from children and women and men - ring in my ears, even today seventy-seven years later. (pg. 115)"

"Smith had no illusion that this would be easy to do, nor did he suffer from the delusion that such an exercise would, in any sense, be perfect. But he did have the conviction that the exercise could still be very useful, and the best should not be made into an enemy of the good."

"Smith distinguishes with great sophistication the different kinds of reasons people have in taking an interest in the lives of others, separating out sympathy, generosity, public spirit and other motivations. Even though he acknowledged the role of mental attitudes and predispositions, he went on to discuss how reasoning, which is at the heart of rationality, must have a big role in preventing us from being – consciously or unconsciously – too self-centred, or thoughtlessly uncaring."

"The case for combating debilitating inequality in India is not only a matter of social justice. Unlike India, China did not miss the huge lesson of Asian economic development, about the economic returns that come from bettering human lives, especially at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. India’s growth and its earnings from exports have tended to depend narrowly on a few sectors, like information technology, pharmaceuticals and specialized auto parts, many of which rely on the role of highly trained personnel from the well-educated classes. For India to match China in its range of manufacturing capacity — its ability to produce gadgets of almost every kind, with increasing use of technology and better quality control — it needs a better-educated and healthier labor force at all levels of society. What it needs most is more knowledge and public discussion about the nature and the huge extent of inequality and its damaging consequences, including for economic growth."

"profits made by the East India Company [...] in Bengal, financed [...] wars that the British waged across India in the period of their colonial expansion. (pg. 164)"

"That austerity is a counterproductive economic policy in a situation of economic recession can be seen, rightly, as a “Keynesian critique.” Keynes did argue—and persuasively—that to cut public expenditure when an economy has unused productive capacity as well as unemployment owing to a deficiency of effective demand would tend to have the effect of slowing down the economy further and increasing—rather than decreasing—unemployment. Keynes certainly deserves much credit for making that rather basic point clear even to policymakers, irrespective of their politics, and he also provided what I would call a sketch of a theory of explaining how all this can be nicely captured within a general understanding of economic interdependences between different activities... I am certainly supportive of this Keynesian argument, and also of Paul Krugman’s efforts in cogently developing and propagating this important perspective, and in questioning the policy of massive austerity in Europe. But I would also argue that the unsuitability of the policy of austerity is only partly due to Keynesian reasons. Where we have to go well beyond Keynes is in asking what public expenditure is for—other than for just strengthening effective demand, no matter what its content. As it happens, European resistance to savage cuts in public services and to indiscriminate austerity is not based only, or primarily, on Keynesian reasoning. The resistance is based also on a constructive point about the importance of public services—a perspective that is of great economic as well as political interest in Europe."

"Ambedkar is my Father in Economics. He is true celebrated champion of the underprivileged. He deserves more than what he has achieved today. However he was highly controversial figure in his home country, though it was not the reality. His contribution in the field of economics is marvelous and will be remembered forever..!"