Footnote 19 (Feminism)

Kafeel Siddiqui There is no question of Hindu-Muslim with Safoora Jargar. , she is a free and equal individual. She is a woman and a Muslim by coincidence, what I bluntly say as a consequence to a biological accident. Azadi is freedom from external constraints, not subject to anyone else's will. I do remember your introducing your wife as a PhD in mathematics and a house wife. I did not comment about your being a patriarchal. In the farewell lectures to my final years students I used to request them in a light tenner that those boys, who would take dowry and those girls who would become housewives to conceal the fact that they had been my students. To answer the issues like the one raised by you I used to quote Simone de Beauvoir (the French feminist philosopher). Once some journalists asked her that when women themselves are happy with traditional ways of life, why do you want to impose your views of freedom on them? Her answer was, "We don't seek to impose anything on anyone. They are happy with traditional ways of life because they don't know other ways. We just seek to expose them to other ways of life. And what can you do if someone learns to derive some power within the prison?" Like race and communalism, Gender (patriarchy) is also not an attribute of biology, but an ideology that one internalizes as natural and final truth. All such socially constructed naturalities are unnatural and need to be questioned. The quality of ideology is that it affects not only the perpetrator but also the victim. Not only my father thought that commanding my mother is his right but under the hegemonic influence of ideology of gender, my mother also thought that obeying him was her duty. The struggle of feminism is ideological and cultural. That is why the words and acts of unconventional women give cultural shock to gendered men. "how can a woman, say/do this?". And culturally shocked men find character assassination about her sexuality, easiest way to counter the feminist assertion and scholarship. But the powerful tide feminist scholarship and assertion cant be stopped by such feeble straws. In the words of Faiz, जो दरिया झूम के उट्ठा है, तिनकों से न टाला जाएगा। I think this must explain your query.