Congratulation on graduation

As you graduate today, its time for both retrospection and looking ahead. As you would look back, bitter-sweet memories will come alive. Moments of elation, moments of despair, the best of times the worst of times, the spring of hope, the winter of despair….. its been a long journey, not just from a small town to Calcutta,  but from a gawky confused teenager to a mature composed man. At the end of it all, what you will get today is not a sheet of paper, not just gift wrapped books, its an experience, it’s  certification that you have grown, as a person, as an individual.

Its also a time to look forward…to newer worlds, newer heights, newer adventures. To strive, to seek, to find and never to yield. There will be many battles to be fought, wars to be won and perhaps the most significant of these battles, will be the battles you fight inside your own head. Keep walking, keep fighting… and don’t let that fire inside you die out.

 As for today…You made it…I Knew you would…..Your efforts, your talents, your vision, your belief, your time, your dedication, your devotion…what amazing results! BRAVO.

Marxist Critique of Feminism

Marxist theories disagree with the implication that women are a class and argue that such views divide the proletariat. Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English state: “Women are not a ‘class’; they are not uniformly oppressed; they do not all experience sexism in the same way.”[1]  Do proletarians, including women all experience class oppression in the same way? On the level of the work women do, women’s lives are strikingly similar across class. Kate Millett has argued that “ economic dependency renders women’s affiliations with any class a tangential vicarious and temporary matter.” [2] Evelyn Reed has responded: “To oppose women as a class against men as a class can only result in a diversion of the real class struggle.”[3]

Marxists seem worried that to posit women and men as classes suggests that women must fight for their freedom. “ What is logical and inescapable extension of the basic feminist position that the fundamental social division is one of sex, that the oppression of women stems from male supremacy, that all women are ‘sisters’ if not that women should place themselves on the opposite side of the barricades from their oppressors- from men?”[4] Apparently it is a matter of judgement – perhaps an assessment of importance as much as a deduction from theoretical postulates or empirical evidence- which struggle is the “real class struggle.” If women were considered oppressed as a class, Marxists should be among the last to protest recourse to the barricades.

Beyond the disagreement over categorical primacy, if one accepts sex as a material social category at all and uses Marx’s analysis of class to scrutinize feminist analyses of sex, a substantial body of feminist work can be criticized for the very tendencies Marx criticized in burgeois theory. Marxists have charged feminism with liberalism of two kinds: idealism or belief in the power of ideas alone to cause social change; and individualism, or reliance on the individual to effect social change.[5] The first criticism is often presented as addressing attitudes rather than the material base of those attitudes[6] or as relying on moral persuasion.[7] The theory and practice of consciousness raising can lapse into treating social reality as if it were constructed solely by one’s idea of it, so that all that is required for social change is to persuade people of the morality and utility of equality for women to achieve equality by force of reason and exemplary practice.[8] This approach attributes the movement of history to the movement of ideas and changes in these ideas to abstract human reason or to eternal ever unfolding verities of ever progressing justice. Marx criticized Hegel and Proudhon for idealism in attributing movements in the material world to movements in reason rather than to alterations in material relations. Marx ridiculed Proudhon’s notion that ‘ it was the principle that made the history and not the history that made the principle.” [9]

As an example of the feminism to which such a criticism of idealism would apply, Mary Daly in Gyn/ Ecology speaks less of the creation of the women’s consciousness by the realities of male power, therefore of the depth of women’s damage, and more of its lies and distortions, positing mind change as social change. For instance, in the investigation of Sati, [10] Daly focuses upon demystifying its allegedly voluntary aspects. Women are revealed as drugged, pushed, browbeaten or otherwise coerced.[11] Comparatively neglected- both as to the women involved and as to the implications for the diagnosis of sexism as illusion – are perhaps sati’s deepest victims: women who want to die when their husband dies, who volunteer for self immolation because they believe their life is over when his is, women whose consciousness conforms to the materially dismal and frightening prospect of widowhood in Indian society. To the extent this analysis turns on whether the women jump or are pushed, it gives ideas both too much and too little power. In the case of male power, too much, in suggesting that the subordination of women is an idea such that to think it differently is to change it. In the case of female powerlessness, too little, in neglecting the consciousness of the most totally victimized in favour of a critique of the victimization of those whose consciousness at least has escaped. Similarly, Susan Griffith, in Pornography and Silence, reduces the problem of pornography to the problem of the ‘pornographic mind’[12] Pornography is opposed to eros in a distinction that I fundamentally psychological rather than interested something to be unthought and therefore changed, rather than a form of exploitation rooted in social life which both constitutes and expresses its material realities.

A similar failure to situate thought in social reality is central to Carol Gilligan’s work on gender differences in moral reasoning[13] By establishing that women reason differently from men on moral questions, she revalues that which has accurately distinguished women from men by making it seem as though women’s moral reasoning is somehow women’s, rather than what male supremacy has attributed to women for its own use. When difference means dominance as it does with gender, for women to affirm differences is to affirm the qualities and characteristics of powerlessness. Women may have an approach to moral reasoning, but it is an approach made both of what is and what is not allowed to be. To the extent materialism means anything at all, it means that what women have been and thought is what they have been permitted to be and think. Whatever this is, it is not women’s possessive. To treat it as if it were to leap over the social world to analyse women’s situation as if equality, in spite of everything, already ineluctably existed.

The women’s morality Gilligan discovers cannot be morality “in a different voice”. It can only be morality in the feminine voice, in a higher register. [14] Women are said to value care. Perhaps women value care because men have valued women according to the care they give. Women are said to think in relational terms. Perhaps women think in relational terms because women’s social existence is defined in relation to men. The liberal idealism of these works is revealed in the ways they do not take social determination and the realities of power seriously enough. As a matter of sociology of knowledge, it is enlightening, though, that affirming the perspective that has been forced on women is rather widely taken as real progress toward taking women seriously.

Some feminists early in the second wave advanced “ feelings” as pure reflection of the external world and therefore unmediated access to truth. The San Fransisco Redstockings for example asserted; “Our politics begin with our feelings: feelings are a direct response to the events and relationships that we experience; that’s how we know whats really going on….. Information derived from our feelings is our only reliable and our political analysis can be trusted only so long as it does not contradict our feelings.” [15] This intuitionist approach posits feelings, as Proudhon and others posited reason, as outside society an internalized reference system for measuring social reality that derives its claim to validity from its place beyond social reach. Surely one is more likely to feel bad than justified when confronting difficulties in a situation that social learning supports, such as motherhood. This response may produce the sense that feelings are n independent basis for understanding reality, that thoughts are able to grasp it only derivatively, and that thinking is socially constructed while feelings are not. Yet feminism has uncovered women’s social roles in women’s actual feelings and society’s standards in women’s feelings, both in embracing and in rejecting their roles. If a woman feels anger at not being treated as a full person, this surely refers to social definitions of personhood, possibly even liberal ones, to which men routinely experience entitlement without being subjected to class- based critique. Similarly feelings of loss of control over one’s life may reflect a social standard of self-actualization that requires control as a means to it.

Some feminist practice – such as therapy, crisis intervention, and service work- tends to focus on the individual as if social life were constructed of an amalgam of independent and solitary individuals, so that social change is a matter of moving their lives one by one. Opposing the suggestion that there is a matter of moving their lives one by one. Opposing the suggestion that there is a sphere of human social activity which belongs to each individual as a unit, Marx states: “ The individual is the social being. The manifestation of his life- even when it does not appear directly in the form of a communal manifestation, accomplished in association with other men is …. A manifestation and affirmation of social life.”[16]

Marxist epistemology makes the isolated individual a person without consciousness, unthinkable to self as well as for theory, social order and social change.

The Marxist criticism of feminist individualism often turns into a criticism of its focus on private life, on the supposition that private life is intrinsically the realm of the individual. Thus, Engels said women’s emancipation and equality were impossible so long as women were restricted to housework, which is private.”[17] Updated, “ the sex occurs on privatized, intimate terrain within the family unit.” [18] The husband’s authority, the children’s demands, and the wife’s conditioned conception of a good housekeeper may be seen as ‘ simply the personal means through which economic necessity is expressed inside the family,” yet addressing housework is called individualistic and characterized as adopting “ primarily interpersonal forms of struggle.” [19] The woman “ rebels as an isolated individual to the immediate detriment of her husband and children and her actions do not contest the relations of capital directly….. Her rebellion is objectively untenable because she is not part of an union.” [20] Presumably, a union of organized labour.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that such charges of individualism are disagreements with the analysis that the division between women and men is a basic social division of power, including labour. Similarly, the charge of idealism often turns into the view that the social division between women and men can be attacked only as unreasonable or immoral- which is another way of saying that it is not a matter of exploitation and has no material base. Yet social theory via individual biography surely has its limitations. Consider the following quotation, which exemplifies virtually all the strains in feminist thought singled out for Marxist criticism- the focus on the individual, the reflective theory of perception, and the asocial “ ideas move life” logic:

 We know that true revolution is a glacial process of unknown cell structures that will evolve out of shared bits of profoundly internalized consciousness. This consciousness, which is at first realised through the painful acknowledgement of hierarchical oppression, is transformed by degrees into the birth of the self and the celebration of spontaneous behaviour appropriate to the individual and her perception to the constantly changing environment and social conditions.”[21]

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[1] Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, Glass Mountain Pamphlet No. 2 Feminist Press, 1973, p. 11

[2] Kate Millett, Sexual Politics  (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970) p. 38

[3] Evelyn Reed, Problems of Women’s Liberation, Pathfinder Press, New York 1972, p. 74

[4] Sparticist League, Women and Revolution: Journal of the Women’s Commission of the Sparticist League7 (Autumn 1974): 1, See also Reed, Problems, p. 72, for a view by the Socialist Worker’s Party which co-incides with this approach.

[5] Charnie Guettel, Marxism and Feminism, Toronto, Hunter Rose Company, 1974, p. 26

[6] wally Seccombe, The Housewife and her Labour under capitalism, New Left Review 83 (Jan- Feb 1974)

[7] Branka Magas, ‘Sex Politics: Class Politics,’ New Left Review 80 ( March – April 1971): 69

[8] Bebel, Women under Socialism, p. 210 exemplifies this position

[9] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, New York, International Publishers, 1963, p. 115

[10] A practice in which Indian widows are supposed to throw themselves upon their dead husband’s funeral pyres in grief

[11] Mary daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of radical Feminism, Boston: Beacon Press, 1978, pp. 113-133.

[12] Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge against Nature New York, Harper and Row, 1981, pp. 2-4, 251-265

[13] Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982

[14] For a subtle empirical

[15] San Fransisco Redstockings, “ Our Politics Begin with our feelings”, in Masculine/ Feminine: Readings in sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women, ed. Betty Roszak and Theodore Roszak ( New York: Harper &Row, 1969) pp.285-290

[16]     Karl Marx, Early Writings, ed. and trans. T.B. Bottomore, New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), pp. 121

[17] Origins, p. 221

[18] Seccombe, The Housewife and her Labour, p. 22

[19] Ibid. ,pp. 27

[20] Ibid. p. 22

[21] Jill Johnston, “ The Myth of Bonnies without Clydes: Lesbian Feminism and the Male Left, “ Village Voice, April 28, 1975, p. 14 as cited in CATHERINE A MACKINNON, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachussets, London England 1989

Sahebji

Centuries ago the sea brought in more than just the predictable oil slicks and plastic bags. About 1400 years ago, it brought in Parsis from Iran at Sanjan, Gujerat setting the stage for dhansak, the House of the Tatas and ‘bawa’ jokes. The Parsees are an ethno-religious minority in India, living chiefly on the West coast of the sub-continent. In spite of their infinitesimally small number the Parsees occupy an extraordinary position in India’s most recent history. Their past and present role in the economic, social and political spheres makes them one of the most interesting of India’s ethnic groups. The name Parsees  refers to the Persian province “Fars”, which they left over 1,200 years ago to save their religion, the teachings of Zoroaster from being Islamised by the invading Arabians.

 Our knowledge of the circumstances and stages of the migration from Persia is based almost exclusively on the chronicle ‘Kissah-i-sanjan’ written in Persian in 1600 A.D. by the Parsee priest Behman Kaikobad Sanjana in Nausari.  When the Parsees came to the King of Sanjan, he imposed 5 conditions on them: The Parsees High Priest would have to explain their religion to the King, the Parsees would have to give up their native Persian language and take on the language of Gujarat, The women should exchange their traditional Persian garb for the customary dress of the country ,The men should lay down their weapons and the Parsis should hold their wedding processions only in the dark.

The Parsees complied with these restrictions. Gujerati became their native
language. The women started wearing sarees. Gujerati spoken by Parsis is an
idiosyncratic variant of the language. This is highly typical of the Parsi
tendency to adapt but without any surrender of their distinctiveness. 

 In the fields of language and clothing two essential channels and indicators of socio-cultural change, the Parsees proved themselves extremely adaptive. On Indian soil, they erected Zoroastrian fire temples - the temples in which a flame (atash) is kept burning as a symbol of the life cycle and of eternal recurrence. This symbol has been richly significant to the Parsis: the Zoroastrian faith has been kept burning. Zoroastrians pray to one god Ahura Mazda (the "wise lord") to help them in the dualistic battle between Spenta Mainyu (the "Bounteous Spirit") and Angra Mainyu (the "Destructive Spirit").

 The Parsee community, which lived relatively unnoticed for more than a thousand years on the periphery of the Gujerati society as artisans, carpenters weavers etc., showed remarkable changes only after the advent of the British. With the arrival of the British, however, Parsi fortunes underwent a quantum leap. Manifesting a business acumen which got them dubbed the "Jews of India", the Parsis came to dominate the commercial life of Victorian Bombay, the city in which they are still mostly concentrated .

Monotheists, unconstrained by any caste system, and lighter skinned than the majority of Indians, the Parsis were eminently acceptable to the British imperium; with some exceptions - notably Dadabhai Naoroji, an early proponent of the independence movement. Indeed, there was no shortage of those who - like Mancherjee Bhownagree(one of the first Asian MPs of the British parliament) regarded British rule as little less than providential.

There seems to be a total absence of recorded history vis-à-vis the Parsees in Calcutta. The first Parsee came to Calcutta about 200 years ago. Mr. Ardeshir Dinsha who was a research scholar in Calcutta has recorded that from the time of foundation of Calcutta by Job Charnock in 1692 A.D. till the Battle of Plassey in 1757 A.D., no record is found of any Parsee presence in Calcutta. The recorded history of the Parsees in Calcutta begins with the arrival of Seth Dadabhai Behramji Banaji in 1767. Seth Banaji was a close friend of British Officer John Cartier, a chief officer of the British Settlement in Surat. John Cartier was posted from Surat to Calcutta and he induced Seth Dadabhai Banaji to come to Calcutta to explore business possibilities. In those days there was a thriving trade with China, Burma, Siam and other countries in opium and silk.

The person who brought fame and fortune to the Banaji family in Calcutta was Rustomji Cowasji Banaji, Dadabhai’s nephew. Seth Rustomji Cawasji Banaji was one of the first Indian to enter into a business partnership with Europeans. Set Rustomji was considered to be father of ship building industry in Bengal. In 1837 he bought Kidderpore Docks and the Salkea Docks . He played a leading part in introducing and developing Insurance business in India.  True to Parsee tradition of charity, he used his immense wealth in philanthropic works of public good. He was known as the father of the Calcutta Corporation and the Medical College and Hospital. Amongst the other institutions started with the donations of Seth Rutomji were Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, The District Charitable Society, Native Hospital of Dharamtalla, The Mayo Hospital, The Medical College Hospital, The Veterinary College and Hospital of Calcutta. One of the most prominent contribution of Rustomjee was the building of a Fire temple at his own cost to enable Calcutta Parsees to offer prayers and perform religious rites.

Another illustrious Parsee merchant was J.F.Madan to who goes the credit of introducing cinema on a commercial basis. Along with the running of the Corinthian Theatre at 5, Dharamtalla Street, he also dealt with auctioned goods, provision stores and supplied essentials to the British for their military expeditions. He was the pioneer and the father of the cinema industry in India. J.F. Madan has left behind for the community a large philanthropic infrastructure which includes inter alia houses for the needy and poor Parsees, contributions to the Mehta Fire temple and a substantial contribution to the Tower of Silence.

On 11^th August 1838, the ship “John Woodhall” brought in the first Parsee ladies to Calcutta. Zoroastrianism enjoined equality between the sexes - an imperative which sharply distinguishes it form other eastern religions – hence Parsee ladies enjoyed a great deal more of independence and opportunities than their Hindu or Muslim contemporaries. In those days, the system of Purdah was prevalent in Bengal and women were not seen in public, but the womenfolk of the Rustomji household were openly seen welcoming guests at parties and receptions.

The academic education of girls and the widespread emancipation of women resulted in a quick acceptance of English standards all the way into the details of daily life. The process of assimilation touched on almost all of the spheres of life. As far as clothes were concerned, it was only the men who made a change and took to European fashion. Thus the sudreh was shortened to suit the length of the European fashioned shirts and trousers. Similarly, the habit of wearing a pheta at all times, had to be done away with, to be in observance with European practice of removing ones hat when one went into the house of another.

The homes were furnished with English furniture, with pianos and crystal chandeliers.  Parsee girls of rich families, educated by English Governess, learned to play the violin or the piano. Evening parties have been celebrated since then to the sounds of waltzes and operettas.

The nonexistence of their own literary tradition- apart from the religious literature – made the preference for and the acceptance of European literature easier. Around 1850, Parsees at Elphinstone College had already formed a theatre group – The Parsee Elphinstone Dramatic Society for the performance of English plays. The response was so encouraging, that this ensemble could make ventures into Singapore and England. Thus the Parsees set the stage for English language theatre in India and are even today some of the leading actors, directors, of English plays are Parsees.

The Parsees fervently imitated the Englishman’s enthusiasm for sports. Cricket became a popular sport for the Parsees overnight. Parsee teams were sent to England, and the reputation for having brought forth some of India'’ best cricket players is proudly registered even today and is an integral part of the Parsee community consciousness.

This now brings us to Calcutta Parsees of today. Numbering about 600, mostly above 50 years old, holding on strong to the three millennia old Zoroastrian heritage, high educational standards, sending children to Scout programmes under the Saklat Physical Culture Institute, meeting regularly at the Parsee Club on the Maidan, reveling in traditional dress contests, housie games in the afternoons at 52, Chowringhee, and of course meeting and greeting on Parsee New Year day.

New Year is celebrated twice a year – 21^st March (Jamshedi Navroz) and on 20^th August (Papeti). 10 days before Navroz, people offer prayers for the souls of their departed near and dear ones (called mukhtar) in the fire temple. On the 10^th day the new year is rung in with cheers.  There will be prayers at the fire-temple on Metcalfe Street and vermicelli and sweet curd with rose petals, marghi na farcha and kolmi patia at home. An annual event to mark this day is the staging of a Gujerati Natak by the Calcutta Parsee Amateur Dramatic Club.  And then there will be drinks, Parsi pegs.

So far as the community has a hub, it is 52, Chowringhee, where meetings and social functions are held. Edalji Olpadvala in 1967, gifted his magnificent mansion at 52, Chowringhee to the Anjuman trustees with the request to build a hall for the Parsees after his death, In 1971, he died , leaving behind the legacy at 52, Chowringhee. The property was the developed, a building was built, with the lower floor serving as a hall for the community. This legacy has enriched the community spiritually and morally, giving them a forum to congregate and organise events and functions. Such events give the community a forum to socialise and further their ‘group identity’.  Here, however, as elsewhere, Zoroastrians are riven by ideological disputes. Some, worried about shrinking numbers, the Parsi way of death, practicality of Towers of Silence, poisonous debates on mixed marriages, pre-occupation with dwindling numbers, some want to waive the traditional Zoroastrian taboo against accepting converts; for others - the highly orthodox  Zoroastrians in particular - such proposals are anathema. Their debates, apparently, are lively. I have oft heard the joke that wherever three Parsees meet the result is four arguments.

There have been several like the Madans, Mehtas, Modis and the Saklats in the history of the community. The Parsi families were in the vanguard of jute and shipping , the twin pillars of Calcutta’s wealth. They took over the liquor trade, went into catreing, won all the coveted contracts, set up the first cinemas, brought theatre culture. Parsees rose to the apex in whichever field they chose to make their mark in… be it C. R. Irani, Sheriff Rusi B Gimi, engineer Minoo Dastur, Dr. Anklesaria, Chartered Accountant P. N. Narielvala, advocate P.P. Ginwala. More importantly, they built a philanthropic infra-structure from which the community would draw sustenance for a long time after their commercial empires had faded away. There were many, whose names I have not been able to mention due to my limitations of time and space, many who were fondly called “sethiya loque” because their hearts were as generous a their fortunes.

Today, however, the question is whether the Parsis in general can survive at all. The community’s existence though not threatened from outside, is all the more endangered from inside. Furthermore, Parsi numbers, always small, are now diminishing at an alarming rate. In 1971 there were 91000 Parsis in India, by 1981 the figure had fallen to 71000, and one in five Indian Parsis is now over 65. Non-marriage, marriage outside the community and late marriage, falling birth rates, increasing death rates, impoverishment of the middle class, excessive dependance on charitable institutions, lack of entrepreneurial initiatives have all contributed to the decline. The Parsees, are not inclined to take talk of the impending disappearance too seriously, “It has always gone on”, they say. In view of the sharp decline in the Parsi population, this may seem complacent, but the Parsis have an impressive record of resilience and their adaptability is almost proverbial. It is not yet time to write their obituary.

An Ode to a wonderful boss

I have definitely overdone the word “Thank You”. I have probably hacked it mercilessly by over using it. But my cup of joy runneth over… and my vocabulary seems massively challenged! I have nothing more appropriate to say.. and somehow saying “thank you” even innumerable times, just does not seem enough.

I must have done something terribly good to have deserved a fabulously wonderful boss like you! You have been a parent, a mentor, a teacher, a guide, a friend, … all in one and more… I am truly lucky.

You have been by my side through dark times, when I have felt like a sinking ship and there you were…standing like a  beacon of light… I am so much more confident, just knowing that I have a solid pillar of support behind me.

You have listened, when I have jabbered on and on about all things relevant, irrelevant, sundry, problematic, painful, tiresome, happy… listened, not just heard. You have been the first to share my joys as if they were yours too and you have shared my troubles, making it as much yours. You have given me a ear when I needed one and a helping hand, even when I have chosen not to ask for it.

You have encouraged me in all my initiatives, curricular and otherwise and made even my most trivial ideas seem like Archimedes’ discovery! You have put up with all my madnesses, all my outbursts, my sometimes-misplaced sense of humour with that never fading smile of yours. I so envy your energy, enthusiasm and optimism.

When I have made mistakes (and Oh! I have made many) you have been kind and patient. I have learnt from my mistakes, only because you pointed them out gently and taught me how to correct myself.

You have been the most fabulous teacher around. If there was a Nobel for teaching, you would surely win it. You have taken me through the most fabulous classes in law and life……

I have told this before, and I can never say it enough… you are the wind beneath my wings.....