Violence against Women - some more books.

Here are some more books that speak about Violence against Women, and in a way that really brings home the fact that it is a universal phenomenon, and can take varied forms, from the most subtle to the extreme.

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Dear Zari

Written by Zarghuna Kargar

Published by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Random House

The story of how this book came to be written is very similar to that of 'The Good Women of China'  reviewed by me here. Zarghuna's family went as refugees to the UK after the Soviet backed government in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. There, Zarghuna worked as a radio presenter for the Afghan Woman's Hour on BBC World Service. (Go on, click on this link to read about Zarghuna's book in her own words.)

She came across many ordinary women who told the reporters their extraordinary stories of daily struggle in a country who values its girls so little. Where boy-children are preferred, and a woman is an object of pity and malicious gossip if she does not give birth to boys. Where girls are denied an education because they are 'plants growing in the neighbour's courtyard.' Where girls as young as 10 yr-olds are given away or sold by families routinely to settle disputes or pay a debt. Or to get a bride in exchange for their son. Where girls are not educated in their own biology, but are expected to somehow know what to do when married. Where the bleeding by a woman on her wedding night is celebrated as a proof of honour, and anyone not able to give this proof or unable to give it because of an ignorance of what it is all about is hounded all her life by her in-laws and society. Where the pressure to have a boy leads some families to bring up a girl as a boy, who is treated as a boy and later a man by everyone, who is denied her feminine side all her life, although she gains in terms of freedom in society!

Zarghuna's experience with these stories motivated her enough to try and get out of her own disastrous and abusive arranged marriage.

A book worth reading. One learns so much about a country which we share a heritage with, with many similar (good and bad) traditions, and which we unfortunately do not really know much about.

Pic courtesy uRead.com

Death  by Fire
Written by Mala Sen
Published by Penguin books India

Mala Sen, who passed away in May this year, was also the erstwhile author of another controversial book on the life of Phoolan Devi, based on actual interviews with the female bandit when she was in prison. That book, too, highlights the violence faced by a young phoolan Devi, and her subsequent joining of the dacoits.

In Death by Fire, Mala Sen highlights the forced burning of 18 yr Roop Kanwar on her dead husband's pyre as a sati. Something that has happened even though the practice of 'sati' has been outlawed for more than 200 years now. She also takes up the case of 'bride-burning'- a horrific form of dowry deaths - violence in the extreme that many young women have been facing.

Mala Sen takes us through the struggle she had to undertake to have people agree to speak to her about the issues, and the hostilities she had to face while researching for the book. She also tries to analyse the whys and hows of the social dynamics of the situations that she highlights, leaving us with some answers and many questions.

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Dowry Murder:
Re-investigating a cultural whodunit
Written by Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Published by Penguin books India

Veena Talwar Oldenburg, a historian in the US, of Indian origin, has herself been a victim of dowry related domestic violence, which, as she puts it, "could easily have culminated in murder instead of a legally acquired divorce." She links female infanticide and foeticide to dowry deaths, the only difference being that the former are in the natal home, and the last happens usually in the marital home.

Fact one: Dowry has historically, since many centuries, been also called 'Streedhan" or the wealth of a woman, given to her by parents in lieu of her inheritance, a safety net to fall back on in hard times. This is other than the 'bride-price' given to the girl's parents in some communities.

Fact two: The communities in which the incidence of dowry deaths is high are also those that historically prefer the male child.

Fact three: During British rule in India, they passed many legislations that they thought would be more in keeping with the civilised (read western) world.

Although they did a lot of good this way by outlawing horrific practices like sati and child-marriage (which continues in pockets even now), by universalising education, etc. among others, they also unwittingly did women a disservice. They introduced individual property rights, which reduced the status of women from co-owners of shared familial property to dependents on the male members who now owned this property.

Soon the connotations of dowry as the "bride's wealth" changed to "wealth brought for us by the bride". And the ownership of this wealth naturally went to the head of the household.

The author then goes on to deduce how this unique combination of age-old customs and traditions, along with misguided legislature by 300 years of colonial rule, increased consumerism post-independence, and greed calling for competitiveness in exhorbitant expenditures in weddings and dowry, with technology helping all this along- all contribute to the continuem of selective abortions of female foetuses, killing of female babies, neglect of the female child and finally, domestic violence, both in the parents' and marital home, and finally, dowry murder.

A must read for someone working in the field of domestic violence, as also for sensitizing society to this montrous practice.

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The above three books are have been written by women who have been trained in the discipline of investigation and research, and have based it all on fact, not to mention first-hand experience of violence for the mere fact of having been born a woman. So they know very well how to listen to the unspoken behind women's silences

Something that is addressed very well in the groundbreaking programme "The Vagina Monologues" by Eve Ensler, now published in book form.

The book I have (which I haven't read completely yet, but have browsed enough to get the essense of) is a special edition by Villard books to mark the 10yr anniversary of V-Day, the dynamic grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls. In the blurb, it says, "Witty and wise, this award winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears...spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearingly moving...it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history" And no, it is NOT pornographic.

Then there is this extraordinarily useful book that I have, called Body Talk.

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Body Talk
Written by Anjali Wason
Published by HarperCollins
Ages: 15+, young adults

Other than the expected information about biology, hormones, sexuality and feelings, this book has a useful chapter on sexual harrassment and abuse- at home, on the streets, at educational institutions and the workplace. All in a lucid, easy-to-relate-to, no nonsense way without resorting to coy euphemisms, but not in a very harsh, forbidding way, too. Perfect for the young lady about to face the world. The only lacuna is that the tone takes into account only urban, educated, upper class women, so this might not be a completely helpful books to other girls out there, poised on the brink of womanhood with dreams in their eyes.