Parineeti Chopra was named the brand ambassador of the Beti Bacho Beti Padhao campaign last year, where she said that she’d like to be a role model for girls but not be called a feminist.
Similarly, Priyanka Chopra in an interview said, “The word feminist has been bastardised; there’s no respect for it anymore.”
In a recent interview with HuffPost, 50-year-old Indian author Arundhati Roy expressed her frustration at these ideas. “I get so annoyed when I hear “cool” young women say ‘I’m not a feminist,” she said.
Roy didn’t name any specific “cool” young women but continued, “Many people have fought long and remarkable battles to create the freedoms we have. How can we concede those spaces? How can we think that some natural phenomenon has gifted us these freedoms? No! They have been wrested, one by one,” added Roy.
Roy explained, “I mean, do they know what battles were fought? Every freedom we have today, we have because of feminists. Many women have fought and paid a huge price for where we are today! It didn’t all come to us only because of our own inherent talent or brilliance. Even the simple fact that women have the vote, who fought for that? The suffragettes. No freedom has come without a huge battle. If you’re not a feminist, go back to into your veil, sit in the kitchen and take instructions. You don’t want to do that? Thank the feminists.”
But she feels that all of that freedom hinges on a thread.
“It’s wonderful to see the emerging independence of women in India, but then there’s this dark undercurrent of conservatism running parallel to this revolution. Remember the women in Afghanistan? When we were growing up, they were doctors and surgeons, they partied and wore cool clothes. And now? We have to be alert to the dangers. We can be set back by centuries in no time at all,” said Roy.
