The price of questioning
For the first time in her life, she opened up in front of her parents and told them about how she had escaped sexual abuse at the age four, and was actually subjected to harassment by her Qari sahib and others later in her life. She apprised them of the day when she was asked by two policemen driving a police van to “jump in”
I really do not know where to start, for the setting of this article is as cliché and complex as my life these days.The quotation I had read years ago, “The suspicious parent makes an artful child”, kept banging against the walls of my skull since several days. I could not keep and finally googled the saying in order to find the name of the great person who originally said it. Thomas Chandler Haliburton it was. A Nova Scotian author, jurist and politician of the early 19th century who knew exactly what majority of the children hailing from brown families suffer from every single day in the 21st century.
Until lately, I had thought the mindset of suspecting your children and discouraging them from challenging the hackneyed norms of this society to be a banality itself which is restricted to, as I thought it to be, in conventional brown families… families where educating girls is still demeaned and abiding by status quo is considered an obligation. But I was wrong! I was proven wrong when my friend had to hear it for the first time, “Log kya kahenge (What will people say)?”
Her encounter with this perplexing statement (I will not glorify it with the status of being a ‘question’ because this interrogative sentence is particularly used as a full stop to your dreams!) occurred when her father raised objection on her questioning a religious scholar about rape. According to him, he cannot even imagine what people must be opining about her after reading the article she had recently written in which she mentioned the scholar’s statement. The cause and effect relation has only begun. This remark of concern regarding our bellowed society’s take made sure that she discontinues writing. And that is surely not all! She was instructed to give the digits of that religious scholar who, instead of stopping her from asking that immoral question, answered it. She was mocked, ridiculed and castigated for her seemingly loathsome act. “Are these the limits we taught you? Is this how you have kept your promise of staying in your limits?” were the questions that were repeatedly hurled at her during the hearing. However, the most unfortunate part is that the castigator was no one but her very own father.
Now, what are we expecting of her? What would have been my friend’s move in the given situation? She would have cried, right? She must have fled to her bedroom, thrown herself on her bed and cried for hours, right? But that was not the case. There is always a flipside. She reasoned, or at least tried her level best to do so. She did not bury the hatchet by giving up. She did her utmost to present solid arguments in favour of her ideology following which she did not consider her deed to be a wicked sin.
For the first time in her life, she opened up in front of her parents and told them about how she had escaped sexual abuse at the age four, and was actually subjected to harassment by her Qari sahib and others later in her life. She apprised them of the day when she was asked by two policemen driving a police van to “jump in”. This was not at all surprising for me; in fact, all it did to me was to make even more proud of her because this did require a lot of courage. What actually dumfounded me was her father’s reply: “What were you wearing that day?”A part of the very society his father was afraid of was factually living inside him as he, like the world at large, found it convenient to find the fault of being harassed in her.
“This society still thinks of female education as an unequivocally detestable idea, then why are you still spending your money on my education?” she argued.
“Is this how you have trained our daughters?” was the question tossed at her mother who did not have any answer to this because she was unable to come out of the shock after listening to her daughter’s accounts.
“You think that the religious scholar I profoundly respect was wrong in answering the question. Why don’t you think of this as may be the whole idea of asking this particular question was not wrong since he did not stop me from doing so?”
“You are my daughter, not his.”
“Then what about the surahs you recite in my presence? Don’t those verses discuss women issues and hoors? When a nine-year-old boy can recite those verses why can’t I discuss what these mean?”
“That is a different thing.”
“No, it isn’t! Even if it is, why are making me study for CSS when you know what is discussed in subjects like Political Science and Sociology? I think evolution of mankind in every possible way involves the processes of family making.”
“That is a class with only a few people around you. What you wrote was read by hundreds which is not at all acceptable.”
“Please define the term ‘public sphere’ for me? How can a thing being discussed in the presence of tens be any less vulgar, if at all, than being written for a few hundreds to read?”
“Fine! Do whatever you want to do. But then don’t keep any relation with me.”
My friend could not utter any word in response to this exhortation. This is what made her shed tears because her father actually had made her speechless. What was circling in her mind? How she had always tried to be her parents’ son, do all that was possible for her being a ‘she’, fight against this society so courageously that no one had ever pointed the finger at her. The one who did were her own family.
“I know my limits, Papa,” she finally voiced her thoughts after a long pause. “I know how to be a virtuous woman because this is what you taught me. You did not teach me how to remain virtuous when someone else hits on me. This is what I have learnt from the world because I have faced it. Today, I shared with you the most horrendous events of my life. But I did not expect the response I got. I though you would understand. I never shared this with you before because I knew that instead of holding the external factors accountable you will break my legs. No one has enough guts to objurgate me because they know I can twist and break their fingers pointing at me. But I cannot do this with my own family members who were supposed to trust me.
“You want me to stop writing. I will. You want me to sit at home and not go out. I will. But if you want me to believe that I did something wrong, I won’t. Because I cannot be accused of doing a sin until and unless I commit it. Questioning it or writing about it is not equal to perpetrating it. I respect your views and honour you as my father, and that is why I will no longer write. But this episode cannot transform my ideology.”
I do not know what happened next because that is all what she told me later that day. Is this really how we should deal with such gifted individuals as her who realise at an early age what societal problems are and try to bring a change through their acts and words? Is this how we should curtail the very change we wish to see in our society? What amount of infamy has her act of discussing rape brought to her family? What is more admonishing – discussing rape or facing restrictions on writing about it? If she was at all, she was guilty of one thing and that was being guileless. Her only mistake was to show her parents the article which she thought would be a source of pride for them. Nevertheless, she forgot that hypocrisy is what our society demands and diplomacy is what it is known as in common parlance.
