Opinion Liberté,égalité,sororité
When was the last time you heard the word sisterhood? Perhaps while brushing up on some history of feminism...
When was the last time you heard the word sisterhood? Perhaps while brushing up on some history of feminism,reading about those heady 1970s when white women marched in western cities,campaigning for abortion rights or equal pay. Or if you risked disapproval to listen to all-girl bands like Spice Girls and the concept of girl power they briefly promoted in the late 1990s,before the band fizzled out,along with the power.
In all likeliness,it did not come up in the course of the tale of the two young Chandigarh girls,Ruchika and Aradhana one a victim of molestation,the other its sole witness,one hapless and lonely and driven to death,the other engaged since then in looking for justice in the cold and unfriendly corridors of power,to restore some dignity to her dead friend. Ruchika Girhotra and Aradhna Parkashs tale of tribulation is now well-worn; far less celebrated is their tale of friendship and camaraderie,which could have served to inspire a new generation of girls and young women. No one,even after this,talks/or makes an exemplar of the edifying,empowering attributes of female bonding.
Women are taught to fixate on men,American feminist Janice Raymond had written in her 1986 book A Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Friendship. They are also expected to,and end up fixating on the notions of friendship and bonhomie from a male perspective,celebrating the obvious robustness of male bonding,whether among boarding school boys or boardroom brethren. Following Raymonds advice,women might be tempted to try out being less invisible vis-à-vis their own selves,and choose to see each other. But such efforts necessarily play second fiddle to the demands of the heterosexual contract,of which the family and children are an essential component. As Kristin Aune wrote in a 2003 post in The F-Word(a blog on contemporary UK feminism),the main reason for the demise of sisterhood is men.
In much of western thought and literature,the noble,pure and inspirational has always been located in the domain of male friendship,with or without the attendant association of homoeroticism. For the Greeks,Achilles love for Patroclus in Iliad was the gold standard,male bonding unifying the military where heterosexual desire (Achilles for Briseis) had proved divisive. Even the fount of their wisdom,Socrates,basked in the warmth of male companionship,dispensing wisdom in his dialogues with Alcibiades or Ion. Christian monasticism kept the cult of same-sex friendship alive through the Middle Ages,with the concept getting a boost during the Renaissance in Montaignes essay De lamitié,the ultimate gospel of misogynistic male friendship. Literature celebrates such life affirming friendships between men,wondering at Antonios devotion to Bassanio,laughing at the jejune naiveté of Huck and Jim rafting down the Mississippi,mourning the death of Arthur Hallam with Tennyson,marvelling at the enigmatic bond between Ishmael and Queequeg. Hollywood provides its own archetype in buddy films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Sisterhood is largely absent from this roll of honour,ashamed almost of its painful incapability to live out such a high-minded,virtuous notion of friendship. Women do befriend each other,but always in the shadow of impending separation,always circumscribed by the more important calling of family so necessary to maintain the male world order. And so when we stand face to face with an Aradhana and her dogged pursuit of justice for a dead female friend,we are left speechless,because our cultural discourse has not given us the tools by which to evaluate woman-woman friendship (an imperfect coupledom,according to feminist literature),because we are not equipped to understand a womans sacrifice that is directed outside the familial circle of her father,brother,husband or son.
There are several questions unanswered in this poignant narrative of our times. How,for example,do Aradhanas husband and the family she married into look at her? Do they look upon her as a lone crusader,proud of her unwavering quest for justice? Or do they secretly (or not so) sigh at her obstinate refusal to buckle under such extreme duress,at her refusal to let bygones be bygones? If the former,then there is indeed a wellspring reaffirming humanist ideals,hope that human beings might yet end up nurturing values that the dull word of legislation failed to enforce.
antara.das@expressindia.com
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