The experience in patriarchal India can not be experienced first hand by the male voyager. In India I for the first time felt discriminated, silenced and sometimes even invisible because of my gender.
It is inevitable to escape ones own bias. Each of us has a couple of potential biases that will come to work when producing a piece of text, art och music. I as a creator of a text, being my master thesis in anthropology, I am no different. In anthropology class we need to learn to be reflexive regarding our own persons and our bias in our features, gender, class, etc.. I choose to come clean at the very beginning of my thesis regarding my gender bias. I know I cant escape it, so I choose to portray the female perspective on India, based on the experiences I, as a woman, have had in India before my research took place.
This section may be on the first introductionary page of my thesis:
“Imagine yourself young and adventurous experiencing the beautiful Indian subcontinent together with your best friend. You travel together to the villages and the cities of North India enjoying every moment connected and intoxicated by mother India. But then you meet up with your fiancée and your start to see India through his eyes. A completely different experience is revealed. I felt like a minor when men working at hotels, restaurants or taxis asked my fiance -whats her name? whats her job?”
I wanted to scream, I was filled with rage, I got tired of talking when I was not being heard. I became silenced, the subjugated woman belonging to the man who was expected to answer for me. I was forced into the role of someone who should not be listened do. And my fiance was forced into the dominant role… On some levels we had to follow the Indian gender roles to be able to move around in the society. Me screaming to be heard was not helping, I can not change the mind of those men who actually believes that a woman’s voice is not worth as much as a mans voice.
Later I learnt that is a cultural custom of politeness for Indian males not to approach or speak to unrelated females. This explains the behaviour but does not justify it. As I am biased, coming from a complete different setting namely Sweden- top ranked on the Gender Equality Index. India is to be found among the bottom 10 on the same Index.
I respect culture and I am glad that culture is a vibrant, not a static system. I am glad for all the women in India that times are changing and the gender roles with the culture. This will be developed further in my thesis….
