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This year
International Women’s Day is being celebrated in vast parts of the country in
the backdrop of the formation of a genuine proletarian Party in the country —
the CPI(Maoist) — through the merger of the two major Maoist streams in the
country, that of the CPI(ML)(PW) and that of the MCCI. This merger also has
enormous significance for even the oppressed women of the country, ground down
by centuries of patriarchy, besides the other forms of exploitation and
oppression.
Why is the formation
of the CPI(Maoist) of such significance to the oppressed women? The reason is
that it is the only a proletarian party and a genuine proletarian outlook that
is able to fight the varied manifestations of patriarchy and male chauvinism
thoroughly, through to the end, and root it out of the minds of the mass of
people. In a country like India, which is sunk neck-deep in all the most
obscurantist feudal values, to which has been added the growing wave of
religious fundamen-talisms, particularly of the Hindutva variety, the oppression
of women and their exploitation has increased over the year. To this if we add
the extreme commodi-tification of women due the aggressive imperialist
penetration of the country, women are being faced with worst of both the two
worlds — semi-feudalism and imperialism. The extreme result of this has been the
gigantic increase in number of ‘dowry’ deaths and the massacre of lakhs in
infanticide and practices like amnio-synthisis. The result has been that the sex
ratio has dropped lower than it has ever been — 927 women to every 1,000 men —
and dropping as low as 793 in Punjab and 760 in the posh localities of South
Delhi.
No doubt, this month
all will be celebrating March 8th. But the celebrations of most others are a
hoax. In the country all parties, except the Maoists, only play lip service to
the real fight and uprooting of patriarchy. The main line parties have been
responsible for actually sustaining all patriarchal values notwithstanding a
handful of women, like Sonia or Rabri or Mayavati at the helm of affairs, while
the BJP-associated outfits vigorously promote it, in the name of upholding
Indian tradition. The revisionist CPI/CPM-type parties prefer to compromise with
existing values and traditions in the name of ‘being with the masses’, and so
turn a blind eye to day-to-day practices of it and only take up issues that are
extreme in their cruelty. While the feminists and the NGOs often do take up the
issues of patriarchy and imperialist exploitation of women they seek to divert
the issues by turning it into a female vs male phenomena rather than against the
socio-economic system, which is at the roots of this evil practice.
While the most
gruesome forms of women’s exploitation is in rape (including custodial rape),
‘dowry’ killings, wife-beating, etc — all of which have become even more rampant
these days — it also takes on more subtle forms resulting in the continuous
humiliation of women in their day-to-day existence. Some of these manifestations
are: confining women to the home and preventing their participation in the
social, political and cultural life of the masses; discrimination against the
girl-child, non-payment of equal wages at the work-place, forced and early
marriages, and numerous other forms of subtle discrimination.
It was the erstwhile
PW and the MCCI who have totally eradicated the more gruesome forms of women’s
exploitation in those areas that they wield influence, and have been waging a
systematic campaign against all forms of patriarchy and women’s discrimination
in their areas of work and even within the party. An example was a recent
marriage in the heartland of feudal culture — north Bihar. Here a boy and girl
who liked each other got married at a large social function in a village with
party leaders giving speeches against patriarchy and the linking of the fight
against patriarchy with the question of armed struggle and new democratic
revolution. At this function there was no dowry, there were no elaborate
expenses, there was no talk of caste equations, and there were no veils for the
girl. There were sweets and food for the roughly 1,000 gathered to celebrate the
event and see this birth of a new culture; there were songs on women’s
liberation, there were an exchange of garlands and there was an oath taken by
the boy and girl on the occasion vowing love to each other and to jointly
continue in the revolution. In the speeches the party leaders spoke on the
question of equality of women, of fighting patriarchy, of women to partake in
the activities of the party — whether in the mass organisation of women and
peasants, in the people’s army or in the very party itself — on a fully equal
basis as the men-folk of the villages.
This was just one
example of the daily struggle that the new CPI(Maoist) is waging against
patriarchy in all spheres of social and political interaction. That is why the
merger of the two revolutionary forma-tions and the formation of the new party
has great significance for the emanci-pation of women in our country and it is
hoped that the movement for women’s liberation will also pick up speed as with
the entire revolutionary movement of the country.
On the occasion of
International Women’s Day this year we are printing articles on women in the
Indian and Nepalese revolution. The two articles from Nepal are regarding rape
as an instrument of the reactionary government to crush the people’s movement
and the initiative shown by women in the Nepalese Revolu-tion. It also shows how
bravely the women are facing this humiliation and how it is in fact firing their
hatred against the enemy and thereby increasing their dedication to revolution.
The two on women in the Indian revolution show how women can be no less than
their male counterparts in military battle, and a case study of the campaign
against patriarchy in one area.
It is clear from the
above that the more the Party struggles against patriarchy within it the more
women will join the revolution and also reach positions of leadership within it.
The less it does so, by turning a blind eye to such attitudes, it will act to
retard the recruitment of women and thus keep away half of society from the
revolutionary process unfolding. We hope these articles from the battlefront
through their examples help the process of breaking patriarchal chains in a
highly regimented feudal ethos.
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