Still Learning

Prayas, Prayas. Everyday seems to be a new adventure in boredom, except when Anjali is here. We have had a lot to talk about recently.

First of all, it seems that her parents have found a husband for her. She is 26 or 27 now, and getting up there in age in India to be married. When she was in Delhi over the New Year, she gave her parents permission to search for a husband for her. Anjali is extremely intelligent and cultured, has a Master's degree in Social Work; basically there is no place for her to find ANYONE that would remotely fit the bill in Chittor, so she just told her parents to find someone for her. It seems that now they have. He is a guy about her age who is in the Army in Assam. They have spoken on the phone, and she seems to really like how he seems. He decided he liked her without seeing her picture and told her it didn't matter to him what she looked like, which gave him points in her book.

Even though she knew her parents were looking for her, she still seems blindsided by the whole thing. I would be. She may even get married before the end of April, which seems really in a rush. It is kind of like she is resigned to the fact that she HAS to get married. I have the feeling if it were just up to her she would try to find a job in Delhi, or even Jaipur, and in a more metro place maybe find someone on her own to marry. But Anjali has a younger sister who will need to get married at some point (she is 22ish now) and it won't look good to have an older sister who is unwed when the prospective in-laws come calling.

Anjali claims she is neutral about the whole thing, but I think it may be happening so fast that she can't really comprehend it. She doesn't seem to be excited about it; especially not like Pallavi who practically glows anytime you mention her wedding (although she is marrying someone of her choosing, not an arrangement). I don't know her well enough to exactly catch how she is feeling, and I can't deny that I am very frustrated with the situation. I understand all the cultural reasons why this has to happen, but I just wish it didn't have to. Anjali is by far one of my favorite people here, and I just don't think that this is what she really wants-and that makes me sad.

On a completely different hand, Anjali and I went out for dinner the other night and along with gossiping about this whole husband-to-be issue, she told me that on one of her field visits she got some disturbing news. I guess one of the male Prayas workers from Chittor made advances on some of the female Prayas field workers in the form of suggestive comments and inappropriate touching. He is also a guy who is in charge of some of the finances here, so he "suggested" that there could possibly be problems if she ever spoke up. Even worse than finding out that this was happening was that Anjali was hesitating to tell Dr. Gupta about it. I guess that this particular worker is a favorite of the director of the board, who is Dr. Gupta's best friend, and would challenge him if he ever fired this particular worker. Anjali said she knew that Dr. Gupta would be on her side about this, and would want to know what had happened and what was going on, but she didn't want to put him in a spot.

I was outraged. First of all, this is an organization that at its very core fights for women's empowerment and the right to be safe from unwanted advances of men. And to have someone on staff who directly contradicts those goals AND puts employees in danger is disgusting. Second of all, anyone who behaved that way should be fired and reported to the police for potential criminal action.

But, that was my American mind talking, and I was quickly informed and reminded that this is India. In the U.S., having someone who is a known sexual harasser is a liability. The possible lawsuits you may have to endure as a result of their actions alone requires that they be fired. But that isn't the case here, for multiple reasons. #1-Most people could not afford to pursue legal action against a harasser in this country. #2-The legal case would probably pend for years in the Indian justice system without any result. #3-Unlike in the U.S., where a man faced with these accusations would have to prove they DID NOT happen, in India a woman has to prove that they DID indeed happen, and how do you do that? How does a woman in a country like this do that, when she knows that her family will be labelled and stigmatized by the ensuing scandal? She can't. She would most likely deny that it ever happened and keep her mouth shut, and the society would continue to be male-dominated where they can get away with anything they want and won't be questioned for it.

I was trying to explain to Anjali how a sense of moral right and wrong about sexual harassment exists in America, but the only example I could come up with was a little off the mark. Instead, I told her of the mantra "boys don't hit girls". I said that one of the first lessons you learn when you are little and in elementary school is that boys shouldn't hit girls. The reasons for this aren't obvious when everyone are still children, but little girls learn that boys shouldn't hit them, and boys in turn learn that they could hurt girls if they ever hit them. This then manifests itself and internalizes into society, so that people understand that this type of violence is wrong and parents will continue to tell their children "boys don't hit girls". I know this is an oversimplification of an argument, but it worked in this particular instance.

Anjali, the educated modern woman she is, seemed amazed that people taught their children this in the U.S. Here, girls and women are told that they should expect that they will be beaten by their husbands; that spousal violence is just as much a part of a woman's life as getting a period. You don't know how many times I wish I could sit with these women and have in-depth conversations with them in Hindi about how its illegal in America for a husband to hit his wife, and that everyone agrees that you should not have to put up with domestic violence in your life.