In its 60th year as an independent nation, India has just elected its first woman president. Yet the ascent of the demure Pratibha Patil - with her covered head and long career in "women's issues" - may not necessarily be a victory for Indian women. Today, in India, "women's empowerment" is a government slogan; it is a feature of every party manifesto. There is a ministry for women and child development. There are laws against female foeticide, domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace. The number of working women is exploding: businesswomen such as Kiran Majumdar Shaw and sportswomen such as Sania Mirza show that talented, determined women are making it in every corner of this traditional society - a society that was entirely male-dominated in 1947. Yet, in the first decade of the 21st century, Indian women - seemingly protected by law, celebrated by the media and nursed by activists - remain second-class citizens, most obviously in rural areas, but in some senses everywhere. Crimes against women continue to escalate; female foeticide remains common even among educated women; stray incidents of sati still take place, with women either jumping or being thrown on to their husbands' funeral pyres. Arranged marriages are commonplace. The father is still the head of the family. And in the same year that Patil became head of state, Kiran Bedi, India's first female police officer, has been denied promotion to the post of Delhi's police chief. It seems as though only a certain type of Indian woman is approved of these days. Meanwhile, for millions of Indian women, it is not women such as Bedi or Patil who are role models. Instead it is the heavily made-up and bejewelled women of the soap operas, with their hair full of sindoor (red powder) and their minds full of domestic politics. Today, these are the women to be emulated. In urban India, across income groups, there is another role model, closely related to the soap-opera ideal: the brainless sex goddess, whose freedom is expressed purely in her ability to show as much breast, leg and midriff as she can. This sex goddess won't question tradition - because she can't be bothered, because it will affect her marriage chances, or because she simply does not possess the power to think. In a popular advertisement, a half-naked beauty quivers helplessly next to her car's flat tyre because she's so sexy that she's forgotten how to be independent. "Freedom" is increasingly defined as the ability to show skin or smoke and drink in public. When women here talk about individual freedom - as opposed to the collective freedom of equal opportunities in education and at work - the freedom they tend to be thinking of is the freedom to be constantly sexy. So what went wrong? In the 1940s, India's freedom movement brought women into political activism and spawned a generation of female politicians. Sarojini Naidu, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Aruna Asaf Ali were some of the educated, elite women who joined the Gandhian movement in large numbers. At that time, the social reforms of the 19th century had had only limited impact in places such as Bengal and Maharashtra. The colonial government had made sati illegal, but it was still practised in many areas. The male child remained the preferred first-born. In this context, the new Indian constitution, born with independence, was a radical document, promising equality before the law and handing voting rights to women. Legal reforms in the 1950s allowed women to inherit property. However, the Muslim woman remained, and remains to this day, burdened by oppressive personal laws. The scandalous practice of "triple talaq" (where a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the words "talaq talaq talaq" - divorce, divorce, divorce) still endures. Feminist campaigners had many successes in the decades after independence. When a 16-year-old girl, Mathura, was raped in 1972, years of protests led to changes in rape laws. When 18-year-old Roop Kanwar jumped on to her husband's funeral pyre in 1987 - an act still defended by many politicians as a symbol of true "Indian culture" - it sparked a strong campaign against sati. In recent years, many cases of women being burned for failing to meet dowry demands have been investigated. The women's movement also campaigned against the widespread practice of sex-selective abortion, and even protested against male alcoholism. But within this lay a problem: Indian feminism was and is largely unconcerned with western, feminist ideas of birth control, sexual freedom or opposing the patriarchal family. As yet, the movement has failed to develop an Indian definition of women's freedom, or create meaningful debates on sexuality, family or professional choices. No wonder, then, that many women are happy to accept role models who are beautiful, thoughtless beings. The failure of the women's movement is partly down to the speed of its early successes, and the speed with which its activists were absorbed into the establishment - which led to a backlash. Among India's middle-class and lower-middle-class women, feminists are perceived to be unpopular conference-hoppers or political climbers. There is a reluctance to take "women's issues", when they are described as such, seriously. India's official feminists talk about dowries, not sexual revolution, and feminism has ceased to be a living force among women. Meanwhile, the "westernisation" of India has led in some quarters to a more conservative mindset, and this has had an impact on women. Economic liberalisation from 1991 onwards brought the mall, the fashion show, the glossy magazine and the beauty pageant to India in new and dazzling Technicolor. But the west was to be imitated at one level, yet resisted on others. It became the norm to wear tight jeans, but not to question the wisdom of the arranged marriage, as this was a mark of "Indian culture" - a culture now perceived to be in danger from the advancing tentacles of the west. In a recent survey by Outlook magazine, 61% of young Indian people said they disapproved strongly of losing their virginity before marriage and 40% said they would prefer to marry someone from their own caste and state, leading a sociologist to comment that just as the economy was opening, the minds of India's youth were closing down. With the threat of westernisation looming large, the traditional Indian marriage made an appearance in Bollywood. Films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun or Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge popularised the designer traditional marriage. It became hip to be traditional. The heroines of these "new India" films were presented not as individuals attempting to create their own lives in a new economy, as millions of women across India were doing. Instead, the films showed young brides following religious ritual down to the last detail - viewing the moon through a sieve, praying before their in-laws' photographs, and spending their girlhoods working towards getting a husband. When I met students at a prestigious women's college at Delhi University last month, the majority told me that they wanted to get married to a rich man and have week-long weddings, with all the rituals, because that was part of "Indian tradition". They didn't want to be the "feminist type". That doesn't mean that all Indian women are happy with the status quo. Thousands of young women today are searching for their own identities: what is the right choice between Indian culture and western freedom, they ask. But there is no one to provide any answers. Between the soap-opera beauties and the establishment figures of "women's empowerment", the Indian woman is floundering for new ideas about herself and her destiny, unclear about what freedom means, at a time when east and west are clashing at every shopping mall. And most Indian men are quite happy to let her flounder. (This article first appeared in the Guardian UK in a special issue on 60 years of India's independence)
- Sagarika Ghosh
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