Iranian women's struggle has lessons for Indian men too

On the 40th day since the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, after she was arrested for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’, Iranian women gathered to protest once again, defying bans and police firing. Their extraordinary courage is shattering stereotypes. Muslim women, often seen as an oppressed group living in veiled seclusion and forbidden from speaking out, are suddenly out on the streets. Their voices are ringing out boldly against the theocratic regime that rules over them. Iranian women are burning their hijabs. They are cutting their hair. They are shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Iran is a good example of how religious orthodoxies view women, particularly modern women, as Enemy No 1. But this mindset is by no means restricted to Islam. Other religions share the trait. Menstruating women are barred from some Hindu shrines and young widows were once forced to shave their heads and wear white clothes. Modern riffs on this orthodoxy include some groups seeking to restrict women’s freedom of choice in inter-faith marriage and government ministers speaking against women’s ‘ripped jeans’. This ‘morality police mindset’ exists across genders. Sometimes, so dangerously bewitching is the power of ‘cultural identity’ that women themselves sleepwalk backwards into a medieval era and attempt to impose an imagined mythological ‘purity’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ on members of their own sex. These women are their own worst enemies. During protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film Padmaavat, some Rajput women in Chittorgarh took out a march glorifying the ‘jauhar’ ritual, hailing a queen who sacrificed her life at the altar of ‘cultural honour’. But sati is not a mark of cultural honour. It is a heinous crime against women. Religious conservatives seem terrified of free modern women. Or perhaps militant traditionalists are petrified of their own powerlessness and inability to dominate independent women. In 2017 when students of Banaras Hindu University were protesting against sexual harassment, their own vice-chancellor GC Tripathi equated the protests with putting “the modesty of a girl in the market”. In 2014, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar infamously suggested that the way women dressed was responsible for the crimes against them: “If a girl is dressed decently, a boy will not look at her in the wrong way ... These short clothes are Western influences. Our country’s tradition asks girls to dress decently.”In 2009, the Sri Ram Sene outfit assaulted women drinking in a Mangalore pub.This year in Agra, Bajrang Dal activists hounded and heckled women seen with male companions on Valentine’s Day.In 2020 Bajrang Dal harassed and persecuted Pinky and Rashid, who was arrested under UP’s ‘love jihad’ laws even though Pinky kept insisting she had married of her own free will.Actually India’s own morality police or vigilante squads regularly interfere in women’s freedom to choose life partners.Self-styled ‘defenders’ of religious and cultural identity are perpetually on a collision course with women who claim free choice. There are only six degrees of separation between voices demanding that women conform to ‘cultural identity’ here and Islamist clerics who want to forcibly impose veils in Iran. Religious traditionalists of all hues are fixated on women’s bodies and on women’s freedoms. In the US the crusade against abortion is led by the religious right. In many ways women are standing up against religious orthodoxy and arbitrary state power in India. The dadis of Shaheen Bagh were unafraid to voice their dissent against CAA-NRC. On the contentious issue of triple talaq, Muslim women activists took the lead in challenging sharia law. On the hijab issue too there has been a debate: Is being forcibly compelled by the state not to wear the headscarf as pernicious as being forced to do so? Sania Mirza rejected a fatwa on her short skirts. Women activists have protested against the denial of the right to pray at shrines like Sabarimala and Shani Shingnapur. In these instances, top-down authoritarian state or judicial actions cannot provide the solutions. Dialogue and bridge-building is the way forward. Modernity’s crucial feature lies in accepting that women possess free choice. Yet orthodox religious traditions try to impose a dictatorial list of dos and don’ts on women. Women everywhere need to learn from the brave Iranian women and push back against those invoking religion to deny their individuality. More crucially, men need to join this struggle because at stake is the right of all citizens to exercise the freedom to read, write, think, eat, pray, love and marry. After all, those who prevent the rise of free women, also obstruct the emergence of free men.