'Middle class Muslim women still victims of bias'
Friday April 20, 2012 11:29:45 AM,
Madhusree Chatterjee,
IANS
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New Delhi: Muslim
women from middle class homes continue to battle discrimination
despite efforts by the government and non-profit organisations to
empower them, says veteran filmmaker-activist Rama Pandey, who is
serialising her encounters with 26 women from the community in
three volumes of stories.
Her book, "Begum Bano Aur Khatoon", a collection of seven plays in
Hindi, was unveiled in the capital last week. The other two are "Faisle",
which was serialised on television, and "Hum Hain". Pandey is also
an eminent broadcaster, writer and theatre personality.
Pandey said "Begum Bano Aur Khatoon" has been "welcomed by the
imams of mosques who have admitted there was a need to address
social issues in Muslim society".
"I am a commentator of things of human interest. Any woman who
fights injustice and triumphs over suffering attracts my
attention. For 40 years of my life I have observed the incidents
that I have described in my book. The book is a salutation to
these women and my commitment to my cause of helping Muslim women
in distress," Pandey told IANS.
"Every woman who lives behind the veil (in Muslim society) has
deep lives - and those who have the desire and the courage to
stand up for what they believe are winners," said Pandey, India's
first producer-director at BBC Radio Service.
Pandey, who had married into a Muslim family, says "the women from
poorer Muslim homes do not have the economic condition to protest
injustice". "There is no social structure to support these women.
Women with three to four children are often abandoned by their
husbands. They are denied the right to decent lives. Women have
suffered male egos because men from this society cannot tolerate
women who have opinion and break out."
Pandey cited the example of a Muslim Indian Administrative Service
(IAS) officer, who tried to misuse the position of his wife, also
an IAS officer. "He would question her decisions and try to
dictate the postings of collectors and cadre distribution.
"The men still oppose higher education in women. I know of pimps
in Haryana who lure young Bengali (mostly Muslim) girls to marry
old men. My literature is for such women and their mothers and
fathers. My literature does a different activity - it raises
awareness," Pandey said.
The author has been working with Muslim women - victims of social
injustice - in the non-profit sector for several years,
rehabilitating them with vocational skills. The seven stories in
her collection are real life sagas of unusual grit shown by women.
Narrating a typical story of courage, Pandey said one of the plays
in the anthology "Parinda" is the story of Nasreen, one of
Srinagar's first para-gliders.
Nasreen was trained to be a professional after winning a para-jumping
contest. When she returned home after training, the newspapers
were full of her achievements. Proposals for wedding started
pouring in and Nasreen married one 'Dr Farooq'.
A year after the wedding, Farooq left for Saudi Arabia to earn
dollars and a lonely Nasreen took the job of a teacher in a local
school.
When Farooq returned home after three years, he was angry with her
job. Nasreen became a mother of two children and "asked Farooq to
take her to Saudi Arabia". But she soon realised that women were
'prisoners' and she yearned for her freedom. She walked out on her
husband when he refused to leave his job. Nasreen returned home to
live the freedom that she had experienced as a para-jumper.
"After 'Faisle' (the first anthology) was released, hundreds of
women befriended me and became my sisters. They handed me the
stories of their lives and told me to lend voice to them because
they did not have the courage to speak out...It was as if the dumb
had been given the power of speech in the last two years," Pandey
said.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
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