Respect All Women, My Son

I was pregnant in Dubai when India, where I’m from, was transfixed by the horrific gang rape in Delhi. Like the rest of my country, I was outraged by the grotesqueness of the attack. And like most women from my country, I recounted in my head my own experiences of being gawked at and groped.

Although my time spent living in India doesn’t amount to more than six years in my lifetime of 34 years, numerous holidays in the country have presented enough memories of what is simplistically reduced to “eve-teasing” â€" an unimaginative euphemism for the stares, glares, whistles, hoots, shout-outs, songs, “accidental” brushing-past, intentional grabbing, groping and pinching by men. All designed to make women wish they were anything but.

I started writing letters to my unborn son as soon as I knew his gender (he’s now three months old). Letters that expressed my inability to understand how a country with a majority population of Hindus, one of the few religions that deify the female form, could turn a blind eye to the daily harassment experienced by India’s women.

Raised in a Hindu home, we were taught the Sanskrit saying, “Mata, Pita, Guru, Deva” â€" “Mother, Father, Teacher, God.” It represents a mother’s prominent position in a person’s life. That the mother could outrank all else was meant to symbolize the respect accorded to women. So I was told.

Indian film, that other opium of the masses, has also long glorified motherhood and cemented the mother’s iconic status in society. One of the most famous dialogues in Bollywood film is between the actors Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor in the 1975 Hindi film “Deewar” (“Wall”). In a machismo display of sibling rivalry, Bachchan’s character Vijay asks his brother Ravi (Kapoor): “Today I have a bungalow, a car, money… What do you have?” Ravi responds, “I have our mother.”

A.R. Rahman, the first Indian composer who won two Academy Awards, for “Slumdog Millionaire,” invoked this dialogue at the awards ceremony, an act widely appreciated by Indians.

Where then, I wrote to my son, did the disconnect happen? Does an Indian woman’s right to respect come only by virtue of her ability to reproduce? If we don’t conform to the Indian man’s ideal of a motherly avatar, are we to be reduced to objects of flesh? And what of the millions of foreign travellers who pass through the country and leave with at least one harrowing tale of public sexual harassment?

Aside from change in law enforcement and the courts, what India desperately needs is a women’s revolution, led by men. Fathers, sons, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, nephews, boyfriends, husbands, lovers who are comfortable with the rise of their women. Men who don’t feel emasculated by the success of their women. Men who don’t need to demonstrate their physical dominance privately, when they’re unable to match their women’s achievements in the public sphere. Men who are happy to step back and watch their women lead the way.

“It’s a change that must begin in our homes,” I wrote to my son. “For generations we’ve secretly watched intelligent, imaginative and hugely-talented grandmothers, grandaunts, mothers, sisters, wives and daughters pushed into the background, purely on account of their gender. So, it’s no surprise that our women are now pushing all the boundaries in their own little worlds. We didn’t and don’t want to be left behind. But as a boy who will one day grow up to be a man, I hope you will have the courage to respect all women, whoever they may be.”

Since the Delhi gang-rape, the Indian media has been regularly reporting horrific rape crimes from across the country. The most recent one was from Mumbai. Today, as I lay my son down to sleep in his cot-bed, a small part of me is less fearful for his future safety because he’s not a girl in India, but a large part of me is thankful for an opportunity to raise a young man who will know how to treat a lady.

Vinita Bharadwaj is an Indian journalist based in Dubai.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 29, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.