|
WHO'S MORE INDIAN, SUNITA OR RAKHI?
By NANDITA PATEL
Who in their right mind would compare Sunita Williams with Rakhi Sawant? While the former is a world-record-breaking space explorer, the first woman in just so many ways, the latter is merely a Bollywood ‘item girl’. In mainstream India, the two women exist at opposite ends of the acceptability continuum. While Sunita is lionised as the brainy Indian goddess, the heroine of our times, worthy of our prayers and blessings; Rakhi is derided as the sexy Indian, vamp of our times, worthy only of our voyeurism.
Most Indians, in fact, would be enraged by the very idea of a comparison: what an insult to Sunita, they would say. And yet Sunita Williams and Rakhi Sawant must be compared. Not to create false dilemmas between goddesses and bitches or to use one kind of woman to do down another. Sunita and Rakhi must be compared to demonstrate that women’s emancipation is as much about class and opportunity as it is about celebrating a woman’s individual contribution to her own success. Put another way, they must be compared to demonstrate that women’s emancipation entails building mutual respect and empathy for all kinds of women regardless of their background, starting and finishing points.
Appropriated as ‘our own’ after her stupendous success, we have imposed upon Sunita Williams an Indian identity despite obvious facts about her citizenship. Recast in this tri-coloured hue, Sunita now represents to us the best that Indians can produce and serves as a role model for every little Indian girl — and boy. We can do it, she seems to say to us in not so many words, because it is in our Indian genes to be strong, determined and dedicated! In the midst of our self-applause and self-congratulations, America’s role in educating her, nurturing her talents and providing her with the right opportunities is naturally relegated to the incidental. So is its equal contribution to her genetic pool.
Even as Indianness is thrust upon Sunita whether she wants it or not, poor, uneducated, fatherless Rakhi Swant’s Indianness is her obstacle. The quintessential poster woman for India’s unwanted girl child, Rakhi is without beauty or big brains, and without support from the family, larger community or Indian system. Ordinarily, a girl like Rakhi has no prospects and no future, for India neither lets her forget her station in life nor forgives her for trying to transcend established boundaries. And yet Rakhi did not let any of this stop her. Instead, with the very grit that propels some women into outer space, Rakhi transformed herself with plastic surgery and ‘item-numbered’ her way out of a life of poverty and obscurity. Rakhi’s journey may not be as long as Sunita’s but, in its own right, it has been a long one all right. In the process, some might ask cynically, did Rakhi use her body as currency? Sure, she did. But who is anyone to judge Rakhi when women across India are still forced to commodify themselves, sometimes even in the name of marriage?
The point of this piece, of course, is not that Rakhi should become the next role model for Indian girls, or that Rakhi’s is as great an achievement as Sunita’s. In this lifetime, like most other women in this world — privileged or not, Rakhi will come nowhere close to achieving that which Sunita has. Sunita’s achievement is unequivocally grand and her individual contribution to it is not to be minimised. That said, there is as much to be learned about pushing envelopes and subverting stereotypes in Rakhi’s story as there is in Sunita’s.
The larger point is this. In countries such as India where so many women are denied not only a voice but also their right to basic education and healthcare, where women are still in service of men and not their own selves, where laws protecting the rights of women are not fully developed or enforced, we are more likely to produce Rakhi Sawants than Sunita Williams. What we have to understand, then, is that despite her spunk Rakhi could go only so far because she is as much a product of certain social, economic and political forces as is Sunita. Or, put simply, we need to understand that in order to create even a single Sunita Williams on Indian soil we first need to create bigger and better opportunities for the Rakhi Sawants of this country.
|
|
INSIDE STORY
