Rural Indian Girls Chase Big-City Dreams
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This bit jumped out as extreme - is this usual, or a rarity? :
"Each morning, before she is allowed to eat, the daughter-in-law must wash the feet of her husband’s parents and then drink the water she has used to wash them."
I'd be very wary of the native "mantric" repetitions which are often the source of such articles, http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/26/indian-way-of-westernizati...
In any case, it's so damn boring. You can read some old British book from the 30s and get done with this whole charade at once!
(Source: I've spent enough time in Indian villages)
Yes--I'll get hammered over this, but whenever I see those pictures of huge beautiful skyscrapers overlooking absolute poverty below them; I wonder why the upper/middle class isn't sickened by the depravity, and demand change. I don't know how they can sit in their fancy condos, while overlooking people dying in the streets.
And yes--I am very dissapointed in our American middle/upper class who look at homeless/poverty stricken areas in the United States as something that could be prevented if only they "applied themselves", or "If only they got their diploma, or didn't do drugs.". I have seen people step over homeless in New York forever. I never liked the NY attitude. I now see it in San Francisco, and I'm bothered by the attitude. I'm not saying they should take the person in, but complaining about them is just something I didn't want to see here.
I know people in America have become desensitized to homelessness, and poverty, but most of still care, and are very bothered by it. We still have a lot of people who want change, and will hopefully never become complacent about it.
I hope we never become so desensitized, we don't spend a minute not thinking about it.
Being an American is helping out those in need, and not just being o.k. with it. Some people don't understand that about this country.
Some of the foreign push back is not racism; we just don't want to become your country.
(I won't be back to defend this post. And I know some Americans don't give a dam about anyone besides themselfs, or their family, but this county used to be great. We are sadly sliding.)
Until a couple of years ago, I used to believe the liberal claptrap about the 'vast and miserable' lower classes despite the counter example of my father's life or for that matter the other urban middle class folks around me who came from similar backgrounds.
But then I thought about them some more and came to the conclusion that their criminality and lack of effort to better their lot in life is written in their genes. The quotas will only do so much to improve their lives.
2. Water is fairly scarce in certain regions. Considering how unhygienic such toilets end up in such far off places, I probably would too.
It's not like they can't afford it (most folk carry a smartphone these days, while earning <$200 a month).
3. Rural India is generally way more hygienic than Urban India; apparently has a more even sex-ratio too.
4. I've spent time in villages from my childhood. I know why toilets were kept separated in the backyard, and why they've now moved closer home.
Please don't give me the old "white saviour" line. Chomsky and his starlings may use this line with gusto, but the vacuity of it is readily apparent for those not afraid of not being fashionable.
I also understand how the stupid policies of the state driven by such sentences of native courtiers, led to widespread agricultural failures, ridiculous price fluctuations and rural depopulation.
Do you care ? No.
5. I've also seen homeless Americans poop on the streets.
6. I'm not a fan of the whole post-colonial affair of "white guilt" milking. If you do indeed care, please tell me something that's not religious. Your experience is not divine.
1. See the latest numbers heres: http://www.thehindu.com/data/most-of-rural-india-still-opts-...
I should have qualified "most" as "most of rural", sorry. Of course rural India is 70% of the population.
2, & 4, it is indeed true that people are choosing to poop in the fields out of choice and it "feels" more hygienic to people. But it is a misguided choice - likely a major cause of disease and childhood stunting - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna....
btw, I am an urban middle class Indian too. Not white by any stretch of the imagination. And where I did I say the white man is the saviour? I just said that the plight of rural Indians is completely ignored by those who complain loudly about western media views of India.
In fact I give full credit to the current government for raising awareness about toilets and trying to fix the issue.
That being said, I've never heard of this custom.
Overall, I thought this was a fantastic article.
Fiction needs to be entertaining not realistic. I never considered Dukes of Hazard and The Last Samurai documentaries.
If someone is interested in a culture - just visit the place.
Yes, all of Hollywood(and those evil Americans in general) is composed of stupid racists that simply can't understand other cultures, how pitiful...
Perhaps you shouldn't take the portrayal of a culture in every context as intending to be a completely accurate depiction; It is not as if American culture when depicted portrays the US accurately.
(maybe the guy just accidentally landed in an outdoor museum...)
Media always comes with a bias, good journalists try to reduce it to a limited amount as good as they can, but they often fail due to subjectivity or their employers want them to report in a certain way. The NYT isn't even trying anymore, that's why people turn away in disgust, if I want retarded opinion pieces instead of news I'd read social media BS.
Having said that, the article is correct overall that life of rural Indian women is hard and governed by patriarchal rules - they are expected to be house bound etc. The description of menstrual restrictions is also accurate.
Overall the article did ring of truth and was optimistic - surprisingly for Ellen Barry and the New York Times.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sudama+krishna&biw=1920&bi...
I grew up in an Indian village, not so well off. So were most of my relatives in the neighboring villages. I never witnessed or heard of such a thing.
In some places (covering around 5-10% population of India) there is a tradition of washing the feet of your elders on some ceremonial occasions but that water is never consumed. It mostly goes to some sacred tree or as an offering to some local deity, meaning that it is thrown around the deity in symbolism.
Edit: grammar
I've experienced some villages and I'm not aware of any village custom in which this happens daily but it wouldn't not surprise me if it did exist in some places though I suspect it would be rare.
The sentence seems to portray it as something that a girl is forced to do against a wishes - I suspect in reality its just a custom and they don't think twice about it.
Washing somebodies feet is a mark of respect in the Indian tradition, followed which a couple of DROPS is just sprinkled on the head as a sign of humility. Its is common is very traditional families to wash the feet of the elders as a mark of respect daily. Ofcourse, the feet is cleaned prior to this. No one washes dirty feet.
Among Hindus, we do bath the deity (its another misconception to call it an idol) with water and the water is only sprinkled on people as the water is considered holy. After which the deity is bathed in honey, milk, fruit juice as offerings, which is actually consumed by people as prasad (a devotional offering made to God). Sometimes, if there is nothing special, even water is offered. The point I am trying to stress is that the water for bathing is different from that of offering. The deity is kept in a clean places.
That being said, people ignorant of the customs do commit mistakes. There are many misconceptions among Indians on various matters especially in rural areas. But drinking the water that she used to wash is not heard of.
> "Each morning, before she is allowed to eat, the daughter-in-law must wash the feet of her husband’s parents and then drink the water she has used to wash them."
Grew up in a very conservative rural area in India. Have not heard any of this sort of crap.
Its like only writing about deep south US by the global media for decades on end so there is no coverage of NYC, LA, SFO and all the other bits that make up the whole US.
So no exposure to Hollywood, to technology, to financial systems, to modern cities, imagine the kind of distorted perspective readers will form of USA. While the deep south is US the other bits are also US and you need both or you end with an deeply unbalanced and distorted perspective.
All cultures and traditions originating from thousands of years ago, be it islam, christianity or hinduism are going to be regressive in infinite ways. It takes balanced development and wealth to get people into the modern world both in mind and body so they have the perspective and freedom to accept and reject parts.
According the to the UN development indices 70% of Indian's are poor, that's a mind boggling 700-800 million people (that's more than the combined population of the US and Europe) just trying to survive and like all people who find themselves in these cirumstances they will cling desperately to their traditions.
Even the most committed system will have a multi-generational problem pulling these many people out of poverty, most developing countries, infact most countries do not have the luxury of a committed leadership over these time frames.
"The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works—works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has."
There was no control over reproduction by women before the birth control pill reached the market in 1960. Therefore it would follow that every society before 1960 was poor, which isn't true.
Also why do we experience today rising poverty while further expanding womens rights at the same time? Shouldn't we all get richer?
My conclusion is that these two issues are unrelated. Societies get rich by either creating value (that's the one that I like) or capturing value by the use of force, period.
No, it wouldn't. The argument here is that birth control is a factor that correlates to rising women's empowerment, which in turn can lead to a reduction in poverty. The reverse (societies without birth control are poor) does not follow.
> why do we experience today rising poverty while further expanding womens rights at the same time?
because women's rights are a factor, but not the only one. The argument is that, in the context of developing countries, it makes sense to empower women. It is not that any increase in women's rights automatically leads to more wealth.
It logically follows that women are empowered if you give them the right to control their reproduction but that's not the argument here.
The argument is whether women's empowerment leads to prosperity in a society and nothing else.
You yourself state this:
> The reverse (societies without birth control are poor) does not follow.
This is what I wrote before myself. What is missing is that someone shows that empowering women is a factor (and if so to what degree) that will lead to prosperity.
Just saying it isn't sufficient. I get that people have their values and goals and in this case I agree that women should not be second class citizens in any regard.
But I'm sceptical of statements where people connect arbitrary things to something everyone wants (prosperity) just to promote their values and causes. That's usually what politicians do and I'm not one of them.
By the way it is also not helpful to tell poor countries do X (where X is accept our values in some regard) and you'll be prosperous and rich, when we cannot prove that indeed they'll be more prosperous if they do this.
That'll create resentment or they will stop taking us serious. In fact I'm frequently reading news and comment sections in many languages and I can tell you that this has already happened. They ridicule the West for our stupidity and our values that we try to foist on them.
Usually I won't flat out say something is racist, because it is about points of view and such; however, these are clearly identifiable biases that stem from British colonialism, and either no longer exist, or never did in any relevant time frame.
Yes, India has a weird culture, by western standards (or several, really). Yes, they have insane amounts of poverty that make even our poorest look positively middle class. Yes, India has cultural roots in sexist practices.
However, this? This ain't journalism, and this is insulting to the memory of what the New York Times once was. This is fear mongering, this is a shock an awe campaign. This has little roots in reality.
Clearly, the women in this article experienced prejudice. Maybe that's the norm in India, maybe it isn't, but describing their own oppressive experiences is not even remotely racist against Indians. The article doesn't attempt to make any general claims about India.
But as far as I know, a large part of India does still have very sexist cultural standards when it comes to girls and women. And even if they didn't, such claims (which, again, this article didn't even make) would just be a misinterpretation of the country's culture, not necessarily racism by any means.
Well then I guess I don't have to care if I'm being called a racists because you've made it into a good thing.
However, the failure of the Saudi state has come from within, when the House of Saud was infected by the expansion of Wahhabism in the Islamic world, where two previous states lead by the House of Saud failed, and a third, today's Saudi Arabia (formed in 1932) is also heading towards ruin, but doing so entirely under their own power and leadership.
The failure of the Indian state is due to British rule for over 100 years in which India's own culture was heavily distorted through the lens of colonialism efforts; in addition, Pakistan leaving and declaring its own Islamic government has also not helped India heal from this. The current state of India is due to outside influences.
Bad things happen due to the extreme poverty in India all the time, but the very specific things said in the article are all distortions of Indian culture that are no longer practiced, even in the most backwards towns.
What the NYT did is no different than if today's Saudi Arabia had stopped it's anti-humanitarian efforts and chose to transition into a modern government instead, and you claimed they still killed gays, non-muslims, and whoever else for non-crimes.
India obviously has only taken the first steps in becoming a modern nation, but what the NYT did is not helping India at all.
In short, the NYT is going to have to prove it. Photos, videos, whatever. This is no different than any other editorial hearsay otherwise. If they had actually found human rights violations in the scale and severity implied in the article, the NYT would be running this as front page news, and world governments would be pressuring India to fix this.
For example where it is explained that women wash mens feet and then have to drink the water. Whoever believes this must be either stupid or ignorant.
And that's exactly how I would comment on this. The person who wrote this article is clearly either not well enough educated to have any business writing articles about this for the NY Times or that person is simply ignorant.
But I very much doubt that there is some racism involved here. People sometimes write hurtful or stupid things and I did so myself occasionally but when I did it's not because I hate some specific culture but because of incomplete information or knowledge. (though I'm not a journalist or a politician, so it's not that bad if I get things wrong occasionally)
That editor should have known better.
That being said, these practices should certainly be condemned everywhere.
It's odhisa, so it's not necessarily going to be hard to find someone from there who has experience with it.
As a counter example, it's really common to read about dowry-related killings. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/24771-do...