Beyond burqa and ghoonghat, identify cultural violence against women to put an end to it

The unhealthy obsession with women's bodies to legitimise certain traditional norms and culture needs to be sharply called out. We saw how the Taliban fighters spray-painted posters of women models, who were not covered in burqa or hijab on the walls outside a beauty shop after they seized power in Kabul.

In Taliban's world, a woman should cover themselves with niqab, burqa or hijab. As the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, a few burqa-clad women were seen holding protests in public while braving the gun-bearing fighters. Many women, who did not own burqas, stayed home to protect themselves from the hardline regime's policies on gender segregation.

This compulsive behaviour of the Taliban to control women and their bodies needs to be called out. The Taliban have used burqa, hijab, or niqab as tools of oppression against women.

A video that has now gone viral showed a Taliban fighter comparing a woman without hijab to a 'sliced melon'. "Do you buy a sliced melon or an intact melon? A woman without Hijab is like a sliced melon," the Taliban leader said.

It is frightening to see how the Taliban have made every attempt to reduce a woman's identity and her rights.

Why do women even need to wear a hijab, niqab or even ghoonghat that washes away their identity? Why is it that these diktats are being given by men? A woman should be able to make her own decisions over her body.

The cultural interpretation of a burqa or a hijab, used as a tool for oppressing women should not be understood through the perspectives of privileged women who wear it by choice. If a burqa, hijab or niqab is used as a political tool to reduce the voice of women, then probably it needs to be banned for the larger benefit of those marginalised women who were never given a choice.

Those privileged women who said they wear burqa or hijab only under certain circumstances, according to their convenience, cannot be made the spokesperson for the Afghan women or other marginalised women who never had a choice.

Last week, Afghan women launched an online campaign to protest against the Taliban's burqa diktat. The #AfghanistanCulture campaign also incorporated #DoNotTouchMyClothes to amplify the Taliban's regressive regulations on women's clothing.

These developments in Afghanistan reveal an uncomfortable truth about how structural violence against women is justified. It also defines an underlying truth that violence against women is not inevitable. It is systematically made legitimate by human interpretations of certain traditions and norms. The Taliban rule in Afghanistan serves as the example of culture violence against women.

In case of Afghanistan, we need to deeply analyse the power (Taliban) and the powerlessness (Afghan women in this context) to understand the cusp of the issue.

Why did the Taliban's interpretation of the role of women in Islam gain social legitimacy over other competing claims within the tradition itself? We have to be able to ask questions about perspectives that are politically and socially prominent. Who are the marginalised or silenced and why?

We have to be able to separate the implicit biases planted in our upbringing that teach us to portray women as the weaker section and one that needs to be told when and what to do.

Back in India, we see violence against women being legitimised due to their choice of clothes. We remember how Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder convict's lawyer ML Sharma defended the rapists while making an appalling comparison of a woman to a box of sweets.

Sharma questioned the right to personal liberty of the victim holding her and her parents liable for their choices and ultimately the crime that was committed in the most bestial manner by a gang of six. He argued: "If you keep sweets on the street then dogs will come and eat them. Why did Nirbhaya's parents send her with anyone that late at night? He was not her boyfriend. Is it not the parents' responsibility to keep an eye on where she goes and with whom?"

In rural India, many women are barred from showing their faces in public and forced to cover themselves in 'ghoonghat' (head-covering). This is yet another example of how we are suffocating women in the name of culture and traditions.

A woman seen here wearing a ghoonghat that covers her face and head in India. (Photo: Getty Images)

These traditions of wearing ghoonghat, burqa, niqab or hijab by women need to be banned for the sake of the oppressed women. The stories of oppressed women should be heard and used as a basis to understand the cultural violence against women.

The stories of women often live through usually with a vague caveat along the lines of being 'permitted' according to the certain standards of a societal norm or culture. This is what breeds and provides oxygen to the examples of cultural violence against women.

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WHAT IS CULTURAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND HOW TALIBAN JUSTIFY IT

Culture violence is defined when certain existing prominent social norms make direct and structural forms of violence against women seem acceptable. It is when cultural tradition or norms are often used to justify abuse of women including cases of honour killings or deprivation of certain facilities for women like education.

With the Taliban rule back in Afghanistan, they are back to using the excuse of what they call according to the rights within sharia, widely known as the Islamic law, to justify discrimination against women.

Since coming to power, the Taliban have banned Afghan women from participating in any sporting activities. They reasoned that sports may expose their bodies.

In another order, Taliban announced women attending private Afghan universities must wear an abaya (full-length dress) and niqab (garment that covers the face).

They said the classes must be segregated by gender or at least divided by a curtain. And finally, the 'piece de resistance', only a woman teacher or an old man of "good character" would teach female students. The decree applies to private universities and colleges, which mushroomed after the fall of the first regime of the Taliban in 2001.

Classes in Afghanistan universities resumed with curtains between male and female students.(Photo: Twitter/@AamajN)

The Taliban said they have made these restrictions for women within the rights of Islamic law.

These new rules serve us a jarring reminder on what lies ahead for the Afghan women this time again. History is proof to the Taliban's obsession with their hatred towards women. The gains made by the Afghan women in the last 20 years in the employment, health, education and political sectors stand threatened with the return of the Taliban.

This is not just in the case of Afghanistan. There are examples of cultural violence against women prevalent in other countries as well.

Also Read: Women should sit at home, we’ll pay them: Taliban leader Stanikzai’s 1996 interview a grim throwback

HOW MANY CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES PROMOTE ANTI-WOMEN AGENDA

In India, a man killed his minor daughter after he fought with his wife for not covering her face or wearing a "ghoonghat" in Rajasthan's Alwar district. This happened in August 19, around the same time when there were debates on how the Taliban rule in Afghanistan would bring back those stringent rules against women.

In another incident, a 17-year-old girl from Uttar Pradesh's Deoria district was killed by her grandfather and uncles over wearing jeans in the village in July this year. The accused said it went against the culture and traditional norms for a girl to wear the "western attire".

These two incidents serve as a stark reminder of how direct forms of violence are used against women to justify culture and traditional norms. It shows how women and their bodies are used as shield to uphold a human's interpretation of culture and traditions.

In US's Texas, the strictest anti-abortion law in the country was enacted after the Supreme Court declined to act on a request by abortion-right to block the law banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. The law enables any private citizens to sue anyone who provides or aids or abets an abortion after the heartbeat in foetal cardiac tissue can be detected.

Supporters of the anti-abortion law say this will help save one additional preborn life. Many groups celebrated the anti-abortion law and called it pro-life.

Many abortion-rights' activists, however, say this law ensures erosion of a woman's autonomy over her own body.

In the three examples presented above and the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, a common idea that stems out is how the human interpretation of certain perspectives of any culture challenges women's rights.

While understanding culture and social norms, it is important to see how some theological interpretations are more prominent than others in relation to specific issues in particular social or historical contexts.

NOT A LIBERALISM VS CONSERVATIVE DEBATE

Why does almost all traditional theological interpretation that is highlighted have an underlying tone on suppressing women? Because these are all human interpretations that were set tone to uplift the patriarchal mindset.

I am tired of how debates on cultural violence against women always end up shifting towards liberalism versus conservatism or left versus right discourse. Many were offended when pictures of women in skirts in Afghanistan were circulated when the Taliban seized power in Kabul. Many who were offended by the circulation of those pictures focused on the modernism versus conservatism debate.

Afghan schoolgirls return home after attending school, which was later banned by the Taliban. (Photo: William Podlich)

We should be able to see how those pictures serve as a powerful reminder of contrast of how the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is right now. It showed how the Taliban used a headscarf or burqa or niqab as a tool of oppression for Afghan women.

Those pictures are a sad reminder of what changed so drastically and what catapulted the cultural violence against women. Those pictures serve a purpose for compare and contrast stories. Several types of research or studies are conducted using the method of compare and contrast. Dismissing such stories because it made us (privileged ones who can voice our voices) uncomfortable and could trivialise the pain of women who did not get a chance to voice their opinion.

In pre-Taliban era, boys and girls studied in the same classroom in Afghanistan. (Photo: William Podlich)

An empowered or privileged woman's statement on choosing to wear a headscarf cannot be used as an example to understand the situation of an oppressed woman who does not have a choice of not wearing it. Who will talk about what will happen to the errant women who choose to denounce the Taliban's order on their choice of clothes?

We need to stop reducing the talk of the presence of cultural suppression of women's rights in the modernism versus conservatism debate. We need to get rid of the dismissive culture that blinds us to the rights of woman as they naturally are.

The antagonist here is the culture and tradition that is used to justify direct violence against women. We should be able to identify those norms that provide a breeding ground to give social supremacy to men. Let us first identify, compare and contrast the problematic restrictions imposed on women.

We don't always need to be a liberal or hard-right bogeyman to understand the rights of women. In terms of women's rights, we need to see it without playing the colonialism card or invoking the superior West versus Islamic culture debate.

It is not about the clash of cultures. It is about identifying certain perspectives of any culture that challenge women's rights. A culture is inclusive of political and economic influences.

Those Afghan women, who do not have the privilege to choose not to wear a headscarf, wouldn't want us to forget how their bodies are used as a political tool to further the aspirations of the all-male squad of the Taliban.

We need to hear the voices of the Afghan women keeping aside our elite liberal versus conservative debate. We need to hear more stories about the marginalised women. We need to call out those hidden consensuses on gender inequalities prevalent in any culture.

Let us take a moment to read into what Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy, in her book, "The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls", said, "Are you uncomfortable? Good. You should be. Discomfort is a reminder that privilege is being questioned, and this revolutionary moment is one in which we must defy, disobey, and disrupt the patriarchy, everywhere."

(Views expressed by the author are personal)