In India, we do not all have equal freedom of choice. We also have different levels of resources granted to us to implement that choice. A man enjoys a larger set of options for earning his living than a young woman, as she is under greater pressure from society to abide by age-old clichés and stereotypes. A wealthy man who openly declares his homosexuality has a greater chance of acceptance than a common man, who might be immediately targeted by the society for being gay. Even though the caste system—of pursuing an occupation according to one’s varna or jati—has been dismantled to a large extent, the ‘caste identity’ persists and influences every sphere of life, be it politics, marriage, or societal relations. A person of a higher caste, say a Brahmin, benefits from having many more choices than a man belonging to the Shudra caste, who might be disadvantaged in job interviews, on social networks and even in romance and love because of his family name, heritage, and upbringing. And so I have often wondered if Swapna could simultaneously ever have the choice in India to be—or not to be—a sexually independent woman and free to get an education anywhere while also being a member of the Devadasi community?
Education offers us a chance to know and understand the choices available to us, but in India, education does not always empower us enough to implement these choices. Progress is made only when an individual can make an informed choice and is able to implement that choice freely. Until our most backward communities are able to do this, we cannot say that India is progressing.References
Adiga, Aravind. 2008. The White Tiger (Noida: HarperCollins India).
Al Jazeera. 2017. India’s Maoist rebels: An explainer. 26 April.
Bahri, Charu. 2016. Muslims at bottom of higher-education ladder, alongside backward tribes. Indiaspend, 22 July.
Bhaduri, Amit. 2009. The Face You Were Afraid to See: Essays on the Indian Economy ((New Delhi: Penguin Books India).
Bock, K.E. 1955. Darwin and social theory. Philosophy of Science 22, pp. 123–34.
Bongaarts, John, and Christophe Z. Guilmoto. 2015. How many more missing women? Excess female mortality and prenatal sex selection, 1970–2050, Population and Development Review 41.2, pp. 241–69.
Census of India 2011. http://censusindia.gov.in.
Colundalur, Nash. 2011. Devadasis are a cursed community. Guardian, 21 January.
Dalrymple, William. 2008. Serving the goddess: The dangerous life of a sacred sex worker. New Yorker, 4 August.
Dalrymple, William. 2015. The great divide: The violent legacy of the Indian partition. New Yorker, 29 June.
Das, Gurcharan. 2002. India Unbound, first edition (New York: Anchor Books).
Economist (US). 2017. The war on baby girls winds down. 21 January.
Fernandes, Walter. 2007. The Indian indigenous peoples for sixty years. North Eastern Social Research Centre, p. 1.
Firstpost. 2015. Literacy rates of scheduled tribes far below national average, says Parliamentary panel. 15 March.
Ganguly, Meenakshi. 2012. Between two sets of guns. Human Rights Watch, 6 July.
Guha, Ramachandra. 2007. Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian democracy. Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 42, no. 32, pp. 3305–3312.
Guha, Ramachandra. 2008. Lost in the woods. Hindustan Times, October 23.
Hardiman, David. 2008. Missionaries and Their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press).
Haq, Zia. 2016. Untouched by economic growth: One in 4 beggars in India a Muslim, reveals census. Hindustan Times, 30 July.
Hindu Business Line. 2016. Raghuram Rajan to quit after term ends. 18 June.
Hindustan Times. 2017. Sukma ambush in response to gang-rapes, murders by security forces: Maoist statement. 28 April.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2016. Dalits still left out. Indian Express, 18 February.
Kaminsky, Arnold P., and Roger D. Long. 2011. India Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Republic (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO).
Kumar, Jai, and Rajni Kant Kumar. 2017. Assessment of development plan and protection for Birhor community of Duru Kasmar village, Mandu, Jharkhand. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 22.05, pp. 77–82.
Ministry of Minority Affairs, Press Information Bureau, Government of India 2016. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/mbErel.aspx?relid=147450.
Neill, Stephen. 1986. A History of Christian Missions (Penguin Books).
Phadnis, Aditi. 2016. Story In numbers: Muslim literacy rates rising faster than work participation. Business Standard, August 1.
Pylee, Moolamattom Varkey. 2003. Constitutional Government in India (New Delhi: S. Chand Publishing).
Rana, Preetika, and Joanna Sugden. 2013. India’s record since Independence. Wall Street Journal, 15 August. https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/08/15/indias-record-since-independence.
S., Rukmini. 2017. Five charts that tell sad and surprising stories about suicides in India. Huffington Post India, 3 January.
Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India. 2006. http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/sachar_comm.pdf.
Socio-economic Caste Census. 2011. http://secc.gov.in/reportlistContent.
Spencer, Herbert. 1860. The social organism. Westminster review 17.
Statistics of School Education. 2010. http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/SES-School_201011_0.pdf.
Tewari, Saumya. 2015. 75 percent of rural India survives on Rs 33 per day. India Today, 13 July.
Water.org. 2017. India water crisis: Clean water scarcity In India. https://water.org/our-impact/india.
World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/countries/ind/en.
World Bank. 2017. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS.
3Exploration
We have made it incredibly difficult for ourselves to roam freely.
The last time I landed at the Lahore airport in the summer of 2013, I was greeted by a man in a Western-style suit without a tie, wearing a badge with his name and holding up a placard with my name on it. I was visiting to conduct meetings on behalf of the World Economic Forum with our stakeholders in Pakistan, and so I presumed that he had been sent by my official hosts in the country. He completed all my immigration formalities, picked up my bags, and put me in a taxi to the Pearl Continental hotel. The next four days were filled with meetings with various political and business leaders in Lahore and Islamabad. I also got to experience the warm, generous hospitality of the friends I made among my professional acquaintances. It was time for me to head to the airport again, this time to take my late-night flight back
