Indian men should shed their fake morality and grow up

Let’s admit this. For every good action, there is an equal and opposite bad reaction. Let’s also admit this. Every single creature on the earth has a role to play. When a dog barks, it’s just performing the duty it’s destined to. There isn’t any point in muffling the dog. In a democracy, the dog is well within its fundamental right to bark. The only talking point would be its decibel. But in the world’s largest democracy, some barks are deemed secular; some democratic; some fascist; some racist; some rationalist; some parochial; some opportunistic. And when we all keep barking at the moon, the fox enters the coop. Feathers fly. And the cause gets savaged. This is what happens in many national debates in India. And this is exactly what happened when the Malayalam paper Mathrubhumi’s women’s magazine celebrated International Women’s Day by attempting to de-sexualise public breastfeeding.

Grihalakshmi’s March issue features actor-poet and erstwhile Dubai resident Gilu Joseph staring straight at the camera, with a baby at her breast. The text on the cover reads: “Mums tell Kerala: Stop staring, we need to breastfeed.” The cover story is part of a campaign called “Breastfeed Freely”, which aims to encourage a public acceptance of the motherly act. But amid the social media cacophony over the magazine’s decision to use a model who is not a mother, the good cause was waylaid by patriarchal forces, aided by pseudo feminists, whose prime concerns included the model wearing a red vermilion, which is a symbol of Hindu traditionalism. The sky did not fall when the Indian government brought out a postal stamp in 1984 featuring a mother breastfeeding a child — without covering up. We were not so parochial in our mindset then.

I remember Emmett Rensin’s epochal line in Vox magazine long ago, “Some men have always been wretched. It only took the Internet to make it obvious.” In the case of the anti-Grihalakshmi tirade, such men were shockingly in league with a section of women who led from the front on social media to destroy the noble cause. If we pause for a moment and analyse all the venomous criticism heaped on the magazine and the model, it’s commonsensical to realise how flimsy they are: Why did they use a model on the cover instead of a lactating mother? Isn’t it unethical to stuff a stranger’s breast into a baby’s mouth? Have the baby’s health and rights been exploited and endangered? Why is the model wearing a vermilion? Would any breastfeeding mom look at the camera? Why so much of anatomy on display? Wasn’t the image airbrushed to create a flawless and enticing body part?

Give me a break. Cleavage has long been a marketing tool in India. The Indian audience is bombarded day and night with intimate and suggestive condom ads on television. Item numbers from Bollywood and Malayalam movies scintillate in every living room and we nudge our kids to dance to their vulgar tunes. Sunny Leone has still not recovered from the blush she earned from the phenomenal welcome Kochi meted out to the former porn star last year. We throw garlands of currencies at pirouetting damsels in dance bars. A quick glance at our Chrome browsing history is good enough to deflate the bubble of morality we have ensconced ourselves in. Just a snap, we are undone.

Every single male who finds fault with the thought-provoking Grihalakshmi image is an open advocate of our baneful patriarchal system and every single woman who berates model Gilu is only abetting that historic sin. Opting to play submissive and second fiddle in society is one thing but the rise of women in open defence of male chauvinists on social media would only set the clock backward. The progress of a society is not measured by the number of glistening shopping malls but by the safe haven it offers where men and women and people of different castes and religion can co-exist peacefully. Such a social milieu is never served on a silver platter but clinched through selfless struggles. Such hard-earned rights then percolate through world borders. The attitude of the Indian women that “we want reform, but can’t get our hands dirty” is disheartening and unreasonable.

In the 19th century, women in the United Kingdom had no place in national politics and suffrage on the argument that a woman’s role was child rearing and taking care of the home. It took 52 years for organised moments like suffragists and suffragettes to finally gain the right to vote. In the erstwhile princely Indian state of Travancore in the early Victorian age, women belonging to backward castes and Dalits had to pay a discriminatory breast tax called mulakkaram if they wanted to cover their breasts. Royal officials would travel door to door, collecting the tax from women who had passed puberty. And the amount would depend on the size of the breasts. It’s a huge betrayal for the Malayali women to forget the sacrifice of legendary lower-caste hero Nangeli from Cherthala who cut her both breasts and bled to death in protest against

If we pause for a moment and analyse all the venomous criticism heaped on Grihalakshmi magazine, it’s commonsensical to realise how flimsy they are.

the breast tax. Nangeli’s death brought an end to the heinous tax system, and gifted lower-caste women the right to cover their breasts.

It took one Nangeli to raise the banner of protest against mulakkaram. It took one Amritha, who let her husband post her breastfeeding photo on social media, to spark a debate about the problems and taboos faced by Malayali mothers. It took one magazine called Grihalakshmi to get inspired by Amritha and put the Western world on notice that India is by its side in de-dogmatising beastfeeding. The world’s top publications and broadcasters like The Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, and the BBC have heaped praise on Grihalakshmi for celebrating womanhood with a clarion call for men to stop staring and to respect motherhood. It requires a bold shout, not a whimper, to amplify a message louder enough to rattle society. That’s what Grihalakshmi has attempted to do. In the process it has ripped apart the mask of fake morality we are hiding behind. It’s high time men gave up their sense of entitlement and let women and children keep the first right to the mammaries.