Elections may be done and dusted, but some conventions have withstood the test of time in India. Especially customs that uphold the exclusion of women. The image of Member of Parliament Smriti Irani shouldering the plinth bearing the body of her slain former aid and party worker Surendhra Singh, challenges one such convention, and it is high time.
Smriti Irani’s action of fronting the funeral procession as pallbearer signals the guts to break ancient taboos – cremations being just one of them. There’s many more that come to mind.
A Step Forward
Far from helping to carry the remains of a colleague, women are rarely seen playing a role in cremations, often not allowed near the mortal remains of even those closest to them.
Women have traditionally found themselves in the position of not being allowed to perform the last rites for their own parents – and if there are no brothers, the role is handed over to the next male relative, perhaps a cousin or an uncle. While some women themselves protect these conventions citing tradition, there are many who see Smriti Irani’s move to front a funeral procession as a welcome first step against blindly following customs that keep women out.
Another area where it is assumed that ‘certain’ women won’t participate are the ceremonies that involve celebrations around marriages and fertility. In what is often hurtful, lonely and isolating even in contemporary households, women who have lost their husbands, are divorced or even married women who are childless are excluded from certain family functions. An author on Quora talks of how his mother who was widowed young was kept out of family functions.
On the issue excluding women of menstruating age from Sabrimala temple in Kerala, Smriti Irani was of the opinion that sentiments should be respected when it came to barring their entry. Whether or not she changes her views on this topic, her bold step of being “pallbearer’’ at her slain former aidé’s funeral procession is a step in a progressive direction for Indian women’s equal standing in all walks of life.
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