How are women treated in India today?
How are women treated in India today
Answer:
India gets its 15 minutes of shame on American television
by Chidanand Rajghatta
WASHINGTON, March 22: Mahatma Gandhi may have dismissed ``Mother India,''
Katherine Mayo's hypercritical book in the 1930s on the sub-continent, as a
``gutter inspector's report.'' But evidently, the drain still stinks.
In what many Indians here found to be a painful but fairly credible depiction
of the situation in modern day India, CBS television's highly acclaimed ``60
minutes'' programme on Sunday took a scathing look at the practice of
untouchability in the country -- a degrading custom that is yet to be
eliminated despite the Government having officially outlawed it.
In 15 searing minutes, CBS cameras captured the shame of India -- the daily
ritual of humiliation that millions of so-called untouchables undergo far away
from the elite, who are in denial.
There was Narayanamma, who cleaned and carried human excreta --
euphemistically called nightsoil -- somewhere in Karnataka despite the
Government having banned the practice; Dalits in Tamil Nadu who are not
allowed to draw water from the well andwho had to remove their footwear each
time they passed ``high caste'' villagers; and the ``lower caste'' farm
labourers of Bihar rising up to challenge the landlords.
Some of the footage was truly disturbing -- and disgusting. In one horrendous
shot, a Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu is shown collecting water from a muddy pool
when she is tripped by a stray pig also wallowing in the same water.
The story returns repeatedly to an unnamed village in Karnataka where women
work to physically clear human excreta. ``If I had some other employment, I
would never do this... I don't ever want my children to do this work,''
Narayanamma cries into the camera.
The story was anchored by Christiane Amanpour, a peripatetic American-Iranian
reporter for CNN who is married to State Department spokesman James Rubin and
who works for occasional stories for CBS under a special contract. CBS 60
minutes is the most watched news programme in the United States and India's 15
minutes of shame would have been seen by some 25 millionviewers on Sunday
evening.
Amanpour mentions the fact that a Dalit has made it to the post of the
President of India (a largely ceremonial post), but nothing can erase the
stark images the CBS cameras capture. The so-called untouchable villagers
falling at the feet of ``high-caste'' landlords; Dalits being served tea
outside tea stalls; and a ``poojari'' making them wait outside a temple to
offer prayers.
``Not even the shadows of the so-called untouchables were supposed to fall on
the upper caste folk,'' Amanpour reports, falling back on one of the most-
related stories of the Indian caste system. And what does the Indian
Government have to say about it? ``They don't want to talk about it,''
Amanpour says at the end of the story.
Expectedly, the CBS piece inflamed many in the Indian community who found it
offensive and patronising. In fact, even before the story was telecast,
several people railed about it on a South Asia internet chat forum run by
Columbia University.
One angry participant arguedthat if US television networks needed to look for
``untouchables'' they could look at the suffering Iraqis or their own Black
population. Another wellknown academic hoped that Amanpour would report on the
growth of the Bahujan Samaj Party (she did not) and Dalits who made it to
leadership positions ``to make it a more balanced party.''
On the other side there were those who argued that CBS had every right to
cover the story the way it did, just as the Indian press was free to cover
race relations in America. ``The programme made the viewer more than
uncomfortable. It made us cringe with shame...Amanpour and CBS did a good job
of covering the `nonsense' that needs to be beaten to death a thousand more
the public water taps and are condemned to live in the outer fringes of
society.''
didn't get your point...
..shows the authenticity of the report.
