Patriarchy From the Standpoint of its rural Victims

Chitral is one of the most religious and patriarchal societies in the country.  In a rural patriarchal society like Chitral, women are the ones who bear the difficult task of family care and related domestic burden i.e. child bearing, cleaning, cooking, work in fields etc. It does not mean that men are only idle perpetrators or having luxurious lives like that of fellow white men in the western world. Given the structure of particular society, relative to women, men not only enjoy many privileges that women do not but also leave no single stone unturned in order to get advantage of the powerlessness of opposite gender. Unlike men, women have less chance of getting quality education, decent work opportunities or even not in a position to take decisions that affect their lives. Likewise, they are more vulnerable to various brutal violence including sexual harassment and honor killing.

Irony is that women, including the few educated, in these communities are literally unaware about their basic human rights: right to have control over their own bodies, their sexuality, when and who they marry or number of children etc. On the contrary, reality is that these highly important decisions are imposed on them at the cost of their happiness and overall social well-being. In such situation, it is unsurprising to see traditional aunties supporting patriarchy and legitimizing all forms of inhuman behaviors both in and outside the house. Moreover, this miserable and intolerable position of female gender shows the barbaric nature of our so-called civilization.  Charles Fourier righty said that “the humiliation of the female sex is an essential feature of civilization as well as of barbarism. The only difference is that the civilized system raises every vice that barbarism practices in a simple form to a compound, equivocal, ambiguous, hypocritical mode of existence….. No one is punished more severely for keeping woman in slavery than man himself”.  

Chitralis, like other isolated ethnic communities, are proud of their culture. However, critical examination uncovers the fact that it is a patriarchal culture comprises of masculine values that mostly entertain the interest of male gender. For example, (excluding the exceptional) musical events by men for men, sport activities exclusively for men, social spheres exceedingly dominated by men, and business areas again closed for women. It also means that if you’re a women and belongs to a poor family then forget about God or any other source of justice. No one is going to save you from the dominated patriarchal monsters. Close relatives will be the first to colonize you, both mentally and physically. Your body is nothing more than an objectified passive idol which encapsulates myriads of social constructs supported by tradition and beliefs; so it is understandable that why the rural privileged men should not herald the dawn of remarkable feminist revolution.

The hegemonic and unjustifiable social power that a single gender enjoys can also be attributed to the prevailing belief system. Men use scriptures and other theological sources to prove that their superiority is something part of nature and thus unquestionable. These fellows ignore the blatant fact that religion allows minimum intellectual interference therefore it is not difficult to observe the ubiquity of dogmatic rituals. In other words, powerful class uses religion in whatever way it wants. Eqbal Ahmad, twentieth century’s Pakistani social scientist, writes that “all religious systems are made up of discourses that are, more often than not dialectically linked to each other…Hence it is possible to detach and expropriate a part from the whole, divest it of its original context and purpose, and put it to political uses”.

Our social system, at this particular time and space, has been shaped in such a manner in which it seems that women have nothing to do with politics. Alienation of this part of social being from the various kinds of political activities reiterates the fact that in polity, unlike men, women are unworthy of any participatory social relation pertaining to various important decision making processes. In the same district, last election would be the best example of this phenomenon. So many political events took place but all for men. Interestingly, women constitute about half of the population but not a single women appeared in the list of candidates either for provincial or for national assembly. At the end, success of the wright-wing religious parties, led by parochial minded clergymen, further elucidated the point that misogynistic practices will continue irrespective of minor societal changes. To be more precise, politically women in our society are as deprived as black men used to be in British colonies, especially in North America. The only difference is that the former are still waiting for Grimke sisters (Sarah and Angelina) and their comrades in order to uproot the cruel patriarchal system.

Having experienced patriarchy as an unjust and exploitative social system, women distrusted it and decided to take revolutionary action i.e. Aurat March.  It is important to keep in mind that, using Eqbal’s words, “unlike rebels…revolutionaries challenge a system’s very title to rule. They question the legitimacy of the entire system and seek new bases of authority in new values as well as in new social, political and economic arrangements”. After all, “they have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (Marx and Engels)… Aurat March signifies momentous historical change that marks the transition from a disastrous patriarchy to a more balance social system in which human intellect will replace all forms of traditional superstitious regulations. These revolutionary movements pave the way towards a bright future, thereby leads to the formation of a new world where the oppressed social strata will practically experience the pure humanistic mission of their great teachers namely, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Arundhati Roy says, “another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.