More on Rasmani in Manushi No 78 was very good. I The life of Rani Rasmani was very entirely agree with you that the nicely described in your issue. The degradation and persecution of an following two incidents will be of Indian woman starts with her own interest. natal family. Almost all the decisions Rani Rasmani’s family was at first that underline the unwantedness and Vaishnavite (Bhakti cult). Once during vulnerability of a woman are taken by the Durga Puja ceremony at her her own parents. It is the latter’s son Janbazar Road house, some preference which leads to Europeans were very angry about the amniocentesis induced female terrible noises made by the trumpets foeticides or female infanticides, (dhak, dhol, etc) especially during the neglect to death of the girl child and Navami Puja and Sandhi Puja at denial to her of the same midnight. Some of them ordered the opportunities for education and skill trumpeters to stop that noise but they training as her brother. Cheating her kept right on playing. One angry out of her rightful share in the parental English sahibcame with some oned. She died in prison. Matangini property on the flimsy grounds of associates to attack her house. Then Hazra, also from Midnapore, joined expenses for her marriage is just Rani, with a sword in her hand, the 1942 movement and was shot another instance of this parental appeared before them as Asuradalini when three bullets were fired at her discrimination. After all, many families (destroyer of Asuras). The and the volunteers who accompanied which give huge dowries and spend Englishmen had to retreat. After this her.. lavishly on daughter’s weddings affair, she became a devotee of Kali, All these instances are important often outdo themselves at the time of the destructive goddess, whose other for historians. Fifty years have passed the sons’ weddings and in decking name is Bhabatarini (saviour of the since Independence was declared. out of the daughters-in-law. However, world). This goddess in our Bengali Now women are more conscious and that expense is not taken into account tradition has 12 forms, varying from have to fight daily along with others when parental property shares are affectionate saviour to destructive against all sorts of injustice and torture being decided. deity. Perhaps we women have to take which they have to face everyday. In Nirmala Banerjee, Calcutta such forms in our different aspects of some cases, some reference to past life. heroines are necessary, of course. But Justice Delayed Another tale concerning Rani is I think present day problems need to Thanks for using my article “Crime that once she became so angry with have our attention more than those of and Punishment: Combating the Shiv the local British rulers that she the past. Sena Menace in Bombay” in Manushi considered asking the Danes in I hope you don’t mind my wasting (No. 78). There’s one small but Chinsurah (Hoogly district) to help her your time. sig-nificant error I made. I said, against them. However, this alliance Kamala Mukhopadhyaya, “Neither petitioner is Maharashtrian.” never materialised. Calcutta (page 23) What I meant was, “Neither Now I am busy with the Please feel free to “waste” as petitioner is a Maharashtrian Hindu.” publica-tion of two books and editing much of our time as you like. We are My father is definitely one of my lectures on unkown women honoured to receive a letter from you. Maharashtrian. His family has lived in ’s freedom struggle from 1857- Editor in Bombay for generations. And Dilip 1911. One of the women, Rani Thakore is a Hindu, but not Siromani of Midnapur, fought against Early Discrimination Maharashtrian. the British for which she was impris- The article “Dowry Calculations” You may be interested in what

42 MANUSHI happened to our application for an been written on how ordinary working colony. He had mobilised about a expeditious hearing on the petition people risked their own lives, home hundred gangsters, who were all against Thackeray. It took three and property to save and shelter armed. All the residents of our colony months to finally come up in front of people of another community. were saying, “If not for the armed the chief justice on November 14. There have been several such outsiders, all the residents would have Three months! He said he wanted two incidents. In one basti in Jogeshwari, gone and intervened. Amin and his weeks to read the case papers. On when rioters came to kill people, a people are one among us. How dare November 26, he passed a bland Maharashtrian Hindu family hid their anyone call them otherwise.” “order” simply saying we neighbours in their attic. The rioters Similarly, in Asalfa village, on the shouldapproach him in another two knew that people were hiding in that - road, lived an old months. Meantime, he’s moving to the room. They threatened the owner of soldier called Ismail Naruddin Supreme Court and who knows how the house and ultimately poured Chiplunkar. He had fought in the long it will take for his replacement to kero-sene on him, saying that they In-dian army twice against Pakistan. take up the hearing application? would burn him. The owner kept silent In one of the wars he had narrowly I enjoyed your article on dowry and said, “Do what God tells you to es-caped death. After his retirement (as far as I could “enjoy” reading do.” Luckily for all of us, however, the from a full-fledged career, where his about dowry). I hadn’t thought much rioters were persuaded to leave. patrio-tism was more than well tested, about this notion of inheritance and There are countless heartening Chiplunkar was working as a security the role that it plays. It is good you ex-amples. We are proud of them and guard in a company in Bombay. When are explor-ing it from so many angles they instil hope in all of us who live the riots broke out in Bombay in (the woman, the parents, the in-laws’ and work here and whose families and Janu-ary 1993, his family members family). Just focussing on banning children have to inherit this country. were all ready to leave for safer areas. dowry seems both counter- Often the worst sufferers were How-ever, the brave soldier insisted productive and inad-equate. What those noteworthy for their that he had fought for the country and ways are there to agitate or press for contributions to the community. Take risked his life, which none of the legislation to ensure inher-itance the case of Professor Amin who used rioters or the people goading them to rights? Not that legislation alone will to live on the ground floor of the riot had. He felt that his selfless solve it either. building that faces our play ground. service the coun-try was protection For instance it seems to me that Professor Amin is a Sanskrit scholar enough. He refused to go, but his banning amneocentesis is entirely doing his Ph.D on the life and era of family left the area. In a few hours, wrong. I know of doctors here in the seventeenth century Maratha Chiplunkar was hacked to death by Bombay who agitated to have it hero, Shivaji. A couple of months ago the rioters. banned; now that it has been, they he had organised an exhibition on the Also among the sufferers of the engage in a far more lucrative, illegal period of Shivaji. Amin is active in riots was thedaughter of Haroon business, offering the test different cultural activities in his own Rashid, editor of Urdu Blitz. She could themselves. Sickening, but more than residential area, as is his wife, a not attend the ceremony at which she that, the very purpose of banning the Maharashtrian Hindu woman. was to be felicitated for her top test has been undermined. Professor Amin had over the years performance in the . Dilip D’Souza, Bombay built a sizeable library of rare and She had scored better marks than choice Sanskrit classics. many others whose mother tongue Senseless Rioting This collection was set on fire on was Marathi, but could not be present A great deal has been written January 11,1993. At the forefront of to accept such an impor-tant about the brutality and massacre that the attack was one of our locally active felicitation simply because a was perpetrated in December 1992 persons, a leader of a local Hindu fort-night earlier she and the 20 and January 1993, but very little has cultural-cum-political group in the families who lived at Jubilee Hall had

NUMBER.80 43 to flee for their lives. Organised gangs had burnt down their houses. Among many other possessions, Haroon Rashid lost his precious library which he had painstakingly built over the years. The attack took the form of petrol bombs thrown from the house of a local Shiv Sena corporator who used to be a good ‘friend’ of Rashid. There is also Aalam Saif, a carpen-ter who lived in Girgaum, in central Bombay, a largely Hindu do the same? Revolting Hoarding locality. Saif was compelled to leave Why does the girl have to change I was in Trivandrum recently for Allahabad, his ‘hometown’ which her name and surname after marriage? where I came across this billboard by he had never seen. He speaks neither Why is the husband always the head Kerala Travels while wandering Hindi nor Urdu, only Marathi. “At the of the family? through the city. [Seeplwto age of 40 I’ll now have to start When nature has not made woman above^iam no feminist or social rights learning what they tell me is my lesser than man, why is she treated as activist, but I found the quote and the language,” he says sadly. a subordinate in present day society? context in which it was set quite Sujata Gothoskar, Bombay The separation or gulf between men revolting. Ire-readitseveral times, and and women should not be stretched still could not figure out why it was Complementary Roles to the extent that they come in conflict there at all, ironically right outside the Nature has allotted different roles with each other. child welfare complex. to men and women. A woman has the Surabhi Gangal, New Delhi SunitaRao, New Delhi very essential and responsible task of carryng the unborn baby in her womb for nine months, giving birth to and feeding the baby. Even later it is the mother who has to be strength giver and supporter for the child’s develop-ment. Hence, the mother’s role is irre-placeable. It is a widely believed, tested and accepted fact that a man can con-struct a house but a home needs a woman—wife, mother or sister. This certainly proves the greater prudence and maturity provided to woman by nature. Despite these factors, why is the patriarchal family system imposed on women in society? Why does the girl have to go to her in-law’s house after marriage and break all ties from her real house, whereas the boy is not expected to

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