Iranian Women’s Lesson Is For Indian Men Too

Modernity’s crucial feature is accepting every individual’s freedom to choose

- Sagarika Ghose

On the 40th day since the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, after she was arrested for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’, Iranian women gathered to protest once again, defying bans and police firing. Their extraordinary courage is shattering stereotypes. Muslim women, often seen as an oppressed group living in veiled seclusion and forbidden from speaking out, are suddenly out on the streets. Their voices are ringing out boldly against the theocratic regime that rules over them.

Iranian women are burning their hijabs. They are cutting their hair. They are shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

Iran is a good example of how religious orthodoxies view women, particularly modern women, as Enemy No 1. But this mindset is by no means restricted to Islam. Other religions share the trait. Menstruating women are barred from some Hindu shrines and young widows were once forced to shave their heads and wear white clothes.

Modern riffs on this orthodoxy include some groups seeking to restrict women’s freedom of choice in inter-faith marriage and government ministers speaking against women’s ‘ripped jeans’.

This ‘morality police mindset’ exists across genders. Sometimes, so dangerously bewitching is the power of ‘cultural identity’ that women themselves sleepwalk backwards into a medieval era and attempt to impose an imagined mythological ‘purity’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ on members of their own sex. These women are their own worst enemies.