THE TYRANNY OF THE INDIAN UNCLE

Behind every case of a woman being robbed of her right to speak, live, love, study or dress as she pleases is a type of unhelpful uncle

- Shrayana Bhattacharya

Show me a hard-working, financially independent professional woman-she need not be feminist, fabulous or flamboyant and I will show you an insecure Indian Uncle who resents her. The news cycle of 2022 reminded us, yet again, of India's deepening crisis of masculinity. Airlines obsessed over the length of women's blouses, committees were formed to regulate inter-faith marriages, a young professor lost her job for wearing beachwear in her private social media pictures, universities penalised student facilitators who tried to help sexual harassment complainants, boyfriends brutalised girlfriends, thugs climbed over campus boundaries to invade a women's college festival, and young men attacked girls on their way to study. Every week of the past year, we have huffed and puffed about what is going wrong with the way Indian boys become Indian men.

While it is morally convenient to look at these incidents as individual episodes triggered by a few deviants and collapse the conversation into the same old tired tropes on women's safety, the rising tide of resentment against independent women can no longer be exclusively challenged by op-eds, sarkari committees or technical fixes. Sure, we can hold governments accountable for not having more women in the police or supporting safe housing and transport. However, gender norms are not manufactured by politicians or a gaggle of conservative or communal male miscreants alone.