"Criticizing ourselves and our country is the first step in our progress. There is no need to be ashamed that our homeland has been put in the spotlight, what should be ashamed is that our country is still lacking in that regard. Because I know that my motherland has too many problems, I want to make my motherland better and better through my own efforts. ”
—Amir Khan
Columnist of World Chinese Weekly: Gu Jingyan
Behind the news, there is a world you don't know
· 01 ·
If there is one person who can make us understand India, it is none other than Amir Khan.
On January 19, Amir Khan's new film "Mysterious Superstar" was released in Chinese mainland and quickly received high ratings. In this film, the story of an Indian girl with rich musical talent pursues her dreams.
At the same time, it also shows us the inferior social status of Indian women.
The heroine, Yin Xiya, comes from a Muslim family, and her father is a conservative and stubborn man with frequent domestic violence, who values sons over daughters, often insults and beats his wife, and rudely blocks her daughter's dreams; while the kind and weak mother is influenced by traditional ideas and does not dare to resist even if she is beaten.
The mother's face was scarred almost forever, and it was common to be beaten to the point that her nose was blue and her face was swollen.
Yin Xiya's situation is not much better, her father only cares about her brother, Yin Xiya is just a dispensable existence.
Yin Xiya, who has a unique voice, has the biggest dream of making her voice heard by people all over the world.
In order to hide from her grumpy father, she had to wear a black burqa to record music videos on Youtube, but she did not expect to become a hit and become a "mysterious superstar" in the eyes of everyone.
Even so, however, she could not escape the tragic fate of most Indian women: her father wanted to take her to Saudi Arabia and marry a man as brazen and rude as her father.
Thankfully, at the end of the film, Amir Khan gives Yin Xiya a perfect ending: the cowardly mother finally decides to divorce and refuses to go to Saudi Arabia with her husband.
Yin Xiya was also able to take off her burqa and stand in the spotlight of thousands of people and become a superstar.
However, movies are movies after all, and the ending of "reunion" is often to make us hopeful about life. In real life, countless "Yin Xiya" and her mother have been buried in the darkest corners of Indian society.
· 02 ·
How low is the status of women in India? You can get a glimpse of it from the movie.
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the film is when Yin Xiya's mother is broken by her husband just because she forgot to boil water, and Yin Xiya persuades her mother to divorce her father, and her mother desperately says, "What Indian man is not like this?" ”
Yes, almost all Indian men are like this. India is a patriarchal society through and through.
The suffering of Indian women begins before birth. The survival rate of female fetuses is very low, because many Indian men will not hesitate to choose to kill their wives as long as they find out that their wives are pregnant with a girl.
Even for baby girls who were lucky enough to be born because their parents didn't do gender testing, some cruel parents would choose to kill them.
In "Mysterious Superstar", when the heroine Yin Xiya was still a fetus, she was almost doomed.
Her father forced her mother to go to the hospital and was determined to beat her up, but fortunately her mother found an opportunity to escape from the hospital, which saved Yin Xiya's life.
And Yin Xiya's aunt, when telling Yin Xiya about this past, was questioned by Yin Xiya: Why didn't she interfere in this matter?
Grandma said weakly, "What can I do?" I also blame my mother for giving birth to me! Look at what I've been like all my life. ”
Generation after generation of Indian women have repeated this sad and desperate fate.
Data shows that in the past 20 years, about 10 million Female Fetuses in India have been killed. In this context, the sex ratio between men and women in India is already seriously imbalanced.
· 03 ·
The extreme preference of Indians for sons and daughters is also very different in terms of dowry customs.
In India, if you hate someone, say to him, "May you have a daughter."
This is a very vicious curse for Indians, because normal Indian men do not want daughters, and having a daughter means losing a large amount of dowry.
Unlike Chinese customs, Indian women must prepare a generous dowry when they marry, while men do not have to prepare too much.
But the high dowry did not improve the status of women in the husband's family. Indian men regard their wives' dowries as their rightful property, and even compare themselves with each other.
If a man feels that his wife's dowry is not rich enough, then he will punch and kick his wife and vent his dissatisfaction. One of the reasons why Yin Xiya's mother was abused was that her husband did not dislike her dowry enough.
In this irrational marriage custom, the daughter is a "money loser" for the father, and for the husband, the wife is nothing more than a slave who can bring great wealth.
Some men with low abilities are eager to rely on their wives' dowries to improve their quality of life, and if this hope is not achieved, they will even kill their wives in anger and marry another one.
This appalling thing is not alone. According to relevant data, on average, more than 9,000 women in India are abused to death every year because their dowry fails to meet their husbands' requirements.
The extreme inferiority of women has become one of the ugliest scars in Indian society.
· 04 ·
In the BBC documentary Daughter of India, an Indian man said: "We have the best culture, but in our culture, women have no place. ”
The idea that men are inferior and women are lowly has penetrated the minds of almost all Indians. According to a survey conducted by the United Nations, about 51 per cent of Indian male teenagers believe that it is a matter of course for men to beat their wives.
What's even more shocking is that more than 54% of female teenagers also believe that being beaten by their husbands is a matter of course.
In this way, the true awakening of Indian women is obstructed and long.
What exactly is the cause of such a low status of women in India?
From the perspective of geographical environment, India is located in South Asia, which is a populous country mainly based on farming. Agricultural work requires a strong male labor force, and women do not have an advantage in manual labor, so son preference has become an inevitable choice for most people.
This is very similar to the China of the past. However, after so many years, the agricultural society has long been transforming into an industrial society, why is India still so discriminatory against women today, when China has gradually got rid of the concept of son preference?
This brings us to a fundamental difference between China and India: religion.
China is not bound by religion, but not in India. In India, where the vast majority of people believe in Hinduism and some people believe in Islam, the impact of religion on the country is unimaginable.
Indian Islamic architecture taj mahal
According to Hindu law, women should obey their fathers, husbands, and sons, and should not handle affairs according to their own wishes; women should not learn knowledge and participate in sacrificial activities, but only need to take care of the family.
In the new era of India, although these bad habits have been corrected in national laws, the influence of religion on people has been deeply rooted. For the poorly educated commoners, national law did not carry the weight of religious law.
And the Indian government does not have the courage to break the shackles of religion on the country in one fell swoop.
The so-called "dragon-elephant dispute" between China and India has always been a hot topic in international politics, and political scientists have debated endlessly whether India, a resource-rich country with a population of one billion, will catch up with China in the 21st century.
However, if the status of women in India has remained the same, then the so-called indian superiority over China is almost a joke.
Because a truly powerful and wealthy civilized country will never be a hell for women. Only when men and women are equally empowered and everyone is equal, can a society truly burst with vitality.
In this regard, we are too far ahead of India.