EAST GOES WEST FOR 'NEW AGE' WOMEN
Delhi, India
June 2OOO
THE WAYS of the West are reaching out to women in India, tugging off their apron strings as one of the world's last great bastions of male "supremacy" starts to crumble.
For centuries, India's women - the vast majority of them (80%) followers of the strict Hindu faith - have had to cover up in public and draw a veil over fashion by wrapping themselves up in voluminous sarees.
Custom has it that they walk discreetly behind their menfolk in the street, arranged marriages are still very much the norm, and work is usually confined to manual or menial labour.
But the ways of the West's "New Age" woman - and Man for that matter - are sweeping in like the monsoon rains.
After China, India has the world's biggest population, and you don't turn the habits of a billion people on their head in a hurry. But the pace of change is quickening.
Out in the country - and most of the sub-continent is extremely rural - women are as likely to be seen as men (pix) labouring on building sites, working in the rice fields, or carrying the produce to market. And all that's on top of washing the clothes in the local stream or cleaning the dishes under the village tap (pix).
But it's in the big cities that you can see the changes happening first. In Mumbai (the new name for Bombay) it's the "20-somethings" who are strolling now in their designer jeans and hugging boyfriends in the street on their way to the vibrant disco scene.
In Delhi, India's capital city, smart worksuits are replacing the saree for girls-about-town who are holding down career jobs now in finance, sales and marketing. And in Kolkata (was Calcutta), where an amazing 300,000 students study at the university, young people are picking up the pace of new trends in fashion in a big way.
What's helped to push things along is a double breakthrough in the beauty stakes with Yukta Mukhi, a model from Mumbai, holding the current Miss World title, and Lara Dutta,the 23-year-old daughter of a retired Indian Air Force officer from Bangalore, winning the Miss Universe crown earlier this year. They have proved to everyone that Indian girls can look the biz in a swimsuit - something Hindus have rarely been allowed to see before.
In this land of stark contrasts and contradictions, abject poverty rubs alongside prosperity. 62% of women are classed as illiterate (33% of men)and vast slums and shanty towns sprawl alongside high-rise suburbia in the cities. Average annual income is well below (UK sterling) 500 per head and the poorest are in the countryside where tribalism is still rife and it's not uncommon for an adulterous wife to be stoned to death by other women in the village. Divorce is virtually unknown.
But Westernism is starting to take a big hold on things. It's piping into nearly every home through more than 20 TV channels - many of them in english - serving up familiar images of glittering lifestyles, dance and music. The internet,too, is having a massive influence, and the Indians are seeing more and more of us and our culture at first hand.
Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic has linked up with Air India in a joint venture to promote more passenger traffic between London and Delhi, while the charter airlines are already doing a roaring trade bringing planeloads of fun-seekers - especially from Britain - to Goa on the west coast for a holiday season which begins in October.
All-night raves and beach parties which last a whole week over Christmas are becoming as legendary for Goa as they have been for Ibiza in Spain. And although the locals don't like it much, they do like the money it brings in.
Politics too are changing. 50 years after the British pulled out and gave India her independence, the domination of the Congress Party has been broken and the current BJP national government is filtering more democracy into the country's own gentle brand of communism. The British influence is still all around however, with english as the official second language and cricket and hockey the major national sports.
Even the first steps to privatisation are being proposed, with airlines and ports scheduled as the first to go, 20 years after Mrs Thatcher broke away from State-control conventions in the UK.
In such a vast country, where every region has different cultures, languages and dialects, and where people physically look and dress differently, change is bound to come at different speeds. Heart-throb film divas, who could have the choice of hunky leading men, still bow to their parents' wishes of an "arranged" partner.
But Westernism is still breaking out in the cities come what may. In Delhi, as in Mumbai, the queues are longest at the counters in McDonald's, while signs for Wimpey,TGI Fridays and Pizza Hut are just around the corner.
Veenu Sandhu,a 27-year-old journalist (pic) from Delhi,summed up the new mood. "There's absolutely no doubt that things are changing," she said. "We are not throwing out our traditions completely. In fact, most young women have two wardrobes now - one for sarees and one for Western dress. We are bombarded by what the West is doing fashion-wise through TV and newspapers and we want to be part of that. After all, wearing jeans and a T-shirt is a lot more comfortable!"
Coping with Westernism is throwing up questions throughout Indian society and bringing about a thorough examination of values.
Critics point out that the use of drugs, especially in heavily urbanised areas, is an increasingly significant problem. There has been a sharp rise in rape and sex-related crime, and the censorship laws are being tested much more often in the courts.
"Many of us are worried that liberalism could bring about big changes in our family lives,"a young father working as a travel consultant in Mumbai, told me."We have seen the explosion in divorce,separation and single-parent families in the West, and there are fears that it could lead the same way here eventually."
(c)Richard Meredith
all rights reserved
Footnote:
This story was submitted to the India Express. They thought it "well written" and other niceties, but felt it said little their readers did not already know.
