Women Empowerment Misplaced
Somen Chakraborty
Sheena Bora murder case is a
family issue. Whether Sheena was daughter of Indrani Mukherjee, or she conspired and murdered Sheena, what was the motive behind the murder are
subjects of judicial scrutiny. Until a verdict comes through from an
appropriate court, stories and interpretations will keep reverberating in public
domain. Inquisitive minds will look for its daily updates.
There is no denying of the fact
that individual or family-centric incidents can also potentially reshape a national
life. Matters of individual concerns may help reconstruct perceptions of nation
building process and systematic behavior of political institutions. In 1978, in Maneka
Gandhi case, the Supreme Court’s decision transformed the scope of the right to
life and personal liberty under article 21 of the fundamental rights. The
Supreme Court verdict on Bhanwari Devi gang rape case, wherein the ‘Vishakha Guidelines’
was framed, changed the understanding of and approach to sexual harassment of
women.
The guidelines for the ‘Special
Cells for Women and Children’ of the Govt. of Maharashtra say that ‘Violence against women is not a personal
matter to be resolved by the family alone and that instead violence against
women is a crime and therefore, an issue that needs to be addressed within the
public domain.’ Violence here encompasses incident of murder as well. That
is exactly why Sheena Bora case will not go to
oblivion for being merely a family matter.
Another interesting fact is underlying in this highly
complex case - the growth and transformation of Indrani Mukherjee. Indrani came
from an educated, urban middle class family of upper Assam. Bora community
enjoyed access to development opportunities during the colonial period. In the
post-independent India they became a dominant social group of Assam. Socio-economic
choices have drawn the middle class of Assam to city life without casting off
their rural bonding. They were either in service or worked as petty merchants.
They did not experience severe poverty as a community.
Indrani Bora, daughter of an
engineer, grew up in Guwahati. As adolescent she spent some years in Shillong
for study. She learnt English and formed some idea about the world outside. It
was the time when Perestroika-Glasnost was haunting the world. India was
getting ready for economic liberalization. Feminist agitation was in transition
to women’s liberation movement.
At a very early age she entered abruptly
but quite boldly into the adult’s world by way of live-in-partner relationship
and Sheena was born. Neither live-in-partner system nor children outside wedlock
was so common in our country, especially among the middle class, in the late
eighties. One may wonder if it had any indication that Indrani was ahead of her
time! Was she aggressive to embrace modernity? Was she restless for
emancipation from parochial values and ethics of society? Or she was just
another decadent, directionless woman of her time! Whatever might be in mind,
her relationship with Siddharth Das, an unemployed young man from middle class background
and later conceiving two children in a short span of time reveal that she was
not so ambitious and futuristic in her late teens or early twenties.
And then fascinating story of
growth and empowerment of a woman took off. In a ruthless manner Indrani
discarded the past. She took a challenging decision to create her own road map
- a life of her choice – to become a member of affluent society.
Indrani migrated to Kolkata in
late eighties. Coming and settling in Kolkata was not so simple for a young
Asomiya woman. Deep wound that the AASU movement had left in the minds of
Bengalis debarred them to trust the people of Assamese origin. Also the middle
class of West Bengal often nourished many faulty perceptions about women from
the north-east region. It was again difficult because she did not come with any
extraordinary skill and capability to secure a stable livelihood. At such young
age and in a disturbed mind, loose family bonding and almost with zero network,
Indrani began her quest for survival.
Perhaps she understood that
association with Bengalis would not offer the comfort she was looking for. She
rather preferred and eventually entered into a society which was more open and
highly materialistic, aggressive, self-centric and capital-driven. Business and
commerce in Kolkata was regulated primarily by the non-Bengalis, especially by Marwari
and Punjabi communities. Their food habits, languages, rituals, cultural
practices and norms of inter-relationships are hugely different. She not only
made herself acceptable in such a new society but also married a business
person and renewed her identity as Indrani Khanna. Instead of adopting Bengali
ethos during 13 long years in Kolkata she learnt the art of business and
commerce. She prepared herself in all respect for a life larger than what this
city was offering. If empowerment means to become an agent of change in one’s
own life, securing greater access to resources and enhancing control over that
then Indrani was, of course, financially and socially much empowered by then. Her
thrust for speedy growth, more power and greater financial stability reduced Kolkata
and married life there to be an obsolete, irrelevant existence.
She came out of marital
relationship and abandoned the city for Mumbai. She soon entered into a more covetous
life by marrying a media baron. In less than a decade she became an owner of a
media company. Crores of rupees were in her control. Her bank accounts spread
across the continents. Prestigious British passport was in her possession. She became
a celebrity, earned self-respect and built powerful network. She was a true ‘empowered’
woman then. In her journey from Guwahati to Mumbai she empowered herself through the problem-solving
process, which validated her strategic prowess, communication techniques and
negotiation skill with market forces. And then all on a sudden she crashed on to the ground – prime suspect of a
heinous crime, monetary corruption, forgery, deceitful actions and so on.
Indrani’s case is an eye opener.
It tells that sustainable collective empowerment is more crucial for
emancipation of women than an individual’s short-lived attainment of power and
position. Empowerment cannot be limited to decision making capacity, property
rights, access to resources and seizing control over resources which is often mentioned
in various national and international documents. If empowerment increases greed,
hatred and vengeance of such intensity that can inflict grave injury to others,
then certainly no society would aspire for this. Value free empowerment devoid
of accountability to societal well-being can be harmful to collective good, may
it be in a family, a community or a nation.
In the present case, Indrani was apparently
scared of her past. Until the judicial verdict comes out many may think that Sheena’s
murder was a desperate attempt to wipe out a frightening past to safeguard the existing
opulence and comfort. Indrani-Sheena incident, perhaps, creates space for
renewed debate on empowerment and more specifically, it may enlighten us to reframe
the perceptions and indicators of women’s liberation movements.
c_somen@yahoo.com
