Scroll down below ⬇️ to read an interesting commentary written by Manisha Gupta on a speech made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently at a graduation ceremony of a young women’s university … a speech in which she said that anti-patriarchy theory imported from the West should not be allowed to become a self-imposed impediment to women-aspirations. ( “What’s patriarchy ya?’ FM Nirmala Sitharaman calls it a Leftist jargon!” …. https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/news/whats-patriarchy-ya-fm-nirmala-sitharaman-calls-it-a-leftist-jargon …..
Manish Gupta takes objection however to Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman’s approach to the whole issue of patriarchy in India and refers us to a TED talk in support of her objections. The TED talk is titled “The Danger of the Single Story” delivered by a young African-American lady in America, Chimamanda Ngozi .
My own thoughts and take on the Manish Gupta op-ed piece, Nirmala Sitharaman and the Ngozi theory is below:
The real power of the “single story” lies not in the idea it contains and seeks to propagate but in its repeatability …
When there are half a dozen different narratives being spouted — i.e. “many stories” instead of a “single one” — it’s likely that one will tend to drown out the others . That drowning out happens because of “repeatability” — that “single story” gets repeated so often, and so loudly, that it attains the status of an “ideology”.
Once a “narrative” becomes Ideologyall “other stories” become its rivals and must therefore get debunked and rejected if it must prevail over them all.
Nirmala Sitharaman in my view was simply saying that the anti-Patriarchy “story” is a narrative whose “repeatability” is what causes harm to women aspirations. It often stands in the way of women self-empowerment.
There are women who cannot stop repeating the “single story” again and over again … until it becomes their own enemy instead of being their liberator .
The “single story” about womanhood — which here in this case Manisha Gupta is expatiating upon — transmutes into ideology …. and ideology can often turn out to be sentencing oneself to a life-term in a prison called victimhood . And once any woman starts seeing herself as “victim” of patriarchy, she becomes the tragic heroine of the “single story”.
That’s what Nirmala Sitharaman was trying to convey to all those young girl graduates starting out in life .
Manisha Gupta in her Op-Ed piece has read Ms. Sitharaman all in the wrong sort of way. In doing so, she’s turned good sincere advice given by one woman to another into a twisted, needlessly complicated narrative.
Manisha Gupta’s is not a good story at all .
Regards ,
Sudarshan Madabushi
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Manisha GuptaManisha Gupta Founder and CEO Start Up!Founder and CEO Start Up!
The Union Corporate Affairs Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has told college students that patriarchy is an excuse that women use to cover up their inefficiency, lack of readiness, and inability to be logical. This was her response when she was asked to advise young Indian women on how they can go forth and live their dreams in an authentic way.
Citing the example of ISRO, the minister said that no force can or has stopped women from joining ISRO (20% of ISRO’s scientists are women).
Mrs. Sitharaman went on to say that families across India have historically provided unparalleled comfort, support, and safety to women who deliver care work at home. This is why women in India are happier than the desolate women of the West.
The Minister also believes that patriarchy is a fantastic leftist concept, and it’s about time the country challenged such narratives with bold, substantive counter-narratives.
Does this mean we can now inform Indian women that the country’s low female workforce participation rate is due to their inefficiency and incapability?
Should I tell my mother that her inability to complete her law degree when she got pregnant was her fault? That she was disallowed by her in-laws to step out of her home and give her law exam because they loved her dearly and prevented her from getting a degree for her own good. Or perhaps my young mother could not argue her case logically with her powerful father-in-law – in which case, there was no point in her being a lawyer in the first place.
Can we also point to the laziness of lakhs of micro-women entrepreneurs as a factor that blocks their mobility to do business beyond their village?
The Minister ended the interview by saying that people roll their eyes at any talk of patriarchy and say, “Chal, let them talk nonsense while I get on with my work.” In that vein, we can roll our eyes too and say, “Another minister just ran down the women of this country – never mind, let us get back to my business.”
But sometimes, you have to pause. Because the thing with narrative building is the danger of a simple, single-story (reference: Chimamanda Ngozi).
A simple, single-story by a person in power has, in a moment, stripped 50% of the country’s citizens (women) of their dignity and absolved the accountability of the other 50% – who are falling short of building gender-responsive ecosystems in education and work.————————————————————————————————
Summary: “The Danger of a Single Story”By Nirmeen Shumpert4–5 minutes | Academic SummaryChimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” Ted Talk, in July 2009, explores the negative influences that a “single story” can have and identifies the root of these stories. Adichie argues that single stories often originate from simple misunderstandings or one’s lack of knowledge of others, but that these stories can also have a malicious intent to suppress other groups of people due to prejudice (Adichie). People, especially in their childhood, are “impressionable and vulnerable” when it comes to single stories (Adichie 01:43). Adichie asserts that media and literature available to the public often only tell one story, which causes people to generalize and make assumptions about groups of people.Adichie shares two primary examples to discuss why generalizations are made. Reflecting on her everyday life, she recalls a time where her college roommate had a “default position” of “well-meaning pity” towards her due to the misconception that everyone from Africa comes from a poor, struggling background (04:49). Adichie also clearly faults herself for also being influenced by the “single story” epidemic, showing that she made the same mistake as many others. Due to the strong media coverage on Mexican immigration she “had bought into the single story”, automatically associating all Mexicans with immigration (Adichie 08:53). These anecdotes emphasize how stereotypes are formed due to incomplete information, but one story should not define a group of people.Adichie also tackles the effect of political and cultural power on stories. Power not only spreads a story, but also makes its ideas persist. Adichie states that power can be used for malintent, through controlling “how [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, [and] how many stories are told” (09:25). Using power to manipulate our understanding of others can be evidenced by Adichie’s trip to Mexico, where she realized Mexicans were not the harmful Americans Western media had portrayed them to be. Additionally, influential western stories have caused people like Adichie to have a limited idea of characters that appear in literature, since foreigners were not part of them. This is why the first stories Adichie had written included white characters playing in the snow rather than things reflective of her life in Africa (Adichie 00:39). Adichie explains how she became enlightened through “the discovery of African writers”, which “saved [her] from having a single story of what books are” and becoming another victim of a biased sample of literature (02:36).Adichie puts her speech in a nutshell stating that “to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become” (09:25). Her conclusion responds to these misconceptions by reiterating the importance of spreading diverse stories in opposition to focusing on just one. She professes that the rejection of the single story phenomenon allows one to “regain a kind of paradise” and see people as more than just one incomplete idea (Adichie 18:17).Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TEDGlobal, TED, 23 July
2009, Oxford, UK. Speech.