Ironic—should I say Iranic—that a country whose language is so sophisticated that it does not even bother with gendered pronouns, referring to everyone (and everything) with the same universal “oo” has become the site of an invasion ostensibly to “save” its women from oppression by the boorish and bumbling west. I am also charmed by the word hamsar, for spouse, which literally translates to fellow-head, neatly sidestepping the tired binaries of ‘weaker sex’, ‘better half’ or ‘head of the household’.
Of course, language is one thing: 2,600 years old. State religion is another: 1,400 years old. And the current government? A mere 47.
But I guess I am reaching beyond recent history—including the US and the UK-backed dismantling of Mosaddegh’s progressive democracy in 1953—towards the deeper instincts of civilisation (the very thing Donald Trump once threatened to demolish). What emerges is something far more robust and inherently equitable.
So, perhaps, the west does not have to worry so much about Iranian women, after all. Perhaps, with near-universal literacy, 63 per cent university attendance, half of all doctors and medical students, and a strong presence in STEM, Iranian women seem more than capable of negotiating their own battles. Especially since their women’s rights movement has been, arguably, the most vocal and public of any such women’s movement in Islamic countries, or, in fact, most countries. The Zan, Zindagi, Azadi movement has burned images of the Ayatollah, set hijabs aflame, knocked turbans off clerics, cut hair in protest, walked bareheaded in the thousands, and confronted both the morality police and the state head-on.
Just worth mentioning here, btw, that Arabic, the language largely spoken by the west’s GCC friends, is highly gendered—primly and obsessively prescribing sexes to every single thing. And that unlike Saudi Arabian women, who only got the right to drive last year, Iranian women have always been driving. Yet, somehow, the west rarely feels the same urgency to “liberate” women in those countries.
But, perhaps, I do men a disservice. Maybe women’s rights are something men are organically and nobly invested in. Like our prime minister, for instance, who recently appeared so eager to advance women’s representation that he attempted to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill, again, this time elegantly wrapped within the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Law (Amendment) Bill. Alas, like the Star-of-David flagged ships attempting to scuttle through the Strait of Hormuz in the dark hours, all three failed to pass. Women, clearly, can be so ungrateful. And the ingratitude does not stop there.
This lack of gratitude seems to be bubbling over. From the girls of Miranda House who pulled a mass bunk at an event, to the girl from Galgotias University who made a blog about the, uh, desultory attendance at the launch of a new airport in Noida, to the girls of Gargi College loudly booing an ABVP-backed DUSU president, to the girls from LSR who were protesting against their own principal because she supported an initiative they disagreed with—they all seem remarkably unimpressed.
Clearly alongside Farsi lyrics, Lego-style videos and anti-fit dressing, Zan, Zindagi, Azadi is catching on here, too.