I’ve just returned from a few days in Assam. Not surprisingly, the subject of discussion in virtually every forum is the National Register of Citizens, which was published at the end of July.

The discussions are not frenzied, there doesn’t seem to be the kind of instant reaction that you see in Delhi. But there is a measured and thoughtful weighing of options, almost a sense of relief that some steps have been taken, and a sort of wait-and-watch attitude.

At the same time, among activists and civil society actors, liberals and academics, writers and thinkers, there is also a deep concern about how people, particularly the poorer ones, will put together the ‘right’ kind of documentation, what it will mean to their lives to pursue this Kafkaesque and opaque process of filing such applications, and what the end result will bring.

One thing that everyone seems to agree on is that women will find themselves in very ambivalent situations, for it would not be wrong to say that the legitimacy of a woman’s identity is often much harder to prove than that of a man’s.

Because they’re often so unwelcome, their births — especially if they’re born into poverty, and if they happen to be born at all — may not even be registered. If they’re not sent to school, there’s no documentation that can prove their existence, or often their age. If they’re married before the age of 18 (as is often the case), they may not have a voter ID card: they can’t get one before adulthood and once they move into their married homes, the families may not be interested in getting these documents for them.

Marriage also often means moving to another place, and the difficulties of securing documentation at a new address are well known. So why go through the trouble of getting such documentation for someone whose life isn’t of much value anyway?

This ‘material’ liminality is buttressed by a sort of social sanction that is even more difficult to address. A woman doesn’t count for much in our society: in many parts of India, when a woman marries, she changes not only her surname but also her first name. Because she now belongs to her marital family, she becomes their property and all traces of her previous identity are left behind.

In fact this ‘leaving behind’ is very much a part of a woman’s life. In some villages of Haryana where the sex ratio is unfavourable to women, it is said that there are no longer any women in the village for the men to marry.

This problem is easily solved by ‘importing’ women from other parts of the country. Their use is clear: They’re domestic work and sex factories, and once they’ve fulfilled this purpose, they can be dispensed with. Their families have already disposed of them by sending them away. She belongs neither to the place she was born in, nor the place she marries into.

Long ago, I had a friend, educated, bright, and who teaches in a college. She was called Purnima. The moment she married, her name was changed to Simashree. It’s as if Purnima had never existed, that identity was gone. I often wondered what would happen if she and her husband divorced — would she then get a third name?

I often wonder what the ideas of home, belonging, rootedness mean generally for women. As migrants go, women have to be among the highest in number — but perhaps because they migrate individually and not in groups, they are not counted.

None of this is new, of course; it’s an old and familiar truth. I was reminded of it when people spoke of the women in Assam and how they would be impacted by the NRC. Even if women in the villages of Assam have proof of identity — and many don’t — where will they get the wherewithal to file the reams of applications that are needed? Who will stand by them in this?

What does it mean to be a woman in India today? What does it mean really? Gender relations in society do not even begin to change unless the ‘other’ genders become part of the common sense of everyday life. It’s when women are seen everywhere, when they’re in all kinds of jobs, when they earn as much as men, when their identities are their own, and not those of their husbands or fathers or sons or brothers — it’s only when this happens that things will begin to change.

But the woman as a full citizen is a faraway dream. If every woman in Assam who needs to get her identity and citizenship back manages to do so, then perhaps we can say that we will have something to celebrate.

BLINKURVASHI

Urvashi Butalia

 

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

blink@thehindu.co.in

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