We do not always realize that an opinion we carry, with all the conviction with which we carry it, may not be our opinion at all. Has it ever occurred to you that what you say may not be the outpouring of your real innate ideas? Has it occurred to you that the ideals you carry may not necessarily have been yours at all? What if the ideals are an import? Is there the slightest possibility that an opinion we think is a well-informed one could have come out not of critical examination but from a blind adhering to a thought which we assume to have emerged out of critical thinking? If a statement is thrown at us, or in the market, are we to lap it up as Gospel truth or shall we pause and ask of the grounds on which the statements are made? Adler and Doler write, “The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements – all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics – to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so.”

Are we sure that we are expounding our own opinions and not just repeating what could be a lie told again and again and loudly? Why are we to assume that a successful woman is one who has entered STEM and emerged a doctor or an engineer? Upon what grounds are we to say that a lady who is an entrepreneur is more successful and liberated than a woman who raised a doctor or an entrepreneur? How do we decide what to attribute success to? Is a lady whose husband earns for her really “jobless”? She has nothing to do in her life? If she does not have an employer her life is over? In what way is cooking and washing like a queen (or a king depending upon who is doing it), any way lesser in dignity than working like a collie or vice versa? Why are we to think that a lady “working” outside the house in the marketplace is in any way liberated while the lady “working” inside the home is not? What is liberation? For whom? From what? Is liberation taking more clothes off or taking more clothes on? Is liberation earning money? Is it called earning money only when it is credited inside your bank account? Would it be called earning money if it were a family member that was crediting the account? Is earning money the end? What is the purpose of earning money? What is work? Is a working lady doing something different than a non-working lady? Can a non-working lady even exist? Can there actually be any existence without any work? What is the aim of life? Is it going out to work, to become doctors, engineers, lawyers?

I am not here to answer any of these questions. If you have answers to all of these, more power to your intellect. What I am here to say and defend is the apparent indefensible. I am here to tell the side of the “conservative” or the “patriarch”. Did you have a chance in your life to listen to one? Or are all your stories about this side of the spectrum told by the “liberal” and “feminist”? Do you know about what the “conservative” or the “patriarch” says only from what the “liberal” and the “feminist” say about what he says? Does it not surprise you that you are yet to hear this side of the story, the story of women liberation in a quite different sense of the term?

Kashmiri society is by far a very progressive society. It presents to large extent equality of opportunity for girls and women (not imposing on them the equality of outcome), not shying away from the fact that there is always room for improvement. Is there a system where there is no room for improvement? Is the west sitting idle since it “liberated” its women? Kashmiri women, those who choose to, are working as teachers, doctors, homemakers, cooks, maids, lawyers, washers, peons, nurses, and many are idle and that is equally good. Has it occurred to you that idle by choice is much more empowering than working out of compulsion? And also, what are equal rights? What are rights? What is equality? Is equality possible? Is equality desirable? Does equality last? Are men equal? Do they all have equal rights? Do all women have equal rights? What is freedom? Is my mom free? In my family, the three males would round and again ask the one woman (my mother) not to put on burkha for she would sweat profusely, Mom would invariably choose to wear one and continue to do so, “choose” being the keyword. Did you jump to the conclusion that the society has brainwashed her into such submission? She went to tour North India when many girls would not even attend schools, she tells us those stories. 2018 and enter another lady in our house, my brother’s wife. She doesn’t wear burkha, no one asks her to, not even my “brainwashed” mom, but when she does, she wears the Afghani one and all of us men, and the one “conservative” woman get berserk about why she would choose it over the beautiful fiza burkha. But then she takes it on and moves like an asthaan, is she liberated or is she chained into slavery?

Let society be free and let girls and women and boys and men choose what they want to choose and that must include a choice of not having a choice at all. A right to choose not to choose. The women who wish to be “free” in the western sense of the term should have that right to be, which they almost certainly have; if they face any threat of physical violence, which many do, those threats must go. But how do we stop crime? Is it a crime that is a necessary result of “patriarchal” thinking? Or can we say it is a result of artificially created narrative stripping man of his manliness and women of their womanliness? If a woman adopting a certain way of life is her choice, by what measure is it not the choice of the society to have a view of with her, the way it wishes without resorting to violence of any kind. There are members in society who would prefer in marriage a lady “modern” in outlook, hair straightened, Lorealised and VLCCeed looks, she must be “working” as well. I am personally one of those, would prefer marrying someone who earns while I cook and wash. But do women not have any wishes of their own? Do they want just any other guy? Join a dating website or roam around and see for yourself who is choosier in selecting a partner, men or women. And no one is to be blamed for being choosy for there are men who are choosy and there are women who are not. And also, there are men who look for Burkha-clad women in marriage. Are the women who look towards bearded old-school guys to be considered in any way less liberated? Why is it that we must consider the woman speaking on the podium to be liberated and not the woman who prefers to remain silent? If women wish to be free in the eastern sense of the term, they must have the choice of doing so.

Kashmiri women should come forward by their own personal will and contribute in whatever way they can, or whatever they want to, which does not necessarily have to be doctors and engineers or the outspoken self-proclaimed neo-nazi feminists. Your contribution choice which includes the right not to contribute at all. Our womenfolk can contribute by homemaking, it is a very tough job which we men are almost incapable of doing without the able helping hands of our women. You can contribute by working outside houses, you can contribute through whichever way YOU want, not what western feminism or eastern conservatism chooses for you. Go and live free lives and that freedom does not necessarily have to be enforced freedom, let it be chosen, let you choose to be a slave or a master, be a master in the eastern sense of the term or a master in the western sense. Let you not be fooled into the mastery by the overwhelming media discourse. You have not been told liberation is in the mind, not in the body, you are a slave till you think you are a slave and by that token most of those who consider themselves “liberated” are nothing but “slaves” and more power to them for they are so by what they think is a free choice (which I think it is not). You are told that you are liberated if your body becomes a delight for millions of eyes and you are enslaved if it is the delight of just one pair of eyes. You are told that you are liberated when your voice is heard by millions and not just the selected few around you. You are told that when you display your embellishments you are free. I tell you that there is another way of looking at the same story. You are liberated from the hounding eyes of millions into the freedom of the unjudging garment of two eyes. There are not millions hearing you, but there are a few listening to you and that is by far more liberating. Let you not bark at millions but speak to a few and that is also a choice which no one but you should have the right the make. And you have every right to yield that choice.

Men yield choices, as sons to parents, as boyfriends to girlfriends, like fathers to children, as husbands to wives. Men do not necessarily choose what they wish to do and be, they are also driven by many hands, some visible some invisible. Let not the woman think that it is just their gender which is “enslaved” for to think of yourself to be a slave is to be one. We are all “enslaved”, is not the chain which you have been told is around your feet also around the hand of the man who is claimed to be holding it? Is not a chain holding two and not just one? There is no Woman’s day, for every day is a woman’s day for every man’s and every woman’s life revolves around only women, careers come a distant second. Every day on this planet is a woman’s day! Even though I may be ridiculed by many, did you notice even this writeup revolves around women!