Fighting Oppression without Catch phrases

How silly it is to tag someone as privileged or oppressed just by their collective identity! A subset of feminists think being a man is all you need to be privileged and to have no idea how it is to be discriminated against while just being a woman automatically gives you all the knowledge about being oppressed and banter about it on social network. Similarly, being born upper caste condemns you to being identified as privileged lifelong, while having been born in a dalit family gives you all rights to consider yourself a struggler who has risen up in status against a biased society.

I think, we all are privileged and oppressed in different measures. If I am born an upper caste male, I still am born a lower middle class Asian. In my local experience, I have experienced what it is to be denied entry to desirable or aspirational positions on the basis of caste. I am not raising any flags as whether it's fair or not. But most importantly, I am a person with reasonable intellect and empathy. I can feel emotions even if I have not been subjected to their primary triggers. So, I understand it in various ways.

Take for example 'patriarchy'. Of course, there are a hundred rejoinders about what it means and what it does not. But literally it names the father. In fact, it's originally a morally neutral term meaning just a social system. However, it's now tainted with a negative shade. And it's used in a negative sense. Isn't it unfair and sexist? 'Male dominated society' is much more closer to reality, because it explicates the fact that the society has largely been dominated by males. And yes, why should that be? Feminism is another word. It claims to encompass all the work that gets done in the name of uplifting women. But it silently propagates a falsehood: that doing fair and just things has something to do with being feminine. How ridiculous and sexist is this?! Being fair and just is a human quality, not feminine. If people have forgotten this, they should be reminded of this with all the force you can muster. You don't coin a new inherently sexist term and keep throwing it around just because it's locally effective due to its shock factor.

Oppression and discrimination has existed forever. No point in denying that. Oppression has been done against gender, race, caste, religion, ethnicity, disabilities and several other collective identities. We all have taken part in such acts, knowingly or unknowingly. We all have been the victims too.

So, my point is: let's discuss social issues. Victims of social oppression can be identified to some extent by name: e.g. women, Muslims, Dalits, coloured people, Asians etc. But let's refrain from using terms corresponding to the compliment of the victim set which directly or indirectly implicate certain collective identities as the perpetrators. 

Constructive discussions and useful actions can be taken by not identifying specific collective identities. This will let open minded individuals of all identities to freely participate in the movement as long as they have their head and heart at the right place. On the other hand, you create unnecessary strife by using inflammatory terms. For example, I am all for fighting for women's right, because that's just the right thing to do. But, I don't want to fight patriarchy because I am not with the whole drama of first attaching a moral innuendo to an otherwise neutral term and then using it to indirectly implicate an entire gender.

The King of All Oppression

One collective identity which cuts across all others, and probably explains the phenomenon of social oppression the best, is economic status. If you are poor or economically dependent, you will face discrimination and oppression. Economic bounty gets you social power. And power is the key. All oppression is in some sense done for it and using it. Haven't you heard of women who treat their domestic helps cruelly? Haven't you come across a Dalit who beats his wife or a Muslim who is sociopath. Then why do we keep talking about the mere symptoms and shy away from the main disease -- the inequity in economy?

Before you immediately tag me as a socialist or communist (which are another bunch of collective identities I find ridiculous), let me deny being either. Anti-capitalist -- to some extent. All I say is indefinite freedom to earn and spend as much material wealth as one wants is a ridiculously unrealistic and unsustainable ideal. Differences in social status/power should be treated as a necessary evil (but evil all the same). Its blatant and crass display or manifestation should be something that should be frowned on, or even curbed if required. If we do agree to do that, we will encompass all social discrimination. If we continue to consider this a taboo the way we do it now, we will keep hoping to get rid of the disease by treating its symptoms.

I would even say that these social identities which are used to simplify discussions by representing concepts often turn into a weapon of imposters to hide their intellectual ineptitude and laziness. These terms also get picked up by radical factions of all movements and are used to propagate hatred against people. These terms are so susceptible to misuse that I am all for a social experiment wherein we carry out our conversations without using them at all even if that means explaining what we say at length every time.

Saraswati Puja Celebrations -- An Environmental Report

With inputs from Shilpi Banerjee

Photographs by Arijit Banerjee

We celebrated Saraswati Puja in our apartment complex on Jan. 29. The festival brought a lot of positivity and joy to hearts, and hopefully contributed to a general view of learning, science and arts as something pure and pious.

The goddess and the priest

As I have been pointing out the environmental aspect of community events in our neighbourhood, I think it would be good if I apply the same scrutiny on something we organised. So, here we go:

Decoration

We mostly used paper, flowers and leaves for decoration. The drapery used as a backdrop was reusable and went back to the tent house. The organic waste goes to the central organic waste disposal of our apartment.

After the puja, we ourselves removed the decoration. We created three heaps of waste: organic, recyclable and reject (very little). What remained were mostly work of art and craft done by ourselves. We retained them.

During decoration - 1

During decoration - 2

Drawings and paper decoration

Outdoor flower decoration

Idol

The goddess idol was a clay one; no plaster of paris or plastic. The idol was painted using organic colour and accessories were stuck using organic adhesive. After Puja, we did the immersion in a drum normally used within the society for sundry construction work. The drum, though not of a very presentable appearance, was very clean and hygienic. It was orders of magnitude cleaner than most ponds and lakes. We used freshwater for immersion. After immersion, the water and the dissolved clay was used in the society garden. The non-degradable parts of the idol, e.g. the clothing, hair and crown, were extricated and retained.

Goddess Saraswati

The immersion drum (PC: Mrs. Sudeshna Banerjee)

During immersion

After immersion (PC: Mrs. Sudeshna Banerjee)

Left over hair and accessories

Prasad

Much of the morning time prasad was served in biodegradable plates. However, we eventually ran out of them and were forced to use paper (foil filmed) plates which are non-eco-friendly.

Lunch

Main course of the lunch was served in biodegradable betel leaf plates and spoons. Sweet Dahi was served in earthen pots, rosogolla was served directly on the plate.

Lunch being the most real time, populated and probably the most sensitive aspect of the festival, saw a few points of failures.

Towards the end of the queue, we ran out of plates. Eventually, we had to arrange more plates which were, unfortunately, not bio-degradable. Since all used plates ended up in the same bin, it all turned into reject waste. This was a bad failure for us.

Water was served in use-and-throw plastic bottles.

Number of people taking lunch was kept track of using lunch coupons generated out of the payment records. No paper coupons were printed. Of course, on the ground, most people having lunch were friends and acquaintances. Hence, the coupons were not used.

Waste Management

Amid her many tasks, my wife Shilpi was continually keeping an eye on the way waste was being managed on the puja venue. She ensured that all organic waste generated from the process was kept segregated from non-biodegradable waste. When we finally left the puja hall after cleaning up in the night, we had three neat heaps of waste: organic, recyclable and reject.

One failure on our part was that we couldn't ensure that the above segregation was honoured by the waste collection people when they picked it up in the morning. This happened primarily because none of us was available onsite at the time of clearing of waste.

Conclusion

Though not directly related to the environment, let me mention that the surplus fund (which was of course rather tiny at this scale) was donated to fund the education of one poor child through Akshay Patra foundation: as a tribute to the Goddess of knowledge a small deed of kindness to make knowledge accessible to one more person.

Overall, I think, we did set a good example of an eco-friendly celebration. Not so much because we didn't create any pollution at all, but because we paid attention to this aspect, and at least a few members of the team consciously worked hard to ensure that this aspect was not forgotten as unimportant. And it showed in the output.

We couldn't prevent being eco-unfriendly in some aspects. I think, we will do better in future through better planning, more explicit buy-in from the organising committee and better communication to all participants.

For celebrations of larger magnitude, the organising committee should appoint one person who keeps an eye of the environmental footprint of the entire event. Of course, such a person should be  passionate about sustainability. As much of his/her responsibility will involve making other people's work a bit harder (at least that's how many would perceive it), he/she will have to mentally sign up to earn a bit of unpopularity amidst other organising committee members and public. However, such a member's role will exceed in importance to most others'. By paying special attention to sustainability, organisers of large festivals and gatherings can make a big difference to the level of pollution that such events create.

Sustainability is going to be the key mantra of future public events. Because that's precisely where we tend to forget about the planet we live in and what we are doing to our habitat through our unsustainable lifestyle.