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| KN Pandita has new dress demand | | Will Kashmiri Pandit females concede it? | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, MAR 31
KN Pandita, well-known researcher and Kashmiri Pandit activist, has warned that members of the community he himself belongs to cannot move forward if the Kashmiri Pandit womenfolk were deprived of their share in new thinking. Having decided not to make use of the beaten track, Pandita has come forward with a new message: "Our womenfolk have to break the shackles that make them the slaves of the kitchen".
Elaborating on it, KN Pandita, in his thought-provoking write-up titled 'Kashmiri Pandits: A moment of introspection' says that Kashmiri Pandit womenfolk have to implement a changed agenda of food habits of the community members. More time, Pandita insists, has to be reserved for outdoor activity, physical exertion, community life and social engagements.
"Our womenfolk", Pandita has explained, "will meet the first ray of liberation the day they say good bye to the damned sari as the comon dress". Yet another warning from Pandita: As long as Kashmiri Pandit women remain bandaged in a seven-meter-long "abnixious bundle of textile", they are tied down in fetters of slavery.
What does KN Pandita actually want? His answer: Kashmiri Pandit womenfolk's dres should be the same as is used by the Jewish women, namely, trousers and a shirt. And Pandita's sermon to the womenfolk of his uprooted community: "Keep your hands free to moe, to brandish and to fight. You need not a Dupatta. It enchains you".
Urging the Kashmiri Pandit womenfolk to throw away Dupatta into the garbage, Pandita tells them that after getting rid of this piece of unnecessary dress when they walk remember what Tagore told the Bengali women: "Look straight into the eyes of the peoplewhen you walk". That gives womenfolk power, confidence, boldnes and indivduality.
Pandita has stated that a word about the changing contours of culture "is also needed". He has made a pointed reference to loud murmur of erosion of traditional culture of Kashmiri Pandits and demonstration of despair by many members of the Kashmiri Pandit community on that count. The phenomenon, he says, has to be addressed in a realistic manner "and not just as a matter of nostalgic imperatives". His advice: "As our community has willingly or unwillingly come into interaction with wider Indian society, it is neither practicable nor sensible to create walls and quarantines to segregate our youth".
Another piece of advice from KN Pandita: What ought to be done is that each Kashmiri Pandit family should steal half an hour every week and impart broad outlines of Pandit community's culture, mythology and history to the younger generation in the home in a manner to create in them a sense of belonging to a specific cultural stream. Sustained lecturing could prove very useful.
But then if notwithstanding that effort the youth are sucked into the vortex of larger Indian lilieu, it has, says Pandita, to be accepted "as inevitable and not something to be despised or abhorred". That will cause "serious harm to the creative faculty or our youth", Pandita has cautioned.
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