A Salute to Fathers

Yes, we did it again!! A hurray for women power. Take a bow men, we can do all that you can and maybe more. Social media is replete with messages of how the women have save the day for India at Rio. There are jokes of how women have to do everything, right from fetching the grocery to getting the medals. It makes you smile and as a woman, proud, that finally women in India have come out and shown the nation what they are capable of, in spite of everything.

Something else though passed on as a joke, caught my eye. The clichéd “Behind every successful man is a woman” was jest fully being replaced by “behind every successful woman is a man.” This was mostly directed at their hard working, all sacrificing coaches. While this is wholly and emphatically true and will be totally endorsed by the players themselves, there are other unsung heroes behind the success of these girls. Namely their fathers.

Manish Sisodia, Delhi’s deputy chief minister, while announcing a reward of one crore for Sakshi Malik, the wrestling sensation, spoke of her father Sukhbir Malik, who works as a conductor with the DTC. In a communication to the transport minister, Satyinder Jain, he says, “One of our colleagues, Mr Sukhbir Malik, Sakshi’s father, while working as a conductor, created such an atmosphere for his daughter so that she could raise the honour of the nation. I propose that apart from felicitating Sakshi Malik, the government should felicitate her family, especially her father. I recommend for the promotion of Sukhbir Malik, for his contribution.”(News 18)

Speaking to the media, Mr Malik had said he was afraid to take his daughter back to his hometown for the longest time, as he was afraid of the taunts she would face. He only took her back when she had finally started gaining international recognition, because then it did not matter who said what. Underlying this statement is the intense pressure he must have faced for not adhering to the norms laid down by a depraved and conservative society, where women are viewed as the property of men. Plus belonging to the Haryana hinterland, where girls are killed even before they are born and wrestling has been the exclusive domain of men, it must have taken a lot of courage and determination to stand behind his daughter in the initial years. But he put his daughter and her ambitions before everything else. Today he must feel vindicated. The whole of Haryana is welcoming her back as their daughter. A revolution, wouldn’t you say?

Same must have been in the case of Dipa Karmarkar. When she was competing in the finals of the gymnastic event, an exemplary achievement in itself, instead of lauding her with the rest of the nation, a sick mind tweeted, “She should be ashamed of herself for wearing the type of clothes.” That is the sort of treatment and taunts these girls and their families are subjected to. In the face of such misogynistic thoughts, it takes a man of strong will to be able to ignore being targeted and continue to support his daughters. Where most of us would have thrown in the towel and told our girls to quit and get married, these parents chose to stand behind their daughters.

The bond between a father and his daughter is said to be special but these fathers have gone beyond that. They created the conditions that were required for the success of their daughters, to achieve their dreams, in spite of the society they live in. It gives us a ray of hope. Hope of more fathers like them who can be supportive of their daughters and their dreams. It gives hope that we can break out of the shackles of age old beliefs and of restrictive practices that push us into a corner.

While in a few days or maybe weeks, when the achievement of these girls become mere records and all the industrialist, actors and politicians, now vying with each other to felicitate them, go back to being their old selves making ruthless and insensitive comments on rape and women, all this thumping of the chest and calling them ‘Hamari Beti’ will be over. But the fathers will continue to support and nurture their dreams and in another four years the nation will wake up again, to sing their glories.

The nation needs to salute these fathers. They have created a spark that could rage into a fire and perhaps create a belief in the minds of other fathers to believe in their girls. So the next time a father might hesitate before he kills his daughter in the mother’s womb. The idea that girls can bring glory to your family and the nation, can bear fruit. All it needs is a change in perception. Because while we all agree we have to fight more battles than our brothers or that we have to work twice as hard to achieve success, more often than not it is our fathers who gave us our first stepping stones.

So while we bow down to these young achievers, we should also laud the effort of the people behind them. They aren’t the first of the girls to have achieved such milestones in the domain of men. There are those girls who became the first pilot or the first to join the army, or became a policewoman and now even those trying to get into the fire brigade for the first time. Women have broken through the walls that confined them, built by a society which decided what women can or cannot do. But there has been little or no change in the basic way a women is treated today. A small change in the way we think about genders and how we bring up our girls and boys will change that. We have seen that ray of hope. Let’s make it brighter till it envelopes us all.

Let us laud the efforts of these men and encourage more of them out there to give wings to their girl’s dreams. So that she can defeat every naysayer in her life, whether it is the relative who shakes their head and says, “ladki haath se gayi.” Or the nosy neighbour who tells you in all their worldly wisdom, “nothing will come of it.” Or the Bua-Mausi who demands to know when she is getting married and settling down. For let us face the truth. No matter how much we strive for equality we can only achieve it if we can take the men along as we go on this long journey. Equality can only come if both of us think alike and then perhaps we can do away with the term feminism forever. We wouldn’t need it, would we?

So for now, a respectful salute for those fathers and their daughters!!