Daily Times

The status of women has always been a conflicted issue in Pakistan. One of the reasons there is no end to it, is that men have made it their business to classify and define womanhood for women. In fact, different mindsets, with varying points of view have their own theories about the ‘status of women’ with respect to certain popular keywords such as Islam, Household, Workplace, Society, Purdah, Four-Walls, Public Space etc. Some scholars have argued; the issue of women’s status, has been ‘created’ through a widespread social narrative peppered with the rigid paradigms upheld by a vaguely defined pseudo-religious ideology. Among the very few masculine voices with a raised tenor for the women’s cause in Pakistan is one of Waris Mir, a teacher, writer and intellectual, columnist for national dailies from 1967 until 1987.

“We believed once Pakistan would come into being, the Muslims of this country could get an environment where they could rid themselves of orthodoxy and backwardness for good, and look ahead towards a future laden with intellectual communication, enlightened discussions and freethinking,” Prof Waris Mir once wrote in one of his columns, now a compilation in book form, titled Kya Aurat Adhi Hai? (Is Woman Half a Human?). “Tragically, as soon as this country came into being, the political and administrative setup fell into chaos due to internal fissures in the system and resultantly, fundamentalist forces paved their way up to the throne of the state,” Waris Mir wrote in a newspaper column in the 1970s.

Waris Mir, along with Habib Jalib, was among those who took to the roads to protest against the Hudood Ordinance and was beaten up by the police for a peaceful protest. That was the trigger which made Mir write extensively in favour of a breathable atmosphere for women in the Pakistani society, which was otherwise bent upon stifling a very vibrant and useful part of the population

Speaking about womanhood, or supporting the feminist cause, during the martial law era of General ZiaulHaq, was a feat in itself. That was a bleak period in Pakistan’s history of the written word, when the Hudood Ordinance had been approved of, the protesting women of the Women Action forum had been brutally baton charged, when women were called names for wearing makeup and entering the National Assembly as elected representatives, school and college girls could not play sports, and women were encouraged (read, forced) to accept the concept of the chador and the four walls – chaadar aur chaardiwari.

Waris Mir, along with Habib Jalib, was among those who took to the roads to protest against the Hudood Ordinance and was beaten up by the police for a peaceful protest. That was the trigger which made Mir write extensively in favour of a breathable atmosphere for women in the Pakistani society, which was otherwise bent upon stifling a very vibrant and useful part of the population.

“Man and woman are not supposed to be daggers drawn against each other. Both of them present two sides of the same picture… In reality, by creating a rift between both the genders no social structure can sustain for a longer period of time… The present requirement is to make the men accept and understand the issues related to women in an unprejudiced manner. Similarly, women must be given confidence and awareness to work as responsible members of the society.”

Waris Mir fell out of favour with the rightist writers who insisted upon the theory of BehishtiZewar by Ashraf Ali Thanvi – Waris Mir quotes excerpts from the ten-volume book – “If a husband orders his wife to pick up a rock from one mountain and take to the other, and from there to another, she must comply. If the husband demands for anything at an inappropriate time, she must comply. She shouldn’t read any book except Quran and Sunnah, nor go to school, nor go visit her relatives. It is her job to look beautiful for him and if she doesn’t take care of her looks, it is rightful for the husband to hit her…If the husband is seeing another woman, she can request him to stop doing so, in private but not protest about it. This shall ensure a high reward in the afterlife and lots of praise from family and neighbours in this world,” the incongruent theory goes on and on, until Waris Mir flexes his intellectual muscles, and quotes Qasim Amin, an Egyptian scholar, who believed, the status of women has already been defined by the Quran and that is of partners with men. “The reason women are suffering from undue prejudice in Muslim countries is not to be blamed upon the religion but on the cultural setup of those countries.” Mir writes, “when Qasim Ameen wrote this book which encouraged Muslim countries to have their women educated and made to feel responsible for the development of a better culture, thirty or more books and journals were written to shun Qasim Amin and his theory. However, with the passage of time, things started to change, and the literacy rate for women in Egypt started to grow.”

Waris Mir, a true champion of the feminist cause, was not against the concept of purdah, debating the fact that if a woman desires to opt for purdah, she needs no one’s permission or the law for it.

to be continued

The writer is a freelancer