I was born and brought in an ultra-conservative Hindu society in the far western part of Nepal. At the age of 17, I happened to read a booklet that brought me to the feet of Jesus Christ. When I eventually met some Christians, the thing that fascinated my young imagination was the egalitarian spirit of that small community where the higher caste and the lower caste would sit together, eat together, and live with no single care of being defiled by the other! Men and women sat together and talked with each other so freely and so comfortably as if there was no wall between them. In my childhood experience as a Hindu, I was not allowed to eat or even touch a lower caste. Even as little school children, when we came home from the school, someone would have to sprinkle clean water over us before we could enter the house. If no one was at home to do so, in that case, there would be a water jar kept outside for that particular purpose, and because there was no one to do the sprinkling, one would have to find a green leaf in the yard, dip the leaf in the water without touching the jar and then sprinkle the drops over one’s head.
Just as the lower castes were treated, so was the case of the women in my ultra conservative society. For seven days in every month, a woman would become untouchable. For four days, she would not be allowed to enter the house; she will be sleeping in the cowshed or a particular hut built away from the house for that purpose. After four days, she could come in the house but she would not be allowed to cook or do any religious activities. In fact, women had no right in any decision making process of the household or society. Men enjoyed absolute dominance over women. Particularly, the life of a young widow was a nightmare. Any man who wished to marry her can come at night and take her by force; whether the man is married or not, she absolutely had no right to protest. Whoever got to lay hands on her first; she would become his game and good riddance for the dead husband’s family.
Having come from such a background, the nondiscriminatory brotherhood of Christian community provided me a foundational truth for the validity of my faith in Christ. The biblical claim of men and women being made in the image of God was demonstrated in practice by this community; how imperfectly it might have been. After spending about a year and half with this community, I joined another church where a woman used to preach from the pulpit and later she went on to become the ordained pastor of that church! My religious and sociological worldview was experiencing a tectonic shift.
After two years of my new found freedom in Christ, I went to a Bible College in Bangalore where I witnessed a remarkable difference in the communal life of students coming from the Northeast and the rest of India. Friends from the Northeast appeared to be distinctly western-style in their fashion, language, music and even in gender equality. I was once again fascinated with what I thought was a transformed lifestyle brought about by the power of the gospel. About that time, to some extent, I was exposed to the material on the age of enlightenment in Europe. The transforming power of the gospel and the spirit of enlightenment in the western world appear to be somewhat connected to my impressionable mind at that time. It appeared, to me, as if the spirit of enlightenment had skipped mainland India and landed in the Northeast. Otherwise, there was no way for me to process the stark differences of lifestyle between the friends from the Northeast and the rest of us.
Having been happily married with a wonderful woman from the Northeast, I was so determined to set a new course for my future. Unfortunately we could not get married in the Northeast due to the terrible communal conflict of 1993 in Manipur. We had to settle for our marriage in Kathmandu, a city so foreign to me and my wife. I was born and brought up in a remote part of far-west Nepal; New Delhi was closer at home to me than Kathmandu. Our son was born in November 1993. Having been greatly influenced by the limited knowledge I had about the life of Martin Luther and the subsequent enlightenment of Europe, I asked my wife if we could name our son Martin. We agreed. The nurse cleaned-up our son, we held him up, my wife fed him and he began to sleep. I asked the nurse to provide us a cradle too. However, I was taken aback and surprised when my wife refused to put our son in the cradle. So far as I had read in English literature about raising a child, I had the impression that a child should sleep in his/her own cradle/bed. It took a couple of years before we both agreed for our son to sleep in his own bed.
Fast forward to 30 years; after a quarter of a century of wandering in many places, we find ourselves settled in Guwahati, the only gateway city to the obscure part of India. My impressionable mind of some 30 years ago had now become a bit more critical to accept the things as they appear to be. As we made our home in Guwahati, like in Kathmandu, our living room fellowship has now turned into a church. When the members began to join us, one of the things that caught my attention was the plight of women.
Back in the college days in Bangalore, I had the impression that Northeast was way ahead of the rest of India in gender equality. I had the feeling the gospel had truly liberated women of this region to a level of some equality with men. However, after four years of my life in the region has now revealed to me something for which I was not prepared for. To my utter amazement, compared to the rest of India, women seem to be far behind in getting their fair share of leadership roles in the society; be that in politics or in religion.
A development seminar on “Gender in the Northeast” was hosted by Brookings India on July 19, 2019. In her article “Assessing Gender in the North East”, Giteeka Dang provides us the materials from this panel discussion in which a sad state of women in the North East emerges.[1] The Christian majority states have insignificant number of women in political leadership; they are virtually non-existent. The same thing goes for church leadership. There seems to be no place for women in the male dominated power centers.
At home and in the family, women appear to be the most hardworking members. From kitchen to cattle sheds, from farms to factories, from raising the children to holding the jobs to earn a salary; the women seem to be bearing the burden all by themselves with little or no help from their male counterparts. In spite of their hard work in running the family, there seems to be an unwritten law in Christian majority states that demands women to be ruled by men; at home and in public sphere.
When it comes to church, women leadership is still a forbidden tree. At the most, they can teach in the Sunday school and lead women’s ministry department. But they are not allowed to hold any office in the church; be that of deacon, elder or pastor. Because of such a view about the role of women in the church, this has also impacted them in politics. Compared to Northeast, rest of India seems to be way ahead in terms of political representation of women in many centers of power and politics. This was not something I was hoping to find out. I was hoping to find out that the women of Northeast were way ahead of the rest of India in terms of gender equality. How wrong I was! Surely, the women in the Northeast have by and large adopted western fashion style, and to some extent are free to choose who they marry with. As long as they do not aim for any place in male dominated power centers, they do have the freedom to run the family as they see it fit.
Therefore, my earlier impression of Northeast being westernized or enlightened in terms of gender equality was simply a mirage because of the fashion, music and language. The arrival of Christian missions over a century ago in the Northeast seems to have done nothing much to lighten the burden of women. Rather, the missionaries brought some archaic and puritanical interpretations of some of the biblical passages that were used to justify the continuation of the subjugation of women as they had been in their pre-Christian practices. Just like in politics where female voters outnumber the male and yet get no representation in leadership; the scene is repeated in the churches. A visit to a church in any given Sunday will reveal how women outnumber the men in the church. But it is hard to find ordained women ministers in the Northeast. Not just in the case of mainline denomination where women are forbidden to speak in the church, but also in somewhat liberal and independent churches, a women pastor is an anomaly.
[1]Giteeka Dang “Assessing Gender in the North East” in https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/02/waiting-for-an-equal-world-gender-in-the-north-east/ (accessed on April 5, 2020).
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