- Sep 22, 2013
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Muslim women are required by their customs to wear veils, so as to hide their beauty from everyone but their husbands.
Hindu brides are sometimes persecuted by the groom's family for failing to pay sufficient dowries (marriage-gift bestowed by the bride's family as a gesture of financial gratitude), and there are countless stories of bride-burnings.
Hindus and Muslims have traditionally been very antagonistic towards each other. The Mughal Empire was a colonial Muslim presence in India ousted by British rule. When Gandhi usurped the British Empire during the Indian Independence Movement, India was split between Hindus and Muslims who were still quarrelling amongst each other. Today, there is still Hindu-Muslim conflict in the politically incendiary region of Kashmir.
However, Hindus and Muslims have both faced global criticism from women's rights groups about the social and cultural treatment of women. Dowry-deaths and forced veil customs mark the Hindu and Muslim customs as very anti-Western (and hence anti-progressive in the world's eyes).
In America, marriages are usually not arranged, but in India, Hindus seek arranged marriages in many cases based on family history and dowry gifts. In Muslim countries, customs of Islam make marriages very prescribed.
Americans may view Hindu and Muslim marriages as very rigid and uncomfortable, and that is what women's rights groups from the West argue about in many cases.
You can give a broche to your American bride, but if you give a broche to your Hindu bride or Muslim bride, the gift may come with many culture-custom 'connotations' (e.g., family experience expectations).
In America, we celebrate all kinds of comic book super-heroines such as Wonder Woman (DC Comics) and Spider-Woman (Marvel Comics), and these 'avatars' symbolize 'gender-liberties.'
You rarely find such characters/avatars in Hindu and Muslim society, perhaps because men and women are treated as very different, almost as if they deserve very different things.
So on the year that America may elect its first female president (Democrat Hillary Clinton), we could consider how criticized marriage and femininity-presentation customs among Hindus and Muslims serve not only as a source of 'gender-critique' but also, potentially, as a source of common progressive political crusades for those working out Hindu-Muslim grudges.
Hindu brides are sometimes persecuted by the groom's family for failing to pay sufficient dowries (marriage-gift bestowed by the bride's family as a gesture of financial gratitude), and there are countless stories of bride-burnings.
Hindus and Muslims have traditionally been very antagonistic towards each other. The Mughal Empire was a colonial Muslim presence in India ousted by British rule. When Gandhi usurped the British Empire during the Indian Independence Movement, India was split between Hindus and Muslims who were still quarrelling amongst each other. Today, there is still Hindu-Muslim conflict in the politically incendiary region of Kashmir.
However, Hindus and Muslims have both faced global criticism from women's rights groups about the social and cultural treatment of women. Dowry-deaths and forced veil customs mark the Hindu and Muslim customs as very anti-Western (and hence anti-progressive in the world's eyes).
In America, marriages are usually not arranged, but in India, Hindus seek arranged marriages in many cases based on family history and dowry gifts. In Muslim countries, customs of Islam make marriages very prescribed.
Americans may view Hindu and Muslim marriages as very rigid and uncomfortable, and that is what women's rights groups from the West argue about in many cases.
You can give a broche to your American bride, but if you give a broche to your Hindu bride or Muslim bride, the gift may come with many culture-custom 'connotations' (e.g., family experience expectations).
In America, we celebrate all kinds of comic book super-heroines such as Wonder Woman (DC Comics) and Spider-Woman (Marvel Comics), and these 'avatars' symbolize 'gender-liberties.'
You rarely find such characters/avatars in Hindu and Muslim society, perhaps because men and women are treated as very different, almost as if they deserve very different things.
So on the year that America may elect its first female president (Democrat Hillary Clinton), we could consider how criticized marriage and femininity-presentation customs among Hindus and Muslims serve not only as a source of 'gender-critique' but also, potentially, as a source of common progressive political crusades for those working out Hindu-Muslim grudges.
