(cross-posted on www.countermedia.in)

Shamshad Hussain, J. Devika

The death threats received by a young woman student of engineering, Rayana R Khazi, a native of Cherkalam in Kasaragod, over a period of the past ten months, have been in the news in Kerala recently. The threats which were issued over the phone, on the streets, and by letters, have demanded just one thing: Rayana should comply with ‘Islamic dress-norms’; she should don the purdah. She has received four threatening letters. Of these, three issue death-threats, outright. The fourth is in the form of a warning that offers lengthy advice. One of these says: you have not heeded many warnings issued. We, Muslim brethren, will now decide your fate. This letter, which begins and ends in the name of Allah, is unsigned.

A few clues seem to be deliberately strewn in the text, but there is little other evidence that would pin the responsibility on to any particular source. One of the callers threatened her – “we cut off the hand which did wrong”. The allusion is of course to the recent violent incident in which members of the Popular Front have been accused. You are committing wrong with your head, continues the caller. It is important however to see that no religious organization has come forward to justify these threats. In fact, many have offered support to the aggrieved woman.

It seems clear that the threats are from not so much the much-maligned religious organizations, as individuals of the same locality as her. But beyond the question of the origin of these threats, the fact that she has been unable to resume normal life looms large. The family has had to shift from Cherkalam to Vidyanagar. Rayana, who used to hang around town casually (a daring feat for most young women, except those of the upper-most classes, in Kerala), does not stir out even on specific chores. This young woman had appeared for the civil services exams last year, but she failed to clear the interview. She had passed the prelims this year and had been preparing for the next. She has decided not to appear for the next exam scheduled in October. Who is responsible for restoring normalcy in her life? Does the police investigation have to be so slow simply because the threatening phone-calls and letters were anonymous? On her writ petition requesting protection, the High Court of Kerala has assigned two policemen to keep vigil near her house. This alone cannot restore her normal life. The state has a responsibility to arrest the culprits soonest.

But does the question of violation end there? Beyond the death threats, there is question of the dress-code. Who is to decide what clothes a young woman should wear? This is a question in which the powerful in different periods of time have always sort to intervene. In the period of the so-called ‘Malayalee Renaissance’ of the early 19th century in which the contours of colonial modernity were shaped in Malayalee society, different community leaderships, which were undoubtedly male, sought to control the bodies of women in those communities, laying down the rules of ‘decent dressing’ for their female members. Irrespective of the specific historical period, when communities are re-formed, the burden of bearing the signs of the community fall disproportionately on its women. This is evident from the historical experience of Malayalee society itself: whether it was the Nambutiri brahmins, or the Ezhavas, or the Muslims, the task of re-forming women, and dressing was a prominent issue there, has been assigned to the male re-former. The present issue involves both the constant pressure on the young woman to conform to norms of dressing found desirable by certain elements claiming to represent community interest, and a threat to life — we feel that both kinds of violation call for  condemnation.

In other words, even without the death-threat, intense pressure on women to conform to dress-codes is serious enough. This is poorly perceived by not only the media, the religious and other organizations that have taken her side – but more dangerously, even the police. Rayana has been advised by many — including the members of religious organizations who visited her to offer support and a functionary of the secular state, the police officer — that it may be better for her to conform in the long run or the short run. These individuals of course do not endorse the death-threat; they assume the posture of Reformer-Man, that familiar figure in the history of Malayalee social reform, who claimed to possess the knowledge and the authority to guide women towards the right path . Most voices have focused on the threats and largely read it as a manifestation of ‘Muslim fundamentalism’. While the threats have indeed been issued in the name of Islam, it is important to recognize that this violation is not granted much seriousness precisely because it draws heavily upon the existing norms regulating female dressing in Kerala’s secular public.

Therefore it is vital for us to see that ‘decent dressing’ of women is an issue in Kerala relevant even outside immediate concerns of re-forming communities. There are rules stronger than steel even if they remain largely unwritten, that regulate the spaces in which women may appear and how they should dress, in the secular public. Despite legal sanction to wear clothes of their choice, a great many schools and colleges in Kerala insist that teachers should wear only the saree, claiming that it alone conveys female decency. Decency overrules all other considerations, even those of comfort, health and hygiene. There is the silent demand that sleeves of women’s clothing be long, preferably longer, necks be higher, and length of the garment fall below the knee, preferably the ankle — within the secular public as well. The ‘Nightie Revolution’ of the 1980s in Kerala, which is just a little short of purdah, established this widely. That is, women (of all communities) now wear this long loose gown which falls to their ankles and goes up to their necks, even to local shops, throwing a towel over their shoulders to ensure additional modesty! There are colleges in Kerala where students’ organizations, and not necessarily religious ones, dominated by male students, have issued orders that girl students cannot wear sleeveless clothes or jeans. Such control by college managements is even more common and easily accepted as normal! As women move out of homes into workplaces and education, they seek more flexible dressing options. That is, they do not cling on to established norms of decent dressing, nor do they completely abandon them. They assert their ability to set their own norms without recourse to either of these extremes – and it is the possibility of such assertion that is thwarted when patriarchal rules are enforced through all these institutions, religious and secular. It is a mistake to think that male control over dress always and solely involves encouraging women to expose themselves. Rather, it lies in forcing women to comply with either of these extremes, both of which dismiss women’s agency.

Such violation is not simply a restriction of women’s dressing choices – it is clearly control over women’s social space. To claim that women should enter secular-public or religious-community space only if they are dressed according to the norms of decency and honor set up by men – through processes which have completely excluded women — is to consign them to the domestic and the private. It is this notion of the rightness of patriarchal control over female bodies that is shared by both religious and secular spaces that works to downplay the seriousness of the issue that this young woman is trying to raise.

Many sections of the Muslim community today try to uphold the ideal of global Islam, and given that such adherence is also a mark of upward cultural mobility in many areas, young women are now frequently under pressure from even their families to conform to dress-codes projected as given in it. But all Muslim women do not choose to adopt such norms – the purdah is not worn by all Muslim women in Kerala. Why is Rayana alone being targeted? Initially, one felt that in the specific situation in Kasaragod, the purdah may be more common than elsewhere. However, we did see a large number of women in salwar-suits and duppatas on the streets.

A clue may be found in one of the letters Rayana received: I understand that you are vain that you are educated and knowledgeable, it said. The intolerance towards the educated, confident, articulate woman runs through this text – her unveiled brow appears to be just a pretext. Besides, Rayana appeared to us as a young person well-versed in the tenets and practices of Islam and exceptionally capable of arguing her case rationally. Her determination to remain unbowed is also very evident. It appears that the threats reveal more the insecurity of the senior patriarchs of the local community at the sight of an articulate and questioning young woman, confident of her freedom and knowledge. The signed letter of warning was written by such a person who testified to the police that he made no threat and was on the contrary offering her ‘advice’ – in other words, merely bearing the ‘Re-former Man’s burden, so entirely acceptable in the history of community reformism in Kerala!

There is no doubt, however, that this incident is likely to be read as evidence for growing ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ and thus will only accentuate the present ideological climate of Islamophobia. Organizations which have supported Rayana, which are also aware of the need to mitigate the current atmosphere of Islam-baiting, ought to demand speedier investigation by the police so that the culprits are brought to book soonest, and their motives are made clear. And the task ahead for all of us, perhaps, is to initiate informed debates on gendered norms of decency, against patriarchal controls over women’s bodies, in ways that straddle religious and secular spaces in contemporary Kerala.