Anuja Chauhan on the dawn of Indian women

Ijjat se jeene ka,” says Gangubai Kathiawadi, brothel madam and mafia queen, to whistles and applause in a new film currently breaking all records for movies top-starring a female actor at the box office. “Kisi se darne ka nai.”

This dictum—demand respect, be unafraid—pretty much sums up the emotion simmering in the hearts and minds of Indian women today. The signs are everywhere—in the Shaheen Bagh protests, where women led the way, in the Instagram reels of The Rebel Kid Apoorva and the songs of Neha Singh Rathore, in the burqa-clad girl defiantly shouting Allah-hu-Akbar at a crowd of blood-lusting bhakts, in the post-marriage film choices of Deepika Padukone, the frontline reports of Barkha Dutt, the courage of Priya Ramani, the Ramanajun prize for Mathematics for Neena Gupta, and the audacity and unapologetic ambition of Priyanka Chopra and Mamata Banerjee.

Girls growing up today have more heroes and role models than ever before. In almost every field, they can point a finger at a female hero and say, “Look, amma, look appa, that’s who I want to be. She did it, and I can, too.” With agonising slowness but undeniable inexorability, stellar examples of female achievement are starting to bloom in what used to be a pitch-dark sky, with Gangubai shining like a chand (moon) in her white sari, and dawn imminent.

Of course, the damning statistics and the savage backlash against this surge is there for all of us to read in the newspapers every day. But every day the shame shifts just a little, the awareness increases infinitesimally, the agency increases, the fear decreases and hope springs eternal in the feminine breast.

It helps that our film industries, perhaps because they no longer dare to speak up on issues of caste or religion or corruption, have embraced the cause of the uplift of middle-class Hindu housewives and their daughters with a vengeance. We have seen Dangal, Thappad, Bulbbul, Guilty, Haseen Dilruba, Rashmi Rocket, Pagglatt, Aarya, Badhai Ho/Do, even Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui. And, there is more content releasing every day. I, for one, am certainly not complaining.

Besides, working from home has made the smug ‘working’ men and women aware of how gruelling housework is, and how vital, and how it can be done equally well by people of any gender. Advertising, that faithful, grovelling mirror to all things trending, has captured that in campaigns like #SharetheLoad.

The other really exciting development is that the lifespan of women’s careers is increasing. They are remaining visible, active and relevant well into and beyond middle age. Falguni Nayar founded Nykaa at 49; daily television’s number one soap Anupama tells the story of a divorced woman, who restarts her life at 45, finding a career, a love interest and societal acceptance along the way; Sania Mirza hung up her tennis sneakers at the fairly advanced age of 35, while Mary Kom continues to go strong at 39; Seema Anand preaches and practises the unapologetic pursuit of sexual pleasure at 58; Neena Gupta, Madhuri Dixit, Pooja Bhatt and Raveena Tandon are all back at work, their reappearance on our screens as much a message as the content they are spearheading.

Going forward, both as a democracy and as a society, we need to emphasise the non-negotiability of being a feminist. Uplifting humanity cannot happen if half of humanity gets left behind. Education, nutrition, security and dignity need to be guaranteed to all. Later marriages, longer careers, younger husbands for older wives, shared chores and equal pay for equal work need to be normalised, while sexism and ageism need to be called out, even if it means offending every uncle ji and aunty ji on your family WhatsApp groups.

Ijjat se jeene ka, darne ka nai, needs to make the transition from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s dreamverse into our lives. It is the only way our timorously twinkling night sky will transform into a blazing dawn.

Chauhan is a bestselling author.