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THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
revenge; don't say 'I am a toy, a breeding machine'; don't try to send men to the kitchen. Yours is the greatest profession in the world, in which nobody can compete with you. It is no use trying to play a thing you are not. Don't enter the arena of the struggle for existence which belongs to man."
This paternalism means denial of economic freedom to women. You cook for me, bear children to inherit my property, and I shall protect you. Of course, who does not take care of the means of production? As regards the struggle for existence, no amount of benevolent, though interested, paternalism can keep women out of the fray. Only the fortunate few can keep their women in idleness. The great majority are caught in the vortex. They are not pet idols, but chattels, Desai tried to rationalise his doctrine of patriarchal servitude with the following argument: "They are different by nature. You cannot alter the creation of nature. A man will remain a man; and so is the case of women." If there is any woman who wanted to have a physical transformation, that is a matter of Desai's persɔnal knowledge. The question of sex equality docs not involve such obvious absurditics. But it is a different proposition to sanction social inequality on the pretext of a difference of physical structure. Women want equality as human beings. We are told ad nauseam that Hindu
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