Calicut: The 42nd Annual Conference of Ethological Society of India (ESI) was held at the University of Calicut. In the Presidential Address by Dr S Faizi, President of ESI spoke about the dangers the modern world faces as water becomes a scarce resource.
 
During the seminar on animal behaviour, biodiversity and human future, he said that their challenge as behavioural scientists was to shed anthropocentric and acquired Eurocentric views when they look at other species and read them objectively.
 
“We need to think beyond the human barriers, reform our assumptions, methodologies and protocols so that we make new strides in understanding the complex world of animal behaviour, and communicate our findings in a way that would help our society make civilizational course corrections. Just so that our own species has a longer lifespan than what otherwise appears,” he said.
 
 “How do we avert this impending disaster? The animal world offers the answer. They do not conduct wars as an enterprise and devote resources for that, they address disputes if any with displays, retreats, conciliation and such. They don’t amass resources to create capital for profit but leave enough for others. They don’t rape as humans do, nor do they seek the mate with money and power, but through splendid courtship displays. They haven’t created religions and castes as a rule to divide the members of the same species. They respect the rhythms of nature, whether circadian or circannual, unlike our species that breach these rhythms,” he said.
 
Full text of the Presidential address by Dr S Faizi:
 
Honourable Vice Chancellor, distinguished speakers on the dais, respected members of the faculty, dear delegates and my dear young friends,
 
The Ethological Society of India is happy to have its 42nd Annual Conference being held at the University of Calicut, where a previous ESI Annual Conference was held in 1982. This university is an important repository of knowledge about biodiversity, and Malabar’s rich biodiversity has attracted both global traders and colonial armies for centuries. A sack of Malabar’s pepper was the most prized dowry in western Europe in the 18th century.
 
This conference is held immediately after the conclusion of the 14th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at Egypt’s Sharm Al Shaikh where important deliberations were held on the strategies for biodiversity conservation beyond the year 2020, and the proceedings of this seminar could form an input into the making of the post-2020 Strategic Plan of the Convention.
 
We face a biodiversity crisis with the irreversible loss of a large number of species due to the industrial revolution of a little over a century, that is but a part of the civilizational crisis that we face. Drinking water becoming a scarce resource in most parts of the world, the spectre of climate change causing deluges like the one suffered by Kerala in August, sea level rise, crop failures and new diseases, and the progressively declining inclusive physiological fitness of humans precipitate this civilizational crisis. And this crisis will mark its tipping point in much less than a century when the oil reserves of the world, upon which our modern civilization is built, will go dry.
 
How do we avert this impending disaster? The animal world offers the answer. They do not conduct wars as an enterprise and devote resources for that, they address disputes if any with displays, retreats, conciliation and such. They don’t amass resources to create capital for profit but leave enough for others. They don’t rape as humans do, nor do they seek the mate with money and power, but through splendid courtship displays. They haven’t created religions and castes as a rule to divide the members of the same species. They respect the rhythms of nature, whether circadian or circannual, unlike our species that breach these rhythms.
 
The natural world offers us insights into how we should reform ourselves as a species in order to ensure the long-term continuity of our species. Shedding our prejudiced anthropocentric views of other species is the first step to do this. And these prejudices have their origin in the Eurocentric worldview of the western science of the 19th century where every ‘other’, whether humans or animals, is treated with contempt. Let us not forget that the great biologist of all times, Charles Darwin, uses the term ‘savage nations’ repeatedly to refer to countries outside Europe in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species – the book that has gifted us the theory of evolution that has stood the test of time. I see this very much in the tradition of the 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri who termed forests as infernal.
 
E O Wilson is a great sociobiologist who has unravelled the mystery of ant societies but his views on human population in the global South does not address the population density factor nor the massive difference in the rate of resource consumption between the northern and southern countries and hence are heavily flawed.
 
Our challenge as behavioural scientists is to shed anthropocentric and acquired Eurocentric views when we look at other species and read them objectively. We need to think beyond the human barriers, reform our assumptions, methodologies and protocols so that we make new strides in understanding the complex world of animal behaviour, and communicate our findings in a way that would help our society make civilizational course corrections. Just so that our own species has a longer lifespan than what otherwise appears.
 
I thank the Vice Chancellor for supporting the hosting of this conference and the Department of Zoology for their hard work to make this happen. We have a very large number of excellent papers from across the country scheduled for presentation and I, like all of you, look forward to a very productive scientific discourse in these three days.

Thank you very much.
 
Dr S Faizi
President
Ethological Society of India.
 

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"Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, but hide not the unbeautiful.
If you are seeking safety and freedom in your garments, you will find a harness and a chain."
-Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet.

But the editors of some family and women’s magazines in Kerala are convinced that clothes are all about morality, freedom and empowerment.

"Your body is not a mass of flesh the beastly-eyed men can watch with lust.Nor a showpiece to attract the men other than your husband. So, wear a purdah while going on the streets," the editorial of the Aaraamam women’s magazine exhorts the Muslim women. "Purdah is a modern dress for moral women," it concludes.

Aaraamam, owned by the Girls Islamic Organisation affiliated to the Kerala chapter of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, is published with the editorial support of the Malayalam daily Madhyamam. Like Aaraamam, there are more than 20 such publications, owned by religious groups, which mainly target a female audience.

According to a recent survey conducted by the University of Calicut, 10 such women’s/ family magazines carried 143 reports/features, 23 of them on covers, to promote the purdah after 1992. Aaraamam tops the list with 23 pro-purdah features to its credit. Pudava, a monthly controlled by the Mujahid Girls Movement carried 19 articles while Poonkavanam and Sunni Afkar, owned by two orthodox sects of Sunni Muslims published 10 each.

Two relative newcomers, Mahila Chandrika of the Chandrika group, owned by the Indian Union Muslim League and Thejas, the fortnightly brought out by the extremist National Development Front (NDF), carried three purdah features each over the last three years, the survey reveals. When Sunni Afkar brought out a women’s special annual issue last year, the topic was confined to the clothing of Muslim women. Thirteen out of 18 by-lined articles in the issue were on purdah.

The survey also revealed that the number of Muslim women who were purdah in the five districts of the Malabar region increased from 3.5 per cent in 1990 to 32.5 per cent in 2000. The northernmost and the most backward Kasargode district, where the community-oriented family magazines have the largest readership, tops in the graph.

Purdah House, started 10 years ago in SM Street, Kozhikode’s commercial hub, set the wave in motion. "The sales, though very lack-lustre initially, improved. Gradually we decided to come out with designer-wear burqas," says Rasool Gafoor, a former partner of Purdah House. Gafoor, who today owns the Crescent Group of Companies, manufactures these garments under the brand name Hoorulyn.

Apart from Purdah House, Hoorulyn sells at a number of outlets all over the state and in neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Crescent has its clientele abroad, too. Last year, nearly 15 per cent of its Rs. 5 crore turnover came from exports to the Gulf. Now, more than 20 companies manufacture burqas in Kerala. And all of them get their quota of feature support from these magazines, which had a total circulation of five lakh at the last count.

Two years ago, India Today (Malayalam) on its cover profiled some budding Muslim businesswomen who dared the clergy, preferring the common dress code in public. Losing no time, the family magazines jumped in with replies and rejoinders. Aaraamam even featured a counter-story on its cover, detailing the lives of Muslim women who do small businesses but still observe purdah. Even the secular credentials of India Today and the correspondent who wrote the story were questioned.

Madhyamam, which has emerged as the third largest newspaper in the state with six editions including one from the Gulf, organised two debates on the promotion of purdah, and published more than 50 letters to the editor in its columns defending the spread of the Arabian dress code.

"The editorial support and moral patronage from Muslim publications, especially the Madhyamam group, were of immense help in spreading the message of purdah. Middle class Muslim women, our consumers and their readers form a common target," says Rasool Gafoor, of the Hoorulyn.

In his earlier advertisements, Gafoor had used newspaper pictures of purdah-clad Iranian women leading marches on the streets of Tehran. Women in purdah, driving cars and operating computers, are some of the images the publications project.

Until a few years ago, only the very orthodox Sunni women wore the purdah in Kerala. Its newfound popularity is due partly to the realisation that it is more convenient than other attire. "Many find slipping into a burqa much simpler than the elaborate ritual of draping a sari. Cost is another factor. But the predominant factor is the editorial support given by the women publications and the patronage of community organizations" says MN Karassery, noted writer and progressive critic on Muslim women’s issues.

Among Muslims, people like Karassery interpret the purdah-craze as a deliberate attempt on the part of fundamentalists to divest Muslim women of all progress.

The conversion of the famous writer and poetess Kamala Das alias Madhavi Kutty to Islam three years ago triggered another boom in the burqa market, as publications devoted dozens of features on the celebrity in purdah. It was an almost warlike campaign to attract more and more buyers for new and newer brands of burqas. A number of shops named after ‘Surayya’ sprung up in several towns of Malabar after the famous author embraced Islam. In return, these publications gained a sizeable volume of advertisement support from the burqa makers.

The only way to reach Muslim women is to advertise in these family magazines. "Their editorial support garnered credibility for our ads," says Rasool Gafoor, who spent more than Rs. 25 lakh on advertising last year.

Even mainstream family magazines like Vanitha of Malayala Manorama and Grihalakshmi of the Mathrubhumi group, chipped in by propagating a ‘nice-girls-wear-burqa’ line.

In Kerala, particularly in the Malabar area, purdah is a recent phenomenon. A decade or so earlier, a woman in purdah was a rare sight on the streets of Malabar. Now they can be spotted everywhere – in colleges, markets and super bazaars. Observers are unable to pinpoint one single factor responsible for the rapid spread of the purdah in such a short time. They attribute it to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the subsequent tendency of community members to become introverted, focussing on a revival of Islam. The high visibility of the RSS-backed revival of Hindu customs and rituals has also had its impact on Muslims.

As more and more women come under the spell of the purdah, the progressive among them view it in a different light. To them the cloak conceals a religious chauvinism that spells danger to Muslim womanhood. "Clerics and orthodox organisations want Muslim women to be confined to their traditional roles in the kitchen and bedroom. The purdah provides an effective weapon to restrict their progress," says VP Suhara, president of Nissah, the Progressive Muslim Women’s Forum. "These publications are run by the same outfits," she adds. 

This article is a part of series on ‘Women and Media’ under the Prem Bhatia Memorial Scholarship 2002-03.

Archived from Communalism Combat, January 2003. Year 9  No, 83, Investigation
 

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