The essential practice of compassion

Let us not talk about hijab today Let us talk about compassionLet us ask the hard unhashtaggable questions about what compassion looks like when you create laws systems rules rights and relationships Reason and rationality have long been offered as some higher state of being But reason and rationality whatever your ideology can sometimes be a kind of veil too for all kinds of feelings Reasoning about uniforms and practices can be veils for unabashed communal persecution for burning insecurity about majoritarian power that feels it must assert itself over and overSome videos circulated after the release of the film The Kashmir Files show young men rabble rousing in the cinema worried that while they are watching movies Muslims are procreating and they should instead acquire Muslim women and procreate with them not sure what this will do for the box office but chalo whatrsquos so great about reason The film like other works before itmdashthis includes liberal onesmdashuses the idea of reality which comes with the dowry of rationality and the implication that realism is truth to create a veil inside which majoritarians may whip themselves into a quivering heap of manufactured humiliation and resentment and provide a rationale for communal hate and violence rather than create compassion for Kashmiri Pandits Compassion is an essential practice of art but not propagandaIf we could find such a language it would be easy to understand that a young woman in one kind of uniform cultural like hijab is not so different from one in another kind of uniform lsquorationalrsquo school uniform It would seem reasonable to help young women who have managed to wrest some freedom and mobility for themselves to expand that freedom rather than constrict it And not further embattle through this polarisation women within the community who do not wish to wear hijab Compassion is an essential practice of justiceIn travel guides to India there is often a section on how women from other countries should dress to avoid harassment But you donrsquot have to be a woman from another country to know all about thatmdashthat constant awareness of what you can wear without being harassed or wear but bear harassment or be dismissed not taken seriously not be given a promotion or simple respect At 24 I acquired a vividly patterned skirt John Lennon glasses and red lipstick As I walked pleased with myself alongside the man of the moment he said to me ldquoYou think you are looking very nice But yoursquore looking really loudrdquoI hadnrsquot asked In 2002 while making a film called Unlimited Girls some young women who were the first generation to go to a coed college in their Haryana town told me chilling tales about the sexual harassment they were routinely subjected to by the male students in their college But they did not want to complain because ldquothen parents will make us sit at home Theyrsquoll say you insisted on going to a coed college and now look at whatrsquos happened Do a correspondence courserdquo When I asked the boys they provided elaborate rationales of how girls dress No woman should feel too smug that the control of what Muslim women wear is not linked to the control of all women Compassion is an essential practice of solidarity and freedomParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom