Wrong conclusions about Indian womanhood

THE EDITOR: Thank you for space to convey my strong objections to Independent Senator Dana Seetahal’s unconvincing attempt to use dehydrated statistics, in isolation, to stigmatise and stereotype Indian womanhood at the recent UWI Seminar held on the theme of Indentureship to Entrepreneurship.

Her presentation entitled “Indian Women and Criminality” bore not even an iota of relevance to the theme of Indian entrepreneurship. I wondered how a reputable attorney, court prosecutor, law lecturer and Independent Senator could have seen it fit to inflict on us misleading generalisations on the character of Indian womanhood. Is the Senator telegraphing that the criminality she mistakenly and suddenly discovered in Indian womanhood is a manifestation of the enterprises risk-taking spirit endemic among Indian women? Independent Senator Seetahal is clearly unschooled in the subject of the frustration-intra-specific aggression of the Indo-TT personality. Out of respect for us, her predominantly captive Indo-audience, she ought to have subjected her thesis of the alleged criminality of Indian women against the concept of intra-specific aggression of which the high suicide (self-aggression) among Indians rate is a clear manifestation. This would have pre-empted her from over-indulging in imputing and deriving negative behavioural patterns and ethnic stereotyping about Indian women from limited, dry, unrepresentative crime and court statistics.

Contemporary Indian womanhood has somewhat increasingly renounced the suicide option (self-aggression) as the natural flight response to the stressors of rampant male alcoholism, domestic violence and marital infidelity and may have now chosen the fight response (crimes of passion). Senator Seetahal may not understand the concept of marriage persistence (commitment) practised by Indian women, their dependency (unemployability), the extended family culture all of which are certain to intensify the level of violence and frustration and which, from an ethnic criminality or behavioural perspective, cannot and should not be flippantly compared with other ethnic groupings in the society because the findings will lack credibility.The learned attorney should have also presented us with a sociological component in her paper using statistics relating to suicides, divorce rate and the prevalence or non-prevalence of single parent (mother) families within the Indian community to better appreciate the Indian mother’s predicament. Before making misleading conclusions on the predilection of Indian women to criminality, based on inadequate data, Independent Senator Seetahal should have researched the inhumane, uncaring lack of social services/counselling almost existent in rural communities as well as little or no access to employment in CEPEP/URP or cheap NHA Housing. The consequence is that many Indian mothers are embedded in violence or frustration — prone to alternative marriages and left to fend for themselves in a sea of neglect and indifference.

I tried in vain to convey in person some of the above to Senator Seetahal in the post-session break but she seemed to harbour an uncontrollable aversion to treating with a Dhal belly Indian. Would learned Senator Seetahal now make similar racial/ethnic stereotyping on the kidnapping menace?

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni