Attention ‘Tamil Culture’ keepers!

The shackles that we have to shake off are different, and we can commit to unfreeing them one at a time. On my list, I would first like to be free of you.

Actor Ajith Kumar’s Nerkonda Paarvai that stars Shraddha Srinath, Abhirami Venkatachalam, Andrea Tariang, Vidya Balan, and a host of others is still raking in the money at the box office, a week after its release. While most viewers have welcomed the film on consent even with a male survivor in Ajith, many reviewers and audience (mostly men) have expressed worry about the ways in which drinking, smoking, women partying on screen will affect ‘Tamil Culture’. On the Indian Independence Day, here are a few things I would like to tell the Keepers of Tamil Culture:

• I am a cis-woman hailing from Tamil Nadu. That I think makes me ‘Tamil’ enough, but in your measure I will not make the cut — I wear pants sometimes, I stress-smoke, enjoy a drink (alcoholic), and think sex is about having fun not making family. But, take a moment to look around, preferably alone and away from the rest of your gang, there are many of me in this state, and mind you, drinking, smoking, partying, sex is not what we do full time; they are choices we make, and form parts of our whole selves.
• The very lifestyle choices that make you worry about women are the ones that men on screen and others have openly embraced. If they are unhealthy choices, we are people who make them but that should not make us bad women for making those choices. We are more than our brand of cigarettes, the number of shots we can keep in, the length of our clothes and the time we spend away from home.
• I said we are not bad women. It means that neither our basic rights should be denied to us nor ours should be violated because we are ‘bad’ in your ‘moral’ standards. No woman deserves violence, and if you will only speak up for the chaste or the dead victim, it is your morality that needs to be revisited. There is a victim, and she needs support. There is not a good or a bad victim to suit your moral grounds.
• Sexual harassment, abuse, molestation, misconduct and violence are all different, but certainly not a punishment scale proportional to skirt size. Violence is not always a stranger at a club; it is often a boss, colleague, known person, trusted relative or the husband. The choices we make are not an invitation to violence, in the same way the expensive lipstick is not bought nor worn for anyone else. And no woman, anywhere, ‘deserves it’ or ‘asks for it’ by way of being, clothing or speech.
• For every Tamil woman who became famous for wanting to save her husband, there is one who fought for herself. The stories that are not going to be buried any longer. And these are the heroines we are inspired by, the ones teaching us to fight for ourselves. 
• Tamil culture is hardly homogenous, we agree, and nor are Tamil Women. But to think of alcohol as the by-product of the modern is akin to saying that the sari is a costume of the bygone ages. It’s not true, and this is a lazy reading of class-caste positions. Allow us to contribute, describe and change with this culture.
• No culture exists in a bubble. The more people a culture influences, the more it is in return affected by the people. The ‘culture’ we harp on about has evolved, and will continue to do so. Protection of culture will not save it, and that is the history of counter-cultures, if you care. Protecting women from the changing culture will also backfire, as you may be noticing.
• We may agree that Tamil is more than the language or the land. But, it is an identity so fractured. To think there is one culture is ludicrous, so we understand that the culture you are protecting is the one of caste supremacy. Sadly, you can’t forever keep people the places you allot them, and we know what you’re actually afraid of radical ideas and inter-caste love.
• We can be defiantly Tamil, but we do realise that we are defined by our positions. The shackles that we have to shake off are different, and we can commit to unfreeing them one at a time. On my list, I would first like to be free of you.
• Give me and all Tamil women, whoever they may be and however ‘Tamil’  they may be, agency, autonomy, the right to be, the right to say no, the right for that no to be heard, and independence from the Keepers of Tamil Culture who want to run our lives.