India, Dec. 20 -- The morning begins in a house where everything is already decided by the past. The daughter is told to speak softly, dress "modestly", and remember that a woman's honour lies in obedience. The son is served first because "that's how it has always been." The maid uses the back door because the front is "not for her kind." A neighbour's illness is dismissed as fate, a child's curiosity as an omen. If someone disputes these practices, an elder will quote a verse from a scripture they have never read and insist that this is the culture and tradition. Discrimination turns into discipline, casteism becomes order, superstition becomes faith, and fatalism becomes wisdom, mandated by texts they neither understand nor care to.
The ...