There
are many things of interest in the article in The Economist entitled High
office, low church (April 13, 2013) centered on the late British Prime
Minster Mrs. Margaret Thatcher.
Oops
… I made a mistake. Describing the Iron Lady, the article says, “In religion,
as in so much else, Mrs (later Lady) Thatcher was a bundle of paradoxes.” I
believe the newspaper is giving itself the hint that it may have been better to
have referred to her as Lady Thatcher. Or, it could be that it was telling the
readers that the lady, when alive, should have been addressed as Lady, face to
face.
Going
down a few lines, you come across this: “’I don’t pretend to understand all the
complex parts of Christian theology,’ Mr (later Sir John) Major once said,
reassuringly.” Here we see Mr. Major metamorphosing into Sir John. Both “Sir”
and “Lady” are gender specific titles, we must note.
I
have one question. Why is it not Lady Margaret, to correspond one to one with Sir
John, title to title, given name to given name? These crazy Brits.
But,
are we Indians equally crazy? I have a feeling we are. Look at Padma Shri. It is sharply gender
specific. Then, should lady recipients of the honor not be given Padma Shrimati? If logic rules, yes,
they must be given Padma Shrimati and
not Padma Shri. Going down this line
of thinking, I do not know if Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, or Bharat Ratna
is gender specific. But, assuming they are, we must have Padma Bhushani, Padma
Vibhushani, and Bharat Ratni!
Go
to the sports awards – any suggestions for Khel
Ratna, or Arjun Award?
Raghuram
Ekambaram
9 comments:
Dear Raghuram Sb,
Is Padma Sree gender specific? I doubt. Don’t we have female names such as Vani Sree, Raja Sree and Rathna Sree, Karuna Sree?
Thanks,
DMR Sekhar
That is a different way of looking at it, of course, DMRS! But, it gets you into the obverse side of the problem! The names you listed out have a preceding feminine adjective, and if you take that logic to Padma Shri ...?
This was a fun post and not meant for bashing our heads :)
RE
Shree was a general way of addressing..the earlier generation would always start a letter as" shree sampathkumar avarkalukku....etc"
yes... for women it was shreemthi...
so it is clear that Indians are equally culpable..
Ratna goes either way. Mostly feminine .Bharat ratna - The jewel/Pearl (?) of India could be Kohinoor ? Must be some idea of Nehru et al of young India to
indianize the English titles.
Agreed Pala, but India is no longer that young! Can we change the titles, make it explicitly gender-neutral? As I said earlier, this was just a fun thought to be thrown around.
RE
Thanks DS Sir. Dr. Mehra asked me, in response to the post, how to call the president of India who happens to be a female (we just had one).
That was the precise tone of this post!
RE
Extreme grammatical correctness, Raghu. :).Thankfully these suffixes to Padma awards are gender neutral.
To extend your fun thought,if you made a woman recipient Padma-Shrimati,the "Ms" prefix die-hard feminists will be after your blood. In Hindi, "Shrimati" implies that the woman is married...hahahha.An unmarried woman is referred as either "Kumari" or "Sushri".
Aditi, thanks for taking the post in its spirit! Now, why can't we have such gender and marital status specific titles/honours etc :) Let them proliferate. Then, if a Padma Kumari/Sushri gets married she should be asked to reflect the change in her honor, after taking due permission from a host of Assistant Secretaries after providing three duly certified documents validating this request!
RE
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