Listen beyond words and conversations turn revelatory. Let’s talk about a few such everyday discussions.
The exchange I am discussing revolves around patriarchy, but it is not why I am talking of it here. My concern, then as now, was the soundness of the argument in terms of its logical structure. It might sound a bit technical, which it is, but the technical aspects of it do not interfere with the everyday application of it, for we all quite competently analyze statements and ideas on a daily basis without having ever been formally trained to do it. That’s because it might take a bit of training to cogently articulate the logical problems in an argument, but it only takes a brief sprint of honest critical thinking to see the flaws.
Also, we tend to routinely misunderstand the function of an argument. Argument is primarily a device of understanding while it is very often misunderstood as a tool of debate to press — more often, force — a point. When an argument is used to “prove a point”, properly speaking, one lays bare the reasoning for arriving at a conclusion so that others could understand — and question, if the need be — the operative logical mechanism behind the conclusion with all its assumptions. So a genuine argument is always about understanding something rather than winning a debate.
That said, it’s not always that the makers of bad or false arguments are clever deceivers engaging in bad-faith sophistry. In fact, many a time, they are convinced about the soundness of their ideas and tend to religiously stick to them only because they have clung to them for so long that dumping them feels like giving up a part of their identity. That’s why some ideas are violently fought for as though heavens would fall, if those ideas were toppled from their lofty perches.
In the patriarchy exchange we are talking, the origin of patriarchy was an entirely irrelevant aspect in the context of the discussion it occurred in because we were talking about the fact of patrilineality as a basis of caste identity, which happens to be a fact. Therefore, the question of why patrilineality or patriarchy exists was extraneous to the discussion.
But when the girl brought it up, I did not summarily reject it because she could have a novel perspective. Not the case. She seemed to be trying to prosecute patriarchy for all that ails the world, and then fix the blame for patriarchy on the people of her choice. I did not exactly question her “facts”, I just repeatedly directed her attention to what logically followed from each of her contentions. For instance, if civilizational influence was the reason why most of the tribes were patriarchal, the tribes untouched by civilization should be matriarchal or non-patriarchal, which is not the case. If Mughals took patriarchy to South India (Deccan), the South Indian society should have been, by and large, non-patriarchal before the Mughals. That was not the case either.
She also invoked the Cholas in the context, and while it is true that under the Cholas, the condition and status of women was better than at many other times in Indian history, but the society was far from matriarchal. It was not exactly the golden age for women. After all, the Devadasi system flourished under the Chola empire, duly supported by the regime of the day. She claimed to have studied history and talked about the Cholas. And any talk of the status of women under the Cholas is not complete without a reference to the institutionalized subjugation of women under the Devadasi system.
She seemed to be trying to assign blame, having already concluded, without much inquiry, that patriarchy was a conscious creation of a person or a group of people motivated by the desire to dominate a section of society. It did not seem to occur to her that patriarchy might have naturally emerged from the prevalent socio-economic circumstances at different times. Maybe it was the most efficient social system to maximize human output and, by extension, the welfare of the largest number at the time.
Even the laziest application of critical thought would have exposed the flaw in her reasoning to her but she appeared more interested in slamming patriarchy (which does deserve to be slammed for so many reasons) than to understand why patriarchy really exists. If X causes Y, Y should not exist in the absence of X anywhere. And if Y is found anywhere in the absence of X, the cause of Y cannot solely be X. Nothing difficult there.
If it was one culture, one religion, one region or one people to be blamed for patriarchy, it would not be found anywhere else. But patriarchy has been around among all people and in all cultures across the world, even before civilization dawned. So good or bad, patriarchy evolved universally without an organized effort, which means a people or a culture or civilization itself cannot be blamed for it.
Furthermore, when patriarchy is touted as a problem, matriarchy is invariably served as a solution. She, too, referred to the few matriarchal societies and tribes that have existed as though matriarchy was this pot of eternal life, youth and happiness that men deliberately sidestepped to retain power over women.
Patriarchy is bad because it allows dominance of one group of people over the other. Matriarchy cannot be any better in that respect because a switch from patriarchy to matriarchy, if it ever happened, would only change the dominant class and not eliminate gender-based discrimination. So the ill would stay, only the ill-doers would change. No real change, that.
Concluded
HemRaj Singh
