Women's health is not a niche issue - it impacts everyone in some way. That is why a collective effort to improve awareness and understanding of menstrual hygiene is key to closing the gender health gap.
Shabana AzmiRead
My being Muslim is only one part of my identity. But particularly in India and the world over, a concerted effort is being made to diminish all other aspects of identity and only take your religious identity as who you are.
Interpretation
Identity is multi-faceted, and one's religion is just one part of it.
In this quote, Shabana Azmi emphasizes the complexity of identity, arguing that being Muslim is just one aspect among many. She critiques the societal trend, especially in India and globally, that seeks to reduce people's identities solely to their religious affiliations, thus neglecting the richness and diversity of individual experiences and traits.
In practice
During a panel discussion on cultural identity.
Women's health is not a niche issue - it impacts everyone in some way. That is why a collective effort to improve awareness and understanding of menstrual hygiene is key to closing the gender health gap.
I grew up in a family that believed that art should be used as an instrument for social change.
We never had money but it was never a problem. The spirit of comradeship, the commitment to gender equality, social justice and a celebration of pluralism and India's composite culture provided the glue that kept us joyous and closely bonded.
It is accepted the world over that women are an essential part of what makes a society successful, and only through supporting and empowering women can a country truly be strong.
It seems kosher and OK to treat women as objects because the business of cinema is about images and when you have fragmented images of a woman's bosom and her swiveling hip and her twisting navel, it robs the woman of all autonomy and subjects her to the male gaze.
India is a country that lives in several centuries simultaneously, and her people at any given time and place encapsulate all the contradictions that come from being a multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual society.
Trees bear fruits only to be eaten by others; the fields grown grains, but they are consumed by the world. Cows give milk, but she doesn't drink it herself - that is left to others. Clouds send rain only to quench the parched earth. In such giving, there is little space for selfishness.
But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you.
Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.
The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist.
i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.
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