A book by India's leading female author promises to set off a debate about the rapidly changing role of Indian women in the male-dominated society. Correspondent Michael Drudge has this report from New Delhi.
Shobha De has established herself as one of India's best-selling authors with a series of steamy novels that have drawn comparison to the work of (american) Jackie Collins.
Her latest work is a non-fiction book titled, "Surviving Men: The smart woman's guide to staying on top."
In it, Ms. De explores the difficulties women face in balancing careers and marriage in a male-dominated society where large numbers of women have only recently started working outside of the home.
Despite the serious nature of the subject, Ms. De uses humor to make her points, and she insists the book does not bash men.
In discussing her book with a group of foreign correspondents, Ms. De said believes Indian women are prepared for their modern roles, while men are trapped by history.
I believe Indian women have changed qualitatively, and are a part of the modern world, and ready for the new millennium. But the Indian male is still in the 15th or 16th century, very medieval and refusing to be shaken out of this torpor.Ms. De says Indian men yearn for sex, while Indian women crave security.
Indian men are obsessed with sex, which, i believe they are because they don't get enough of it. And Indian women are obsessed with trapping them, which is also true because our survival depends on it. And so long as we don't have economic options, it's not enough having just a mind of your own if you don't have an income to match.Ms. De says Indians have lost touch with their rich history of erotic art and literature because of enforced sexual prudery imposed during the british colonial era.
A reflection of this, she says, is the hindi film industry, which churns out hundreds of movies each year full of sexually suggestive song-and-dance numbers that must pass a censor's scrutiny.
If anybody has done the greatest damage to our portrayal of sex, it's the commercial hindi cinema, because they have turned it into something lewd and crass and vulgar and something that is so far removed from reality. They've used innuendo and a projection of sex to beat, maybe, the censor board, in a way that is distorted and gross and grotesque. And i don't think anybody connects with that as being representative of how Indians behave with one another. I certainly hope not.Ms. De is launching her book "surviving men" in the southern city of Madras on Monday. She says Madras was chosen because it is the most conservative of India's major cities, and if the book is well-received there, she predicts will be a major best seller.