Touch him, and you will find he is all gone inside
Just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
Under a smooth skin and upright appearance
Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
Rather nasty—
How beastly the bourgeois is!
– D. H. Lawrence, "How beastly the bourgeois is!"
Muslims and Sikhs are ready to die to defend the honour of their women. For the Jains, every living being is sacred. Hindus claim that they worship their women as Mother Goddess. The presiding deity of Dushhera celebrated last month is Durga, a power-personified woman. Laxmi, yet another woman of substance, is worshipped during Deepawali as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Then, why is that the crime against women is on the upswing in these very societies? What kind of social order is it that makes its mothers go through the harrowing torment of female foeticide?
Perhaps the explanation lies outside the realm of culture. Questions are social, but answers have to be searched elsewhere too. Perhaps it is the rootless nature of the British model of bourgeoisie in South Asian societies that make it as brutal as it has become? Even if to refute such a possibility, more serious intellectual attempts are necessary to explore the hypothesis that the de-politicisation of the middle-class is responsible for most of the ills that are besting this region and its mass of population.