“May you be the mother of a hundred sons”

Simone De Beauvoir, the French Feminist once wrote, “No one is born a woman. Woman is not completed reality, but rather a becoming. When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.” No where is this more apparent than in our Indian society. The plight of women in India has been a cause of concern and a focus of innumerable journals and studies. One such example is the book “May you be the mother of a hundred sons” written by Elisabeth Bumiller which I read recently.
In the book Bumillar writes about the women she encountered during her stay in India and very ingeniously comments on the evils perpetrated against women like sati, female infanticide, dowry, sex-selective abortion and forced sterilization.
Though the book suffers from some generalizations that would be obvious to an Indian eye, the author has done a pretty good job of covering many of the issues faced by women across the country. As far as possible she has refrained from drawing the same sorry conclusions about the plight of Indian women, but instead brought out the diversity.
This book has immense value as a text in mass communication as women are one half of the population of the world and hence an integral part of the masses. Their subject cannot be ignored. They play a pivotal role in the development of every society and nation. Indian women in particular play multifarious socio-economic roles both at home and outside. However, their effort has been silently appreciated but without much recognition. In such a scenario the book plays an important role by creating awareness especially about sensitive issues of tremendous importance like female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, practice of sati and dowry.
Most women themselves are unaware of the condition of women in our society. 62 years since independence and most women in our country living in villages are doubly oppressed by virtue of being poor and being born as “women”. It is high time that this issue is given its due importance. Like a bicycle can only proceed with both its tyres, similarly, a society can only progress when both men and women work in tandem and are given equal importance.
Thus, we can say that the author has done full justice to the sensitive topic taken up and this text in a breakthrough in the women’s writing about Indian society. Being a student of mass communication I would recommend this book to all students of mass communication especially women, as it will help give them a better understanding of the society in which they live and thus, help tackle issues with more sensitivity.