Academic conferences are intense spaces for the exchange of ideas -- but ideas don’t only arise in formal sessions. They also emerge in taxis, diners, and street corners. Often, unexpected conversations become sites of learning. Talking with the girl who serves you at a fast-food joint or the cab driver who picks you up from the Souk in Kuwait City can offer as much insight as a panel discussion.
In some instances, the person you want to talk to would initiate the discussion provided he is curious and needs some help in solving the puzzle. Sohel Mia, our cab driver, was a little puzzled trying to guess our relationships as three of us boarded his taxi from the Souk -- a public place in Kuwait City, where we had dinner -- to the hotel.
He asked me: “Of the two women seated at the back, who is your wife and who is your sister?” Sohel Mia asked me in a matter-of-fact manner. In his world, when a man is out with two women they must be related -- wife and sister are the women that a man should be seen with in public.
“Both are my sisters” I fibbed to make life less complicated. Not convinced, he asked, “why are they talking to each other in English?" Then, after my colleagues disembarked and as I was settling the fare, I explained to him that the two ladies are like my sisters but actually they are professors, one of them a professor in a German university and one in an American university. I say that not so much to impress him but to remove any misunderstandings and confusions.
Kinship, patriarchy are the modes of his orientations. If I understand his mind, it will also help me take a peep into the minds of all those who want to shoot down the reform committee reports on women in Bangladesh. For Sohel Mia, religion -- for him Islam -- must have a bearing on one’s behaviour and life.
The concept of female colleagues, professional dinners, or academic camaraderie lies outside his frame of reference. His worldview is structured by kinship, religion, and patriarchy. Understanding this lens is crucial -- not to mock or dismiss -- but to grasp the mental universe of many like him who reflexively oppose reforms, especially those concerning women’s rights.
Such a worldview explains the resistance to gender equality reforms in societies like Bangladesh. To Sohel Mia and many others, religion is not just faith -- it is a framework for conduct. Why, he wondered, was I in Kuwait rather than Saudi Arabia performing Umrah?
These are legitimate vantage points -- his and mine. He sees the world from his location as a working-class migrant in the Gulf. I, as an academic, view it through a sociological and rights-based lens. We’re both entitled to our views.
But the issue becomes ethically charged when views have real-life consequences. When public policies are shaped not by the common good but by the comfort of a cultural majority or religious orthodoxy, the stakes rise.
Gender equality, protection from marital rape, equal access to employment, etc -- these are not just ‘points of view.’ They are matters of justice, dignity, and freedom
Take the Women’s Reform Commission’s recommendations: Gender equality, protection from marital rape, equal access to employment, etc -- these are not just “points of view.” They are matters of justice, dignity, and freedom. When a woman is denied inheritance rights or subjected to polygamy without consent, it is not a clash of opinions -- it is a violation of personhood.
Rights cannot be relativized out of existence. A woman’s right is different from mine because her life experience is different -- but her right should never be less than mine.
The social contract binds citizens and the state. The state’s obligation is to uphold public interest -- not the sentiments of a powerful or numerous segment.
I was part of a webinar two weeks after the routing of the US troops and return of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2021. A participant, a university student from Kabul, asked me: “When do you think we will be able to return to university?”
At the heart of my heart I knew that it would be long before she and the young women like her would be able to return to university, but I fidgeted and said it is for the new administration to decide -- a text-book non-answer to my shame.
This is the core of the dilemma: Should a society regress simply because the crowd once cheered for a return to theocratic rule? Must we give up modernity, dignity, education, technology, just because a majority says so?
One must not confuse democracy with majoritarian rule. A simple illustration: If I ask my students whether they want a final exam or a guaranteed A grade without a final, the majority may vote for no exam. But I, as an educator, must overrule -- for the sake of learning, for the sake of standards, for the sake of the public good.
We must learn to distinguish between tolerance of personal belief and complicity in injustice. The former is a virtue. The latter is surrender.
Habibul Haque Khondker is a sociologist and columnist.
