The burden of straddling two worlds

V.M. Gokuldas
ON turning 18 last year, she bid adieu to her childhood and her anonymity and has not looked back since. On the 15th of this month, the whole of India seemed to celebrate her birthday.When she faced Serena Williams in a third-round match of the 2005 Australian Open, Serena freely confessed she knew nothing about her opponent.

But by the time the hour-long match was over, the Indian’s whiplash strokes and movie-star poise ensured that Serena and a global audience knew just who Sania Mirza was.

During the year, with a carefree mix of ambition and aggression, Sania moved up from 206 in the rankings to 31 with a tour title at home, a final at Forest Hills, New York and a fourth round appearance at the US Open. This girl from Hyderabad is going places.

Indians were hockey champions long ago. There was some wrestling and a bit of athletics, but nothing for a billion-plus people. Only stray individual performances like shooting, which won silver at the Athens Olympics. The country otherwise lives cricket. Millions are invested and multiplied. For this, matches, it is alleged, are fixed.

But tennis has remained clean, partly because there is less money involved than cricket. Sania’s advent threatens to make tennis glamorous and, maybe, profitable.

As an attractive teenager who plays with abandon and carries herself with unmistakable confidence, she is a veritable mix of symbols. She wears short skirts and is a devout Muslim. She is aware of her sexual power, but does not use it overtly. She plays tennis with savage ferocity on court without losing an air of innocent playfulness off it.

The key to Sania’s appeal lies in the effortlessness with which so many facets coalesce; and yet she goes beyond the pale of definition by any one of them.

The nose ring that she sports sets her apart from other tennis players, and other athletes across the world. It is both an assertion of ethnic Indian identity and a fashion statement.

Her wardrobe includes T-shirts with messages that provoke, tease and challenge our notions of who she is and what she represents, says top Indian adman Santosh Desai. They communicate a certain knowing innocence that allows Sania to retain her individuality.

Sania seems a wholesome product of a well-knit educated Muslim family. She has, so far, retained an image that is sporty and glamorous, while constantly climbing up the ratings with her on-court performances.

Sania is a product of the modern media, her superb talent notwithstanding. She belongs to a generation that instinctively understands how images are distributed and consumed by the masses. Her tennis attire makes a compelling visual across the world. Sania accepts this without excessive defensiveness or coyness.

But straddling two worlds has not been easy. The Muslim ulama publicly demanded that she dress "modestly". Last week, she tersely told an international audience: "What I do and what I wear is nobody else’s business."

Retaliation from the conservatives came a day later. Her effigies and posters were burnt, forcing her to tender an apology and refute an alleged remark on what she thought of pre-marital sex. "It is the worst crime in Islam," she clarified.

This shows that she is modern outside but conventional inside, like most successful women of any era claim to be. In Sania’s case, modernity and tradition are both integral — she is simultaneously more "Indian" and more "modern".

She is the new archetype. Of upper middle class family, hers is not a rags-to-riches story seeking popularity. She is not a loser-turned-winner seeking accolades. She is a winner all the way. Hers is a positive story all along.

In sum, Sania is a celebration of a modern girl, who happens to be a Muslim, for the new-century India. There is a positivity about her that everyone wants to be part of. Her be-yourself-and-go-for-it message is an attitude many young Indians are waking up to.

Great. But she is carrying far too many labels, each carrying a heavy responsibility. It would be naive to look at India, Indian womanhood, Indian Muslims or even Indian Muslim women solely through Sania’s image. The fact is that unlike Sania, all the rest are ill-educated and suffer from want.

Happily, there is constant questioning. Professor Zoya Hasan of Jawahralal Nehru University and Ritu Menon have edited a volume titled In A Minority — Essays On The Muslim Women In India, and an in-depth study in their latest book, Unequal Citizens: A Study Of Muslim Women.

The very title speaks volumes. Perhaps, it’s the first detailed survey based on 10,000 households in 40 districts spread across 12 states. It concludes that the state of the Muslim women is dismal. As Hasan puts it: "Religion does not influence their status significantly, but poverty does. Poor socio-economic condition is not a feature exclusive to Muslim women, but it is aggravated by their marginal status. Overall, Muslim women are triply disadvantaged as members of a minority, as women and, most of all, as poor women."