India school textbook: donkeys better than women

CounterVortex

A school textbook used in India’s western Rajasthan state compares housewives with donkeys and says the animals are more loyal and make better companions, The Times of India reported. The book was approved by the state’s governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and has set off protests by the party’s women. (Reuters, April 5)

“A donkey is like a housewife,” declares the Hindi language primer approved by the state of Rajasthan, according to The Times of India newspaper. “It has to toil all day, and, like her, may even have to give up food and water.”

“In fact, the donkey is a shade better,” continues the text meant for 14-year-olds, “for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master.” (MSNBC, April 5)

See our last post on India, and the status of women on the subcontinent.

  1. Maybe our cultures aren’t that far apart, after all
    We make no claims to the authenticity of the below, but it’s kinda heartwarming, no? From NewsHound, May 6, 2005:

    Bizarre Sex Habits of The Extreme Right-Wing

    Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one – whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.

    At first, Horsley laughed and said, “Just because it’s printed in the media, people jump to believe it.”

    “Is it true?” Colmes asked.

    “Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I…”

    AC: “You had sex with animals?”

    NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

    AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”

    NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”

    AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”

    NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”

    Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and “and I don’t think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I’m saying?”

    Horsley said, “You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You’re naive. You know better than that… If it’s warm and it’s damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it.”

    In addition to Horsley, Colmes has recently interviewed Randall Terry another radical anti-abortionist and anti-gay activist. In the middle of an otherwise serious interview, Terry began joking – apropos of nothing – that he and Colmes were ex-lovers.

    Another extremist interviewed by Colmes not too long ago was Rev. Fred Phelps who stated on the show that he thought the death penalty should be given for those who engage in “sodomy.” When Colmes asked Phelps if he had ever engaged in gay sex, Phelps blustered but never said no.

    Hmm, I’m beginning to sense a pattern here. Come to think of it, Ann Coulter is reputed to have an unusually, er, wide-ranging sex life, too, though as far as I know it’s just confined to men. Still, it doesn’t exactly match the profile of an ultra-conservative.