I came across this piece from the autobiography of Jawarlal Nehru:
For many generations the British treated India as a kind of enormous country house (after the old English fashion) that they owned. They were the gentry owning the house and occupying the desirable parts of it, while the Indians were consigned to the servants hall and pantry and kitchen…
The fact that the British Government should have imposed this arrangement upon us was not surprising; but what does seem surprising, is that we, or most of us, accepted it as the natural and inevitable ordering of our lives and destiny. We developed the mentality of a good country-house servant. Sometimes we were treated to a rare honour – we were given a cup of tea in the drawing-room. The height of our ambition was to become respectable and to be promoted individually to the upper regions. Greater than any victory of arms or diplomacy was this psychological triumph of the British in India. The slave began to think as a slave, as the wise men of old had said.
Edited version for 50:50 group
Replace Men for British and Women for Indians.
What the anti quotas lobby deny is that women were discriminated against in the past and it is continuing today with the under-representation of women in our political system. We are not even getting on the ballot paper.
Women do not face a level playing field when it comes to participating in the political system. Childcare is still seen a the predominent domain of women and very good we are at it too – but that shouldn’t prevent us from taking our rightful place at the decision making table. If politics matters then it matters that women as a group are not represented in sufficient numbers.
Full equality for women has not been obtained when our Dail is not reflective of the gender balance 50 50.
