NEW DELHI(AP) A textbook used in western India compares housewives to donkeys _ and concludes that the pack animals make more loyal companions, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
"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."
The book, reportedly used in Rajasthani schools, has sparked protests from the women's wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls the state government and approved the text, the Times reported.
Rajasthan is known to be one of India's most traditional states, where conservative attitudes toward women predominate, and state education officials said the comparison was meant to be funny, nothing more.
"The comparison was made in good humor," state education official A.R. Khan was quoted as saying.
He added, however, that "protests have been taken note of and the board is in the process of removing" the reference.
would you like a slim jim with your slurpee?
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Thors
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would you like a slim jim with your slurpee?
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dyino
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Goratoar
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Rajasthan is the Mississippi of India ('cept Miss. is only 100 years behind the times in places, Raj. is about 1000). It's still not uncommon up there to hear reports of lynchings for intercaste marriages or liasons (and these are lynchings by their own families). The areas like that are kind of twindling, though, but are most prominent in the northwest near Pakistan and in the eastern central portion between Hyderabad and Kolkata (Calcutta).
However, if you travel to the Northeast of Rajastan and some of the surrounding area up there you enter a region of Polyandrous societies (single wife, multiple husbands), in this case a system where in most instances all brothers from a family are married to a single woman in order to keep land from becoming too spread out. (and I'm not sure, but I think the system is also matrilinear, as well).
Not that any of that's really important, just poking my head in.
However, if you travel to the Northeast of Rajastan and some of the surrounding area up there you enter a region of Polyandrous societies (single wife, multiple husbands), in this case a system where in most instances all brothers from a family are married to a single woman in order to keep land from becoming too spread out. (and I'm not sure, but I think the system is also matrilinear, as well).
Not that any of that's really important, just poking my head in.