Disclosure: This article also published within the organization I work for. Posted here with permission from organization

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”

                                                                                                ….Theodore Parker

By winning the US president’s election, Kamala Harris created history, she would be the country’s first black vice president, its first Asian-American vice-president, and yes, its first female vice-president. In an ideal world, a person winning (or losing) the top position of a country should have the same impact irrespective of the gender, race or color of the person. But not to be so considering the times we live in. Kind of emotional high or low, depending on which side of the fence you are in, we see happening around us based on the blaring headlines, articles, and toxic social media posts, gives an impression that we all live in a racist and misogynist society. We seem to be getting more divided. Extreme opinions due to its polarizing nature and fake facts do hog the center stage. Like the saying goes, by the time truth ties its shoe laces lies have gone around the earth twice. What is worse in few countries ideological parties have taken control and use the power of state to spread divisive forces and consolidate their support base. In this background, it is no wonder we get the feel Kamala Harris’ win is nothing short of a miracle.

The way I look at it, this win is a culmination of all the progress that has been made over 100+ years. Unless we look back it is hard to appreciate the phenomenal progress that has been made in 19^th and 20^th centuries. History shows path of progress never had it easy. It wasn’t like flipping a switch and society changed its mindset. It took generations for the wheel to rotate and move ahead, for the population to shed its centuries’ old prejudices and discriminatory beliefs.  For example, to reach the milestone that enabled Kamala Harris to run for vice-presidency ticket, the path of progress had to overcome multiple hurdles over a period of last 150+ years. In the case of US, only 100 years back women got the voting rights. US granted American women the Right to Vote with 19^th Amendment ending an almost a century of protest. For us, it may come as a surprise that women did not have the right to vote in most of the countries even begin of 20^th century. Anti-suffrage views dominated among men and women through the early 20^th century. There were cartoons that mocked suffragists. Religious leaders were against women suffrage. Many reasons were given against women suffrage, some silly to many outrageous¹. Few of them will ring a bell since those arguments get made even now for different issues / contexts.

With women’s rights movement and pressure, countries after countries started giving in. Thanks to India’s constitution makers, India gave universal suffrage from day of Independence. It is not that everyone agreed. Indian women had been pushing for women’s suffrage from 1920s. They faced a conflict between nationalist movement and women’s suffrage advocacy. They had to balance it with the imperatives of the nationalist movement. Leaders like Gandhi wanted to avoid the distractions (due to difference of opinions on women’s suffrage) from the larger goal. Yet these women did play a larger role which made saner voices prevail during making of constitution. Every Indian citizen irrespective of caste, religion, or gender got the Right to Vote from day one of Independence.

But 19^th amendment wasn’t enough. Even though the 15^th Amendment granted African-American the Right to Vote, various discriminatory practices were put in place to prevent them from exercising their right to vote.Like women’s suffrage, reasons varied from as silly as they got the poll date wrong, wrong polling booth, insufficient literacy skills, to atrocious requirements like being asked to recite the entire Constitution, which even most white voters would fail. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal barriers to deny the African-Americans their right to vote were outlawed at the state and local levels. In addition to suffrage, the path of progress has to remove additional hurdles like school segregation in US.

But these weren’t enough for the Harris event to happen. Wheels of progress had to rotate in India too to get Shyamala Gopalan, Kamala’s mother, to move to US from India for her studies and build her life there. As a society, India had to move away from popular beliefs, like, educating a girl would undermine her feminine qualities, right place of the women was at their homes serving their families (education would make them move out of home), education not necessary for girls (and waste of money) since they were married off young. Thanks to various social reformers and rational thinkers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Phule, Ambedkar, Bharathiyar, EVR, Gandhi, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi from late 19^th and 20^th centuries, oppressive and discriminatory practices, not just of women but caste practices, child marriage, etc., were challenged and subjected to questioning. Seeds had to be sown in the society to accept it is okay to send girls to schools for education, child marriage is against the rights of children, and question scriptures and values it propagated. Marriage age for girls moved slowly from 9 years to 11 (legal restriction came in early 1890s), then 13, to current 18. Female literacy gradually inched from 0.6% in 1901 to ~8.8% in 1951 to ~65% in 2011.

In this societal background, it shows how broadminded Shyamala’s parents must have been in 1950s to let their daughter, unmarried at that time, to move to US in 1958 for her higher studies. Shyamala was 19 and had never set foot outside India. It was very rare for unmarried Indian women to move to US for graduate studies in 1950s.

When I look back, I am full of appreciation and in awe as to how a simple act of asking why not, questioning the rule book, starting the first school for girls, first women engineer, first women doctor kick started achain of events that led to where we are now, like the celestial event where planets line up. To quote Steven Pinker, it is in the nature of progress that it erases its tracks, and its champions fixate on the remaining injustices and forget how far we have come. While the rise of extreme toxic forces does pose a huge challenge to progressive forces and reforms, rather than lose hope or be complacent, we need to continue to push through reasoning based on science and humanism. This isn’t the time to let science and reasoning succumb to beliefs and dogmas. Like Kamala Harris mentioned in her speech, this isn’t the end, this is just the beginning.

Notes:

1. Many reasons were given against women suffrage, some silly to many outrageous
   • Political Activity rendered women incapable of breast feeding
   • Women lack the expertise or mental capacity to offer a useful opinion on political issues
   • Husband’s votes were sufficient to allow a woman’s political expression
   • Women took care of home and children. Do not have time to vote or stay updated on politics
   • States that provided women suffrages has been a proven failure – divorces have greatly increased since the adoption of the equal suffrage amendment
   • Crimes will go up due to lack of the mothers in the home
   • It means competition of women with men instead of co-operation
   • Women can only double or annul their husband’s votes