Authors: Unknown
Chelsea, who had been studying Islamic history and culture in her school, asked our guide well-informed questions. Like the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Quran is open to different interpretations, most of which promote peaceful coexistence with people of other religions; some, like Wahhabism, do not. Wahhabism is an ultraconservative Saudi brand of Islam that is gaining adherents around the world. While I deeply respect the basic tenets of Islam, Wahhabism troubles me because it is a fast-spreading form of Islamic fundamentalism that excludes women from full participation in their societies, promotes religious intolerance and, in its most extreme version, as we learned with Osama bin Laden, advocates terror and violence.
The next day I visited the embassy to talk to the American and Pakistani staff, who were terribly shaken by the recent murders of their colleagues in Karachi. I wanted to acknowledge their courage in serving our country and reassure them that, despite isolationist voices in Congress, their services were invaluable and appreciated by the President and by millions of American citizens. This was a not so thinly veiled reference to some Republican House members who boasted that they didn’t have passports, never traveled outside our country and planned to slash the State Department budget. I also wanted to thank the embassy staff for all the extra work my trip had required of them. From their perspective, the best part of a VIP visit was the moment the diplomatic plane took off―and they could hold a “wheels up” party to recover. I joked that maybe I would only pretend to leave, then sneak back to celebrate with them.
Under extraordinary security, we flew to Lahore, the capital of Punjab. The Pakistanis were so afraid of an incident that they positioned hundreds of soldiers along the route from the airport. Unlike modern Islamabad, Lahore is an ancient site with glorious Moghul architecture. The roads had been cleared of all normal traffic, and the ordinarily teeming city seemed depopulated. On parts of our route, colorful printed cloth had been hung on clotheslines to hide the slums alongside the highway. But where the material had fallen down, I could see children and emaciated dogs scrambling around piles of garbage.
We drove out to a rural village that, despite its lack of electricity, was considered advantaged because it had a health clinic and a school that educated girls. The clinic was a concrete-block building staffed by a handful of doctors and technicians who were responsible for an area with a population of 150,000 people. The staff was heroic in its efforts but lacked many crucial resources. We brought donations of medical supplies and necessities, as we tried to do wherever we visited. Patients, mostly mothers with their children, sat quietly on benches against the wall. They seemed astonished to see so many Americans in their little village but graciously allowed Chelsea and me to hold their babies and ask them questions through an interpreter.
Another concrete building a hundred yards away housed the primary school for girls.
That was as far as their education was likely to go, because the nearest secondary school―high school―was for boys only. I spoke to a woman who had ten children, five boys and five girls. She sent her five boys to the secondary school, but her girls had nowhere to go because they couldn’t travel to or attend the nearest girls’ school. She wanted a secondary school nearby for her girls. She talked very openly about birth control and said that if she had known then what she knew now, she wouldn’t have had so many children.
We visited a multigenerational, crowded family compound just behind the school, with children and animals roaming around the courtyard. The oldest family members sat in hammocks watching the commotion created by my visit, while the male head of the family greeted me warmly and showed me several of the compound’s one-room homes, which contained sleeping and eating areas for individual families. Communal activity took place outdoors, where the women gathered to prepare and cook food. Two young girls showed Chelsea how to use black kohl coloring on her eyes. Fashion is a universal feminine touchstone.
I had given a lot of thought to how Chelsea and I should dress on the trip. We wanted to be comfortable, and under the sun’s heat, I was glad for the hats and cotton clothes I had packed. I didn’t want to offend people in the communities I was visiting, but I was also wary of appearing to embrace customs reflecting a culture that restricted women’s lives and rights. On Jackie Kennedy’s historic tour of India and Pakistan in 1962, she was photographed wearing sleeveless shifts and knee-length skirts―not to mention a midriffbaring sari that caused an international sensation. Public opinion seemed to have grown more conservative in South Asia since then. We consulted State Department experts, who offered tips on how to behave in foreign countries without embarrassing ourselves or offending our hosts. The South Asia briefing papers warned against crossing legs, pointing fingers, eating with the “unclean” left hand or initiating physical contact with the opposite sex, including a handshake.
I made sure to pack several long scarves that I could throw around my shoulders or put over my head if I entered a mosque. I had noticed the way Benazir Bhutto covered her hair with a light scarf. She wore a local form of dress called shalwar kameez, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive. Chelsea and I decided to try out this style. For the extravaganza at the Lahore Fort that night, I wore a red silk shalwar kameez, and Chelsea donned one in a turquoise green that complemented her eyes. The Governor of Punjab had invited five hundred guests to the red sandstone fortress, once headquarters of the medieval Moghul empire, that loomed on a hill overlooking the city. We arrived on a clear, starry evening and stepped out of our cars into a scene from the Arabian Nights. Beneath a fireworks display, troupes of musicians and dancers greeted us on either side of a long red carpet. Camels and horses draped in jeweled robes and headdresses shuffled and spun to flute music. Chelsea and I were entranced and squeezed each other’s hands in wonder. Two huge wind-carved turrets guarded the entrance to the inner fort, where thousands of flickering oil lamps lit the courtyards and passageways, and the air was fragrant with rose petals. I looked at my enchanting, suddenly grown-up daughter wrapped in brilliant silk, and wished Bill were there to see her, too.
The evening ended in a dash to the airport and a flight to New Delhi. I had wanted to visit India ever since I was a freshman in college and Margaret Clapp, the President of Wellesley College, left to head a women’s college in Madurai, India. Before she went, she made the rounds to our dormitories, describing what she would be doing. I was intrigued.
Before I decided on law school, I had considered going to India to study or teach.
A quarter-century later, I was making my first trip there, representing my country. Bill had asked me to go because he wanted to oversee the development of good relations with India after forty years of the Indian policy of non-alignment and its ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I wanted to see for myself the world’s largest democracy and learn more about grassroots efforts to spur development and women’s rights. I was excited about what I’d be seeing, even though I knew my time and exposure would be limited.
My first day, I had a crowded schedule that included a visit to one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages, where girls far outnumbered boys because daughters were not as valued as sons by their families. Mother Teresa was traveling outside India, but Sister Priscilla gave us a tour. Well-cared-for babies reached out their arms, and Chelsea and I picked them up while Sister Priscilla told us about each one. Some infant girls had been abandoned in the streets; more often they were left at the orphanage by mothers who couldn’t care for them or said that their fathers didn’t want them. Some babies had club feet or cleft lips or other physical disabilities and were abandoned by families too poor to pay for medical treatment.
Many of the children would be adopted by Westerners, although adoption within India was becoming more common. Sister Priscilla told me my visit had caused the local government to pave the dirt road, which she laughingly deemed a minor miracle.
I lunched with a group of Indian women at Roosevelt House, the Ambassador’s residence, and dined with President Shanker Dayal Sharma. The next day, I was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister E V Narasimha Rao. It was important to duplicate whatever I had done in Pakistan, lest I offend either country since I knew that both kept score.
I had agreed to make a major speech on women’s rights at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, but I was having trouble writing it. I was looking for one clear image that would express what I wanted to say. At the women’s luncheon, Meenakshi Gopinath, the principal of Lady Sri Ram College, a secondary school, presented me with my inspirationa handprinted poem written by one of her students, Anasuya Sengupta. It was called “Silence,”
and it began:
Too many women
In too many countries
Speak the same language.
Of silence …
I couldn’t get the poem out of my head. As I worked on my speech late into the night, I realized that I could use the poem to convey my belief that issues affecting women and girls should not be dismissed as “soft” or marginal but should be integrated fully into domestic and foreign policy decisions. Denying or curtailing education and basic health care for women is a human rights issue. Restricting women’s economic, political and social participation is a human rights issue. For too long, the voices of half the world’s citizens have not been heard by their governments. The voices of women became my theme, and I decided to end my speech by quoting the poem.
The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, named for the assassinated Prime Minister, was established by his widow, Sonia, who had invited me to speak. A soft-spoken, Italian-born woman, Sonia Gandhi had fallen in love with Rajiv, the handsome son of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when they were students at Cambridge University in England. They married and moved to India. From all accounts, Sonia was happily raising two children when catastrophe struck her family. First, her brother-in-law, Sanjay―whom many believed would follow his mother and grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, into politics―was killed in a plane crash. Then, in 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own security guards.
Rajiv, the presumptive heir to Congress Party leadership, became Prime Minister. But while campaigning for election in 1991, Rajiv was murdered by a suicide bomber from the Tamil Tiger guerrillas, who were waging war against the Sri Lankan government and against the Indian government that supported it. Sonia Gandhi was thrust into public life as the symbol of continuity in the Congress Party. She had found her own public voice in the wake of devastating personal tragedy.
By the time I was to deliver my speech, jet lag and sleeplessness had taken their toll. I could barely see the pages, but I concluded with these lines from Anasuya’s poem: We seek only to give words
to those who cannot speak
(too many women
in too may countries)
I seek only to forget
The sorrows of my grandmother’s
Silence.
The poem struck a chord with the audience members, many of whom were touched that I would draw on the thoughts of a schoolgirl to evoke the condition of women everywhere.
Anasuya, lovely, humble and shy in the face of all the publicity her poem generated, was astounded that women all over the globe were requesting copies of it.
Her words also affected my traveling companions in the Washington press corps, who responded personally to what I was saying about women’s lives and rights. Reporters asked me after my speech why I hadn’t addressed these issues sooner. I understood the question, though I had been working for twentyfive years on improving the status and dignity of women and children in America. In this region, where purdah and abandoned baby girls coexisted with women prime ministers, I could see the issue in higher relief―
and so could the press. Health care reform, family leave, the Earned Income Tax Credit or lifting the global gag rule on abortion were all part of the same theme: empowering people to make the choices they decide are right for them and their families. Traveling halfway around the world helped make that clear. Part of the reason was simple: The reporters assigned to cover my trip were a captive audience. But it was also true that my message abroad carried few of the political overtones of my proposals for specific policies at home.
The transformation that took place in my relationship with the press was one of the pleasant surprises of the trip. Like veterans of different armies from an old war, we began our journey wary of each other. But as the days wore on, we began to see each other in a different light. For me, the ground rules helped: Everything that happened on the plane or in the hotels was strictly off-the-record, as was everything that Chelsea said or did on her own. Once I was confident that the reporters were respecting the “code of the road,” I felt more comfortable opening up around them. It also helped that the press and I were sharing the same experiences, from our immersion in foreign cultures to moments of levity at informal group dinners.
The press corps, which had never interacted with Chelsea before, now observed her poise and her grit. One day she would help weigh malnourished children so fragile that they winced at the gentlest touch; a few hours later she would dine with a prime minister.
She asked good questions and made insightful comments and, naturally, many of the journalists started pressuring me to allow them to quote her. I finally gave in after we visited the Taj Mahal and she said: “When I was little, this was sort of the embodiment of the fairy-tale palace for me. I would see pictures of it and would dream I was a princess or whatever. Now that I’m here it’s spectacular.”
It was a lovely and harmless comment, but I immediately wished we hadn’t opened that door. It was hard to close again. Once the print reporters had the quote, Lisa Caputo, my press secretary, was deluged by television journalists desperate to have Chelsea repeat it on tape. I had to remind everybody what the ground rules were, and I made a mental note to consider putting Chelsea in “purdah” when we returned to Washington!