How is Meena's India different from Smita's? What explains the differences?

How is Meena's India different from Smita's? What explains the differences?

Meena's India gives her almost nothing other than serving and obeying. No education. No ability to make decisions or choices of her own. Smita's parents allowed her freedom. Freedom to choose, to go to school, to become what she chooses, not what is dictated.

Meena's India was that of the impoverished class and women's place was in the home and possibly serving as servant while Smita's parents believed in limited freedom for her plus education, however, there was an obligation to marry within the same religion and preferably an arranged marriage(if course there were more changes once they left India but still there things Smita could not tell her father)

Meena's India was that of a rural, lower caste/class, uneducated woman, while Smita was raised in a city, educated, and higher caste/class.

India's caste system is so strong and Meena's place in a very low caste gave her little chance for anything. It is surprising that she was able to work at her job and earn the money. But her lazy brothers needed the money so she wasn't stopped. Smita, now being an "American" could ignore the caste system. Even if Smita's family had stayed in India they were obviously in a higher caste. It is so sad that this system still has to much power in India today.

Meena is a member of the dominant religious group, and as she was growing up, Smita was not. However, Meena did not benefit from that place of privilege because she was living in a small, rural village where old customs were still dominant. Smita actually experienced something very similar to Meena during the religious uprisings when she was 14. She was dragged to the center of a circle, taunted and assulted. Who knows what may have happened if her father hadn't arrived when he did. What made her life different until then was the privilege afforded by education, a middle class family, and living in a more diverse, cosmopolitan place. That privilege did not protect her or her family like her status as an American journalist did once she returned.

I think that Smita knew there were more similarities than differences between the two. She did not want Meena sitting at her feet and used common titles of mutual respect. Smita refused to be referred to as memsahib and asked Menna to call her by her first name.

During the time in which the story is told, Smita, an Indian American, is a well-respected and successful reporter for a New York newspaper. She is the daughter of a wealthy professional family. Her father is a professor of religion, but is not himself observant. Smita grows up in the freedom offered by her situation in life. She herself comments more than once on the fact that she has choices. Meena lives in an impoverished village in rural India. Her family is poor, often hungry, without hope of improving their life. They are practicing Hindus and the head of the family, her older brother, expects her unquestioning conformity to the role of women in their culture of absolute male dominance. Meena’s attempts to make some choices for herself and eventually to marry the man she loves—a Muslim—outrages her brothers. When she marries anyway and conceives a child, her doom is sealed. Her poverty, her religion, and her bigoted family and village make Meena’s world very different from Smita’s.

I think so many things make up each of our worlds. Class and wealth certainly were hugely different for Meena and Smita. But they had similarities too, both being female. Because of being raised in the United States, as well as being from an educated family, Smita had a much more open life of opportunity. I had to wonder if she would have truly been safe though, if she had been alone with Meena in her village in India. Meena still lived and died within the old male dominated world of lower-class Indian women. I found the bond between the two women, and Smita's efforts to help Meena, extremely touching.

While both have to contend with a matriarchal society Meenas world is strict and unforgiving, Smitas expirenced some of that as a child in India but the majority of her life in the US it is much more subtle control. Meenas place in life as a lower caste and in poverty is world away from Smita’s US upbringing in a well off middle class family where education and freedom are often taken for granted. Coming to India as a US Journalist gave Smita a experience of Privilege Meena would never have experienced.

In her previous novel, "The Space Between Us", Thrity Umirgar explores the cultural differences between Serabai, an upper middle class woman, and Bhima, her lower class servant. She describes two different Indias that are often at odds with one another yet the two women find common bonds around their love of family and friendship. In "Honor" Smita and Meena also come from two very different worlds despite their shared experience of being victims of prejudice and violence. That shared reality causes Smita to reflect on how her family was betrayed by the same fear and hatred that caused Meena to be expelled and ultimately murdered by her Hindu family.

Meena's life is one of abject poverty. She is uneducated and her only prospect for work is in a factory. Smita comes from an educated family. Her father is a professor of Hindu studies and is proud of Smita's accomplishments. Meena's family consists of two brutal brothers who want Meena to serve and obey. Any attempt by her to rise above her class status makes them furious. Additionally, Smita has access to the outside world through her personal experiences, her computer, and her education. Living in a very rural setting without technology nor access to self-improvement, leaves Meena unable to know anything outside her current circumstances.