Growing up, I never heard anything
about who belonged in the kitchen. My mother didn't stay any longer
in the kitchen as was necessary. She put food on the table though.
And books in the library. When she visited home a couple of times a
year, she remembered to take small gifts of cash for her own mother.
My grandmother was in the kitchen a
lot. She never went to school but even from her, I never heard
anything about women and kitchens. She was hoping I'd become a doctor
or a bureaucrat. Future in-laws were never mentioned. In all my years
of schooling and college, none of my teachers – male or female –
ever hinted that girls belonged in the kitchen.
Still, now is a good time to think
about kitchens and women's place. At this fine moment in our nation's
history, the former Chief Minister of Gujarat and current Governor of
Madhya Pradesh has been telling female students that they must cook
tasty daal to appease their mothers-in-law. In fact, they may as well
start right away by helping out in the hostel's mess kitchen. While
she was at it, she also advised girls not to cut their hair short,
else the in-laws wouldn't let them into the house.
These threats about in-laws' acceptance
are real to a young girl. She knows she is not welcome, beyond a
point, in her parents' home. She may be needed by a husband – for
sex, for labour, for the care of the elderly – but the home is not
one she owns. It is place she occupies cautiously, taking nothing for
granted. One wrong move and she will be accused of breaking up a
family. One wrong haircut and she might be turned out. Anandiben
Patel's reminder to girls of their tenuous position in the world is
not the last thrashing of a dying philosophy. It is the ogre of
patriarchy crushing the few heads that are starting to hold
themselves higher. Instead of reminding young girls of the hard
battles fought over the last two centuries by our foremothers – for
the right to own and inherit property, to not be the legal property
of fathers and husbands, to be educated, to earn and enter
professions formerly barred to them – Ms Patel seems to be saying:
There's no climbing out of the abyss of the past. In the kitchen,
without a wage, is your destiny.
I'm not sure what Anandiben makes of
the government's official campaign to “save” daughters (that is,
not kill them before they are born nor immediately after) and to
educate them. Perhaps it is with her blessings that the Barkatullah
University, one of the bigger ones in the state of Madhya Pradesh,
announced a three month 'Adarsh bahu' (ideal daughter-in-law) course,
allegedly to “prevent families from falling apart”.
Such courses are polite reminders of a
woman's “place”. This place is nowhere secure or familiar.
Nowhere she's mistress of her destiny. Instead, she must first
imagine a future in which her life is organised around husband and
in-laws. Then the university offers her training so she may bend to a
politics intent on stealing her freedom and the fruits of her labour.
A 'bahu' is many things but above all, she is a worker in a job that
she cannot easily quit. The most common advice given to a bride is to
work hard and pose no challenge to members of her marital home. An
ideal daughter-in-law fits in like sugar in a cup of milk.
There is no such thing as an ideal
damaad (son-in-law), of course. No university teaches sons to adapt
to in-laws; they don't have to live with them or meet the
expectations of strangers. They visit like honoured guests. The men
who do live with their wives' parents are often derided, either
because they are not earning enough to move into an independent home
or because they must do what women do: adjust, fit in, not call the
shots.
In every family, there is potential for
friction, for stress and emotional harm. But who carries the greater
burden of trying to avoid friction by ridding onself of one's own
personality and constantly pleasing others? Indian women, especially
married women, commit suicide in great numbers. Over 36 percent of
the world's female suicides are Indian.
That's worth thinking about as our
leaders ask young women to please in-laws and future husbands, what
are they asking? Older women, especially who have themselves drunk
deep at the fount of power, ought to have the grace not to tell
younger women to toe the line. Instead, they ought to be telling them
to chase dreams, to grow into the fullest possible version of
themselves, to not shy away from conflict, to not bend backwards for
anyone, lest they break.
First published in The Quint: https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/anandiben-patel-adarsh-bahu-course-patriarchy
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