Chapter 6

THE MAKING OF A MAHARAJA

‘I need a man to respect me, not protect
me.’

— #MeToo Campaign

It takes all kinds (of men) to make the world. Irrespective of the cultural, economic, educational, professional, and social background, it is the upbringing which is responsible for the way men treat women.

The parents play a vital role and are greatly responsible for the attitude a male child adopts towards women. A boy mainly learns from his father’s attitude and approach towards women and his wife, in particular. Similarly, the way in which a mother treats her son shapes him into the individual he becomes.

The Indian subcontinent is dominated by a joint-family system which is mostly patriarchal in nature. The daughters get married and leave the household, but the sons are duty-bound to look after their ageing parents. Since giving birth to a son is viewed as a duty of a wife in the East, the sons rescue their mothers merely by the virtue of their gender. The mothers of sons are put on a pedestal and assume a moral high ground of sorts as compared to the mothers of daughters; women who give birth to a girl child are made to feel that they have failed their family in their ‘duty’.

Spoilt rotten by their families, by mothers in particular, these men thrive on tantrums and dominance. They get accustomed to an environment where everybody in the house, including the grandparents, are constantly attending to their needs. This Maharaja deems women to be subordinate to him and treats them merely as instruments to fulfil his needs, a means to an end. Even if he turns out to be a good-for-nothing bloke, the conceit of being a man is embedded in his psyche.

Since most women of past generations were devoid of financial independence, they gave in to the demands of the menfolk of the household. The men of such households grew up to believe that it was the duty of a woman to comply with all the demands. What they failed to read was that her helplessness stemmed out of her financial dependence on the men in her life—her father, husband, and son.

This subjugation of women becomes the norm for all his future relationships with women. He looks for compliance from the women in his life and tries to supress them—whether it is at his workplace or at home. His environment trains him to see women as the subordinate gender.

Even today, the women from urban and educated households tend to pamper their sons more than their daughters. This attitude is hardwired into them because of its ancestral roots when women were dependent on men for their basic security and survival. The gender roles in ancient times were classified very specifically, and there was mutual interdependence of the sexes on account of these roles.

According to the Vedic school of thought, every individual was bound by duty. Fulfilling these gender-specific roles was essential for smooth functioning of the society. A woman’s duty was to look after the household and the menfolk, and a man’s duty was to care for and provide for his family. There was no room for individuality as it was considered selfish and against the dharma of the household ashram.

Since it was the son’s duty to provide for and look after the parents, the birth of a son was celebrated because it ensured that the ageing couple would have the much-needed support in their old age. In the Indian mythology, the epitome of a good son is a boy named Shravan. As the only child of a blind couple, Shravan physically carried his parents and took them on a pilgrimage. He constantly attended to their needs at the cost of his own happiness.

Despite the gender revolution, which now allows women to have a full-time career, mothers continue to segregate the household chores according to the gender. While children of both genders in the urban households are given equal education, housework such as cleaning and cooking continue to be a girl child’s responsibility. This trend is continued even when school has been replaced by office, where both men and women face the same challenges, tasks, and competition, but come home to face the unfair division of labour.

The Maharaja slips into something comfortable, reclines on a chair with a remote control in his hand and expects that magical element in his life—his wife—to clean the house and serve him a sumptuous meal. He expects her to have a secret magic wand with which she can attend to all his needs. Men do not know it, but her secret magic wand is her resilience. And they need to understand that it has been stretched too far and is on the verge of crumbling down.

Today, more and more women are looking after their parents, yet, the yearning for a son continues and not just in the rural population but in the educated households, too. The sons are still viewed as the real heirs of the family.

The glorification of the male child leaves no room for a woman’s individuality to blossom. She is trained and expected to make all the sacrifices and compromises. These households also have a unique culture of locating their family’s honour in their women. The men from such cultures target any woman who threatens the family’s honour by not consenting to the norms such as dressing ‘appropriately’; staying indoors after sunset; living under the guardianship of a male who is virtuously related to them; and marrying a person chosen by the family. Any trace of individuality they exhibit is instantly crushed.

According to the custodians and guardians of regressive values, women who do not comply with these norms and traditions are ‘asking for it’. Rape and honour killing, the by-products of such a culture, are justified acts of punishment directed at teaching the ‘uncultured’ girls and women a lesson. Men give themselves the authority to protect their family’s honour which has been tainted by the women of their households. They overstep the body of law in a bid to reclaim the family’s honour.

The notion of moral policing impels that women would do well by being watchful of their ways in such an environment, an environment which thrives on repression and breeds perversion. Unless we work on the psychological conditioning of the society, it will rot the mindset of the next generation as well.

Being watchful does not endorse gender inequality. If anything, it highlights the absence of equality. It simply means being aware of the truth of such an environment and working out a way to become as financially independent as possible from these limitations. Precaution is not meant to be confused with or to be taken as the cure for this problem.

Living in denial would rob us of our chances of tactfully dealing with the impending dangers of our environment. Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread. When we understand our environment in a better way, we can inconspicuously manoeuvre our way towards an exit. It is not an easy battle, but until these Maharajas are dethroned, we will have to fight a silent battle. And, unlike the violence adopted by the upstart guardians of a ‘cultured’ society, this battle is being fought in a non-violent manner which truly speaks for a cultured society.