Wife Is Not A Chattel

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

That woman is a victim of patriarchy, I know is an understatement. Women in India and in almost all countries of the world are treated as chattel, a disposable possession. The female child was unwelcome. Indians, history shamefully records, never considered female foeticide a sin. In the 21^st century too, despite legal restrictions, some doctors oblige rich parents in destroying the unborn female foetus. The girl child is a liability not an economic proposition.  On the one hand mythology has created female deities at times more powerful than the male ones, like Durga, the three Divine consorts of Hindu Trinity- Brahma,Vishnu, Maheswar. Saraswati, Lakhmi and Parvati are for creative arts, prosperity and happiness respectively. But in the family situation the woman is the Gruhalakshmi, the deity of the home and she has to keep it shipshape for her husband and children. Women like nature is a display disc of beauty, order and pleasure. But she has no freedom to dream, to love, to entertain ambitions of power, adventure or self-fulfillment. Her husband is her god, master, owner.

The question of freedom of self, individual identity was raised by Draupadi in the Mahabharata when she was staked at the dice game by Yudhistira after he had lost his own freedom. Can a husband retain his ‘rights’ over a wife after he himself has lost his freedom? This question was not answered by the scholars and the wise men present in the royal court. Bhisma when asked however timidly opined that the laws of dharma are silent on it yet a husband’s rights over the wife cannot be questioned at any stage. Fate and metaphysical justice helped Draupadi in her moment of shame imposed by patriarchy and evil men, otherwise history of epic India would have recorded the most shameful chapter of man’s lewdness and moral fall as well as the sexist bias of patriarchy. In modern civilisation too women anywhere is a ‘Second Sex’  to borrow the title of Simon De Beauvoir’s epoch changing book on women, perhaps the most important book in Feminist literature. Since then much water has flown in the Ganga but women do not enjoy a changed status. In the film industry the item songs are still danced out to please the lustful eyes of men only. She is built for man; for his pleasure, for the prolongation of his clan. The housewife is now changed into homemaker but she is still used by powerful men for honeytraps.

But the most heartening thing has now been rolled out of the Supreme Court of India. Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call for ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, it remained mostly a slogan for a large percentage of India’s population. The educated and affluent women wanted more freedom, less moral policing and moral flexibility to prove their worth and fulfil their innate virtues in different fields of activities: the poor and tradition bound Khap –Panchayat victims fell to honour killing even for expressions of love, a value considered to be a wilful transgression by patriarchy. Violence and rape and other instinctual barbaric violations of their dignity continued despite political sloganeering and legal reddressals enforced by the establishment.

But the Supreme Court under the leadership of Justice Deepak Mishra opened up a few vistas for the oppressed women flapping their newly generated wings to fly away from the stakes of patriarchy. Tripple Talaq, a repressive non-Quaranic practice was quashed in 2017 to give the Muslim women some sense of security. The LGBT community was given the honorific Third Sex, and Article 377 was struck down to give the otherwise less fortunate people freedom to express their love and seek their pleasure. But the most forward looking judgement came in the form of decriminalization of adultery. Gender justice took another path breaking step when Justice Mishra made the human soul free of religious and sexist bias. Faith is the aroma of the soul and women now can express their faith in the Sabarimala temple where for the last 800 years women between 10 and 50 years of age were forbidden by the same patriarchy; Reason! Menstruation makes a woman impure! How can a biological function of the body, specific to women to procreate and expand the human race be impure?

Now the husband is a “manager of household” not a master. Woman is free to choose life style and love without patriarchal restraint. Hopefully freedom will not become a licence for bohemian shenanigans.