By Women's Feature Service
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New Delhi (Women's Feature Service) -
Despite our best efforts as a women's group, we could be of very
little help when families wanted to make the son-in-law accept their daughter back and expected us to convince him to treat her well. This is because we have no way of influencing the behaviour of a man or his family except through moral persuasion. But, in most cases, all possible forms of persuasion and intervention by relatives, community elders or 'biradari' (community) bodies had already been tried. Husbands do not usually respond to women's groups' reconciliation efforts because they see no advantage in doing so. |
Many families had the feeling that organized protest demonstrations would help. Many asked us to approach some government official or some highly placed person in the police to pressurize or threaten the man. But, like most other women's groups, we did not have the government machinery at our beck and call to arm-twist errant husbands, nor did we aspire to perform this task.
Ultimately, the problem is the lack of any bargaining position for women in the present family set-up. A husband can get away with maltreating and throwing out his wife because he knows she is easily replaceable. There are enough desperate parents willing to marry off their daughters to just about any man available. The woman controls nothing in her marital family - not even the dowry. The maintenance laws are so ineffective that only rarely does a man have to part with any money when he throws his wife out. The family property is almost never jointly held nor is any significant proportion in the woman's name. So she can claim nothing as her own when she is thrown out.
The attitude of most husbands is very similar to that seen in a case we came across at the Crimes Against Women Cell. The woman said she had been humiliated, confined to the house, beaten and harassed for dowry ever since the wedding. She finally left the house when her husband beat her up one day and repeatedly told her to get out. Her mother and brothers were desperate to send her back to her husband on any terms. Her mother said, 'I told my son-in-law not to mention divorce. The word is unknown in our family. I told him I was ready to eat his shit if he would only take her back.' A few months later, when we went to meet them again, they told us the woman had returned to her husband. We visited the husband's house. We were not allowed to talk to the woman alone. Nor did she say a word during our visit except to offer us tea. Her husband lectured us at great length on the faults of her family, her folly and his magnanimity.
He would not let her meet her parents frequently and gloated at her having been forced to return on his terms although she had left with what he called arrogance, 'She thought I would go and plead with her to return. But you must have heard the Sanskrit saying: A mouse after all remains a mouse.'
It was clear that the woman was compelled to return and endure such humiliation because no other place was available to her. Her brothers were not willing to continue supporting her, nor were they prepared to let her take a job, though she is a qualified beautician. They felt that this would damage their family honour.
A woman generally has no leverage to compel the husband or the in-laws to behave reasonably. She can at best try to be a 'nuisance' - to fight back with words, yell, scream and cry.
But she has no power to enforce her wishes in the way that her husband has. If she becomes too great a nuisance, she can always be thrown out. This threat acts as a most powerful deterrent. The only option she has is to walk out. But if she has no parental support, no house of her own, and is not earning an income substantial enough to support herself and her children with dignity, she cannot exercise this option. This, more than anything else, emboldens the husband's family into riding roughshod over her.
Parents often argue that their daughter must return to her husband because she is incapable of living on her own. They seldom acknowledge that this situation is of their own making. Having disabled their daughter as far as they could, denying her any opportunity to acquire professional skills, confining her to the house and having prepared her only to work as a housewife, they then label her incapable and see her as a burden on them if she is thrown out by her husband.
The woman, already demoralized by the maltreatment she has suffered, needs encouragement if she is to learn to stand on her own feet. Instead, she is repeatedly told by all her family members that she can never survive alone. She has little choice but to accept their evaluation of her. Fearing that she will be a burden on her brothers in whose homes she might be even more humiliated and unwanted than in her husband's, she also repeats that she wants her husband to take her back. This also puts her in a morally 'right' position in the eyes of her family. She is seen as a dutiful rather than a defiant wife. This 'wish' of hers is, however, heavily influenced by all the pressures she faces in her parental home and by a lifetime of conditioning to believe that she is weak and inadequate.
(Extracted from 'Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws: Battling Stereotypes', by Madhu Purnima Kishwar; Published by Sage; Price: Rs 495; Pp: 419)
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