You have a woman who gets into a live-in relation with a married man because he told her that he will divorce his wife and marry her. And when the man doesn’t, the woman takes him to court and she won the case.
You have a woman who has been divorced by her husband for adultery. She had begun to live in the same house with the other man. The woman takes him to court and demands alimony. She won, with the judge saying that living in the same house with the other man doesn’t amount to adultery.
These are the basics of the two cases. If we go into the details, the debate will never end. And I’m sure these cases must have made many feminists ecstatic. Don’t.
Take the first case. The woman had been going out with the married man for some years before he suggested a live-in relationship. Anyone with some common sense would have never gone out with a still married person. Whether they live in or not, almost all couples nowadays have physical relations. If she’s the type of person who equates a live-in relationship with marriage, how about telling the man a very simple “NO” when he asked her to move in with him?
The promise to marry, or the simple belief/statement that we will get married and live together forever, is something that’s implicitly understood when we get into a relationship. But all of us know too, that it may never happen, that couples break up.
The man promised to marry the woman, but didn’t. Ask yourselves this, how many men and women do this same thing everyday? Next time, someone’s going to get sued because he/she promised to buy a watch/car/house as a gift for a lover, but didn’t.
Take the second case. It’s one of those news/stories that always pushes the whole concept of women’s equality and liberation a few centuries backwards. I will never ever understand why educated women with all the privileges and freedom can’t earn for themselves instead of begging/demanding alimony from their ex-husbands?
How many of these wives have spent money and time on their husbands’ education and career? And when you consider the fact that most of the marriages in India are arranged, when the men already have stable and well established jobs, this idea seems even more ridiculous. So, on what grounds are they asking for a share of their husbands’ salaries? If they fuck around with other men, why do they ask money from their husbands when they are served with divorce papers? If that’s not bad and insulting enough, they usually won these cases in the name of women’s equality and liberation. At least, when we men fuck around we don’t ask money from our wives to buy condoms or whatever!!
And in most of these cases, the reason for asking alimony is – to maintain the lifestyle that she has been used to. Doesn’t that remind you of a dog?
As for that judge, please send your wife to live in the same house with some other man. No sir, this is not adultery at all, this is just harmless fucking.
I agree that women have been exploited for ages. But let’s not get carried away. Times have changed, and the trends and lifestyles we see everyday speaks volumes about women’s equality. So many of my friends are married, and they have kids. And all of them, I repeat, all of them, pamper and love their wives so much. They cook most of the times, they buy the groceries, they take care of the kids most of the times, and most importantly, they respect their wives a hell of a lot. I’m talking about friends from Delhi to friends in Tamil Nadu; friends from all over India. So when one of these women from a similar background gets successful in her career, why do the media always come up with that phrase – a perfect balance between career and home? It may have been true decades back but now, most of the household work, sometimes the entire household work is taken care of by the husbands, or the men.
I also agree that life in rural India is a totally different story. And for that, we don’t need all that bullshit debates about alimony and live-ins. We need to make sure the education and awareness campaigns reach and benefit these women.
If urban, educated middle class women are so serious about women’s equality, I hope they do a little bit of these instead. Whenever someone in your family mentions dowry, make him/her drop that sick idea/so-called tradition. Whenever someone in your family or friends circle makes a derogatory remark about women, make him/her feel ashamed. Whenever your housemaid talks of an alcoholic abusive husband, support her and fight for her. If she sends her son to school but makes her daughter work with her, make your maid change her mind about women’s education. Or better still; sponsor her daughter’s education by cutting down your trips to those ridiculously priced coffee shops and pubs/restaurants/hotels.
Don’t try to change the world, don’t even think about it. Just try a bit to change the people you know, the people you meet everyday.
6 comments:
the bit about urban women is true for maybe 20% of urban women, is all i will say (and i'm being generous with the numbers here). don't think of it as symptomatic for the rest, who may have a greater degree of financial independence than their predecessors, but very rarely see that translated into any real freedom. i'm not denying that women have used the biases in the law to their advantage, but i don't think that any law in our constitution has escaped that fate, and it still is too early to declare such laws as redundant. alimony shouldn't be an issue for educated women, yes, but on the flip side, maybe housework should be assigned an economic value to equate it with "real" work. that'll double the national income. and my essay stops here, by saying that the women's movement is about a lot, lot more than divorce law. its always commendable to try and change the people around you, but then the ability to go out and sit in the open and drink ridiculously expensive coffee is also very important.
sangy: the 20% or lesser urban women is what i was referring to. in my opinion, the equality, privileges and freedom enjoyed by these women is the same or sometimes more, compared to that of the people in their same group/class. but the media and everyone else talks about them as if they were born in some obscured village in UP or Bihar. think of it, what there's to rave about an Indian woman becoming a VP or CEO when she has studied in the best schools and colleges of the world? who hasn’t faced any sexual discrimination or who hasn't been denied anything?
and alimony in those cases where the women have committed adultery, where the women are educated and capable of getting a job and earning? it's not just india, the law everywhere gets manipulated and abused by people with contacts, money and power. but when these cases get a lot of support from women, i want to know the reason.
at this point of time, there's just too much hype and noise about women's equality and liberation, women's achievements, and almost all of it is happening in the metropolitan cities of our country. i'm concentrating here mainly on education and financial independence of that 20% or lesser urban women. that's what I was talking about. if I talk about the whole concept of women's equality and liberation by including child-marriages, dowry cases, inheritance rights, marital rights of (especially muslim) women, eve-teasing……there will be no end.
and as you have mentioned, the ability to go out and sit in the open and drink ridiculously expensive coffee is also very important. but if we can help someone we know by cutting down a bit on those trips, that's even more important to me. i never said, give up Barista or ruby Tuesdays:-)) we have worked hard and earned our jobs and salaries, and we should definitely enjoy it.
i like the idea of equating household work with any real job. it requires skills, knowledge and experience just like any other job, and not everybody knows it. and there are the occupational hazards too, i just burned my thumb 2 days back while cooking dinner:-))
thanks a ton for sharing your views!!!
hey.....feminists are not unreasonable women and we can separate the sensible from the nonsense
and I am with u on this, mostly...differ on a few bits which I will come back and take up!
i would definitely love to know your thoughts chandni. after all, you are the one in the field :-)
hey!
When there are laws made, they would strive for a greater good, if not the good of everyone.
Thus, it is inevitable that, for sometime, the law would be used in a not-so-proper manner by few people. SO, instead of framing diffrent laws for different people which would pose technical difficulties, we should probly give it sometime.. And campaign for the right implementation of the existing law, rather than removing the law :)
If all the above seemed like a lecture and u read thro till here, cheers ;)
indira: agreed. i was letting out some steam on all the media attention and hype about women's equality when we need to look at things in a very different perspective.
cheers:-)))
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