Women, sex and marriage
Most societies have tried to regulate sexuality by placing it
firmly within their marriage and kinship structure. However, in
societies which evolved male dominated forms of family, marriage
became an instrument of control over women's sexuality. In the
West, Engels preceded the feminists in critiquing the sexual
morality inherent in such male dominated family structures. He
saw the destruction of the patriarchal family as a necessary step
towards freeing women from men's control.
For the nineteenth century and early twentieth century feminists,
the right to education and the right to vote were the primary
issues. It was only after the advent of cheap, effective and
readily available contraceptives for the mass of women in the
West that the feminist movement began to seriously engage with
the idea of sexual liberation. The possibility of separation of
women's sexuality from reproduction made it easier for women to
assert their own sexuality. This phase witnessed not only
perceptive analyses and radical insights into the power play
behind the sexual aspects of man-woman relationships, but also
ideological challenges to the cultural ideals of women's sexual
purity, virginity, and lifelong sexual loyalty to a husband.
Efforts to promote sexual liberation in the contemporary West
were accompanied by a very high rate of breakdown of marriages
and families, especially since simultaneously many of the legal
and religious bars against divorce were removed. At the same
time, subjective expectations of marriage became more and more
exaggerated. In the West marriage is not just expected to
provide economic and social security for raising children, but
also sexual compatibility, orgasmic delight and romantic
excitement. Walking out of marriage in search of more exciting
liaisons is no longer only a male prerogative. Women frequently
exercise this option. However, even though the idea of lifelong
sexual loyalty in marriage is no longer assumed in the West, the
majority of believers in sexual liberation expect a new form of
sexual commitment _ serial monogamy. For whatever duration that
a couple are together, the new morality assumes that they will
refrain from sexual involvement with others. Marriages and even
non-marital relationships often flounder if either partner
discovers the other having clandestine sexual affairs.
While western women have begun to be more sexually assertive,
many find they are not necessarily sexually fulfilled. A German
feminist friend of mine who was an enthusiastic participant in
the heady days of their sexual revolution once described in vivid
detail to me how she came out of that experience bruised, hurt,
and confused. This is how she summed up her experience: "I now
think we were buggered not just physically but also mentally and
ended up feeling used by men." Today she feels that free sex
without any emotional commitment suits men much more than women
because it allows men easy access to any number of women without
taking on any responsibility.
In my own social I find that circle men who propound sexual
liberation to women tend to be far more exploitative than the
supposedly traditional men. They flaunt ultra-feminist rhetoric
and the ideology of sexual liberation mostly as a device to
intellectually seduce women into being sexually available at
their pleasure. When a woman resists such advances, she often
gets responses like: "I had no idea that you are such a prude. I
took you to be a liberated woman," implying thereby that a
sexually "liberated" woman loses the right that even some
prostitutes have - the right to say 'No'.
While many feminists might disagree about the negative fall-out
of sexual revolution in the West, there is little doubt that the
resultant instability in life within the nuclear family causes
havoc for the children. The breakdown of the patriarchal family
has not yet led to more egalitarian and secure family structures.
Rather, it has contributed to the atomisation of society into a
loose collection of self obsessed individuals. Consequently,
kinship and other human relations have become very fragile.
Sex and Liberation
This seems to be an important reason why Indian women do not seem
very enamoured of the idea of sexual liberation as it came to be
understood and practiced in the West. Feminism in the West came
as an offshoot of individualism _ the doctrine which holds that
the interests of the individual should take precedence over the
interests of the social group, family, or the state. However, in
India, despite the cultural diversity among its various social,
caste, and religious groups, there is a pervasive belief shared
equally by men and women that individual rights must be
strengthened not by pitching yourself against or isolating
yourself from family and community, but rather by having your
rights recognised within it. For individual rights to be
meaningful, they have to be respected by those with whom you are
close, rather than being asserted in a way that estranges you
from them. The vast majority of Indian men and women grow up to
believe that the interests of the family are primary and take
precedence over individual interests.
Therefore, even our idea of the place of sex in life is very
different from those of western women due to widely differing
cultural values and philosophies. Children, the extended family
and biradari continue to be the main anchoring point in our
lives. Individual freedom is given far lower priority.
Many Indian women are unwilling to remarry after a divorce or
widowhood if they already have children even if there is no
family opposition to remarriage. They demonstrate enormous
resilience and resolve in bringing up children on their own
while snubbing sexual advances from men or their family's offers
to get them remarried.
This self denial is based on a fairly astute understanding of the
risks involved in this culture in pursuing intimate male
companionship at the cost of other valuable relations, and a
careful calculation of their children's long term well being.
Women in our society seem to consider sexual deprivation as far
less painful than being estranged from their children and
family.
Since, in our culture, people (both men and women) who sacrifice
their self-interest for others are given far more respect and
reverence than those who pursue their own pleasure without taking
the concerns of others into account, the idea of voluntary
renunciation in pursuit of a higher goal or for the interest of
others continues to have a profound hold on our imagination. For
instance, an elder brother who remained unmarried for many years
because he chose to put all his energy into ensuring that his
younger siblings got well-settled in life would be an object of
veneration in his community and family. Similarly, a man who
refuses to remarry after his wife's death so that his children do
not have to deal with the insecurity and risks that come with
having a step-mother is treated with special respect in his
entire social circle.
The Power of Celibacy
This self denial no doubt takes a heavy toll and cannot be unduly
romanticised as, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi often did. He saw
"voluntary enlightened widowhood" as a great "social asset" and
believed that "a real Hindu widow is a treasure. She is one of
the gifts of Hinduism to humanity"1. Gandhi believed that a
Hindu widow had "learnt to find happiness in suffering, had
accepted suffering as sacred....Their suffering is not suffering
but is happiness."2 However, he did not have a different
yardstick for men. He wanted men to emulate the same ideal:
"Hinduism will remain imperfect as long as men do not accept
suffering" as many widows did and, like them "withdraw their
interest from the pleasures of life."3
Celibacy, as a voluntary option, seldom gets treated respectably
in the West because the West has, by and large, succumbed to the
theory that sexual abstinence is an unhealthy aberration which
leads to unhealthy neuroses and a disoriented personality.
Abstinence is undoubtedly harmful when it is due to external
repression. However, when it is voluntary and purposeful it can
often be liberating. In India people have special respect for
those who can live satisfactory lives without the need for sex.
We are still heavily steeped in the old Indian tradition which
holds that voluntary sexual abstince bestows extraordinary powers
on human beings. Indian mythology is full of stories of sages
who went so far in tapasya that Indra's throne in the heavens
would start shaking. The gods would then send some exceedingly
attractive apsara to lure him and disrupt his tapasya. Those few
who successfully resisted the sexual lure achieved moksha and a
status higher than gods.
In the 20th century we have the example of Mahatma Gandhi who
tried to transcend his sexuality in order to make it contribute
to forging the powerful, modern political weapon of satyagraha.
His sexual abstinence was part of a larger tapasya through which
he attempted to discipline his life for devotion to the cause of
freeing India from political slavery. His rigorous austerity,
various fasts and dietary experiments, vows of silence, and
giving up material possessions altogether, were all essential
components of his tapasya. He believed that the spiritual force
of even one fully formed satyagrahi could set right the world's
wrongs.4
It is not just rishi-munis and mahatma who practice rigorous
tapasya with brahmacharya as an essential component in order to
acquire powers greater than gods, but even ordinary men and
women living a life of voluntary sexual abstinence come to be
highly respected. Such women tend to be treated as a special
category, are subjected to much less scrutiny and restrictions,
and tend to get much greater respect from men provided they don't
show signs of sexual frustration.
Many of the most revered women in Indian religious history opted
out of sexual relations altogether, as the lives of Mirabai,
Mahadevi Akka, Lal Ded and many others attest.5 They aretreated
as virtual goddesses.
In India, men are trained to fear the wrath of non-consort
Goddess figures like Durga, Chandi and Vaishno Devi. While Sita
and Parvati invoke reverence, Durga invokes fear and awe. She is
the great saviour from worldly adversity. "Herself unassailable
and hard to approach" but someone to whom men also turn for
protection. Similarly a woman who rises above being sexually
accessible, consort of none, nor in search of a consort, tends to
command tremendous awe and reverence.
Gurbachan Kaur's life story is a good example. She is now 85
years old and has lived all her life in a small village town of
Punjab called Samrala. Her father Mann Singh was a farmer who
had two sons and two daughters, one of whom died early.
Gurbachan was married at the age of 16 to an army doctor who died
within 4 months of their wedding without consummating their
marriage. Gurbachan's family tried to get her remarried but she
firmly refused, saying had married life been fated for her, then
her husband would not have met with such an early death. She
lived an extremely disciplined life. Seeing her take on such a
tough resolve, her father transferred some land in her name and
began to put the family finances and other decisions under her
charge because he did not want her to live like a dependent on
her brothers. He would proudly tell everyone that his daughter
was stronger and more capable than any man. She became the
virtual head of the family even in her father's lifetime.
The power balance in her family came to be tilted in her favour
not just because of the special measures her father took but also
because of her own very extraordinary qualities. I got her life
story from her niece who told me that even their kids and
grandchildren revere her in the same fashion that her father and
brothers did. She is the power centre and decision maker for her
entire extended family. It is she who has the final say in
selecting grooms and brides even for her grand nieces and
nephews. No financial decisions are taken in the joint family
without her sanction and approval.
Her relatives say that she is held in such reverence because 'she
never tells lies, she is open and forthright, doesn't keep
grudges in her heart, does not badmouth anyone and is a genuine
well-wisher of everyone she knows. Whenever someone is in
trouble she is the first one to go and help them and expects
virtually nothing in return. Even her sisters in-law and their
daughters in-law are devoted to her.' To quote her niece: "She
has lived such a rigorous life of japa-tapa that her entire
community treats her as a woman with a touch of divinity _ a
virtual goddess. Whenever she goes to the bazaar even local
shopkeepers say 'we got devi's darshan today'.
However, her niece Devinder Kaur, who gave this account to me,
emphasised that the starting point for this turn around of the
power equation in the family began because she invoked great awe
and respect from her father and brothers by demonstrating
extra-ordinary self discipline, especially in sexual matters.
Lapses in this regard would have undoubtedly washed away all the
credit she got for her other qualities.
It is noteworthy that a woman like Gurbachan Kaur could acquire
such special powers and clout in rural Punjab which has a very
repressive culture for women and in a community which does not
today subscribe to the goddess tradition on account of their
conversion to Sikhism. In the West, a woman like Gurbachan Kaur
would be an object of ridicule and contempt as in Auden's famous
poem, Miss Gee. Our culture has the remarkable ability to
provide special space and respect for women who voluntarily opt
out of the sexual marital role.
Peripheralising Sex
Even in the life of married ordinary women, making sex a
contingent relationship works as a very effective strategy in
carving out a space of respect and honour for them within their
communities. I illustrate this strategy by sharing with you
glimpses from the lives of some women I have known closely. They
have told me their stories in many versions over a period of
time. I may well be accused of being overly anecdotal and
drawing conclusions from too few instances. But my perceptions
are influenced not just by the lives and experiences of the women
I describe below, but also by closely observing the lives of a
good number of other women I have gotten to know closely over the
years. The life stories I have chosen as illustrations are
fairly typical and representative of a wide spectrum of Indian
women's concerns, calculations, and aspirations.
Let me begin with the example of my friend Razia, a Muslim woman
in her mid 40s, employed as a college teacher. She is respected
by most of those who know her because of her quiet dignity and
generous temperament. She was widowed after eight years of what
was a very happy marriage to a medical doctor. He not only
earned well but treated her with love and affection and took
great delight in providing her with all possible comforts, even
luxuries. His sudden death from a heart attack more than 14
years ago came as a big blow. She had to put herself together
after this in order to bring up two small kids, depending on her
own much smaller income. Their standard of living fell
dramatically. Her in-laws turned her out of her marital home and
she had to fight hard to secure even a portion of her husband's
own property since her in-laws wanted to grab it all.
Even though she comes from a Muslim community which does not
frown upon remarriage of women, she resolutely turned down all
attempts to get her remarried. Considering that she was in her
early 30s at the time of her husband's death, her natal family
was worried as to how she would manage alone. But she was clear:
while remarriage would get her a husband, for her children a step
father could never be a substitute for the father they had lost.
If anything, they would feel even more insecure.
After being pushed out of her in-laws' home, she moved in with
her own natal family so that her brothers, father and other
family could give her and the children a sense of security. This
is how she explains her choice: "My husband was such an ideal
husband _ one could not ask for better. That is why I kept his
name connected to mine after his death. Had I remarried, I would
be known as somebody else's wife. Whatever tasks he left
incomplete, I have tried to fulfil those. However, even if I had
not been lucky enough to marry such a good man, I still would
have done the same. After children come, your target in life is
their well-being and future _ not just your own fulfillment.
Unless you are willing to sacrifice your own self-interest, you
will never be held up as an example to others."
She says sexual abstinence did not pose such a major problem
because she has kept her connection with her husband very strong:
"He is never apart from me even for a moment. So I cannot even
imagine the thought of another man in my life. The idea of sex
was buried forever when I decided I was not going to remarry."
She explains that even while her emotional tie with him remains
unshakeable, her strength comes from the fact that she has a very
deep involvement with her numerous relatives, especially parents,
brothers and their wives, sisters, nephews, and nieces with whom
she lives in a very large joint family. "With each of these
people I have a very strong bond", she says.
She is proud of the fact that her family holds her up as an
example. They respect her for having performed her
responsibility so well despite such odds. Even her colleagues
hold her in high esteem for her resolute commitment. She has a
specially close relationship with her teenage children and is
convinced that this kind of closeness would not have been
possible with a step-father in the house. She exudes enormous
confidence in both her son and daughter: "They would never do
anything to hurt me or refuse me anything I asked of them."
Rejecting Male Norms
This kind of resilience is frequently maintained even in cases
where the husband is alive but blatantly disloyal to his marriage
_ as Maya's life shows. Maya works as a domestic in several
homes in one of the South Delhi colonies. I have known her for
years. She is an exceptionally attractive woman but not at all
self conscious about it. This is not to say she is sexually
repressed _ just that she never uses her charm for flirtations.
She comes from what is considered a lower caste South Indian
community which, unlike many upper caste North Indian
communities, does not treat women's body and sexuality as a
matter of shame. They celebrate it through various rituals. One
of the most beautiful is the ritual to celebrate a girl's first
menses.
A couple of years ago, Maya joyfully came to invite me to a
"party". When I asked her what was the occasion, she happily
answered: Ladki ki khushi hui hai (my daughter's happiness has
come). The celebration was a big affair. Sugandha, her
daughter, after being given an oil and turmeric bath, was decked
out like a bride, with a new brocade saree, flowers in her hair,
new gold jewellery and all the traditional decorations on her
body. Various relatives brought gifts _ utensils, sarees,
earrings, toiletry and what not. It was almost as big a
celebration as a marriage; Sugandha was taken in a procession
through their entire neighbourhood to the joyous beating of drums
and dancing. This was followed by a whole series of rituals
involving rice, coconuts and fruit to symbolise fertility. It
all ended with a big feast for the whole community.
Even though Maya does not come from a sexually repressed
tradition, yet her notion of female sexuality includes a very
high degree of self-restraint. To her that is an essential
component of self respect. When I first got to know Maya about a
decade ago, she would occasionally tell me about how her husband
beat her. At that time, he was heavily addicted to liquor and
spent a big part of family earnings on his drinking. For years
he worked as a casual labourer but has now got a regular job with
the railways involving unskilled, manual work. He has a roving
eye and has had numerous sexual affairs.
His extra-marital affairs started from the early years of their
marriage when they were living in a Tamil Nadu village. She
first became aware of his affairs when she was eight months
pregnant with their first child. The same pattern continued even
after his children started growing up; in fact, even after he
became a grand-father. Over the years a good part of his income
was spent on his various lovers and mistresses. For instance, in
recent years he was stationed in a town in Haryana where he kept
a regular mistress on whom he spent a good part of his earnings.
Maya was both angry and hurt and had many fights with him over
it. He would justify his actions by saying that since he was
away from home, he needed a woman to cook for him and could not
do without regular sex.
When he used to come home drunk and beat her up, she would refuse
to cook for him for days on end. Some years ago she unilaterally
decided to abstain from having sex with her husband. She says
she neither enjoys sex anymore nor does she feel obliged to
provide it to him as a marital duty since he procures it from
outside. I asked if he forced her every now and then. On those
rare occasions she says she gets sick and has terrible abdominal
pains. On occasion, she has had to be taken to a doctor and has
missed work for several days. Seeing her reaction to forced sex
he has learnt to keep away from her.
Her physical reaction seems a clear statement of emotional
rejection. The message is: 'I don't really need you either
financially or physically. I am with you mainly because of my
children. It is you who need me more than I need you.'
She often tells me proudly how whenever he is unwell he rushes to
her. It is she who has nursed him back to health through many
illnesses and helped him get over his addiction to liquor. He
realizes her worth because none of his mistresses ever provided
him with care during difficult times.
No matter how angry and hurt she has been with him over his
infidelity, Maya has refrained from letting her children know
about their father's proclivities (except recently when she told
her married daughter about it). She feels the kids would have
stopped respecting their father if they knew of all his doings.
That would only harm the children and do her no good. Similarly,
she feels she would never consider breaking off her marriage
because that would not only make her children unhappy, but also
have a negative effect on their marriage chances, especially
those of her daughters.
Over the years she has resigned herself to his extra-marital
relationships, but gets particularly upset if he does it in ways
that are likely to expose him before his children. On a few
occasions when she found him sneaking into a neighbouring woman's
hut at night after everyone was asleep, she really gave hell to
both him and the woman concerned. Apart from the personal
humiliation his infidelity causes her, she feels outraged that he
is not careful to hide it from his own young children, though in
many other respects he is a good and caring father. Her
expectations: "All I want is that he should live at home, return
after work at a respectable hour, have his food and go to sleep.
He should not pick up quarrels or give me trouble. All I want is
peace in the house. I don't want any pyar vyar (love-shove). I
know he cannot do without screwing around and he knows I don't
want to have sex with him. As long as both of us stick to
keeping a peaceful home for our children, he can sleep around
with whoever he likes; but when he returns home, I don't let him
enter the house without a bath, be it summer or winter, so that
all the filth he gathers when outside is not brought inside the
house."
When I asked her whether she would ever consider having a
relationship with another man, she looked at me in total
disbelief, saying: "Why would I behave as stupidly as men
behave?" She is truly proud of her unconditional resolve not to
mess around with men regardless of what her husband does. It is
not as if she is afraid of retaliating in other matters. But,
for her, having sexual relations outside marriage amounts to
losing her own dignity.
Sometimes her views initially seem contradictory and confusing.
For instance, she will start off by explaining her unilateral
commitment to her marriage by saying, "For a woman, her husband
is like a god. No matter how he behaves she is not supposed to
stray. She must stay chaste and steadfast. I, too, touch his
feet and pray that my thali (mangalsutra) stays around my neck
till the day I die. Whether he is good or bad, he is after all
my god." When I remind her how I have heard her abuse him, heard
her tell me about her fights with him and how she refused to cook
for him or talk to him, her answer is disarming. Pointing to the
statues of Ganesh and Krishna in my house, she says: "But I fight
with and abuse those gods as well. When both my brothers were
taken away (one was murdered over a land dispute and another
committed suicide in recent years) I cursed God endlessly. I
said to him _ may you also experience being orphaned like me."
(She was deeply attached to both her brothers and grieves a lot
over their deaths). "I fight with God a lot for giving me so
many troubles even though I am a firm believer."
When I ask her why it is that real god-like behaviour is not
expected of her husband if she is expected to revere him like a
god, I get a response so irreverent, it turns the whole concept
of Sati-Savitri on its head. Maya is no Sati Anasuya who will
carry her leper husband on her back to a prostitute's house at
his bidding. She has learnt to cope with his irresponsible
behaviour because she has a very low opinion of men in general:
"Men are like dogs. They will go around sniffing in every
gutter. (Char nali moonh maar ke hi aayega)." It is part of her
coping strategy that she can think of her husband as a god and at
the same time call him a dog almost in the same breath. As a
"god" she accepts her relative helplessness before him as also
the need to accept him for what he is, as one does with gods.
But in describing him as a dog she seems to be saying that far
from being superior to her, she thinks of him as a species much
lower than herself and, hence, has very low expectations from
him.
Usually, when a woman says her husband is her god, it is assumed
that she is a mental slave, soaked in unhealthy tradition.
However, when you probe deeper, it becomes clear that most women
use this rhetoric as a way to anchor their loyalties to their
marriages, not because they really believe that their husbands
are infallible or deserve unconditional obedience.
Recently, when he broke off from his latest mistress, her
response was equally cynical: "How long can a monkey go on eating
tamarind? (Bandar kitne din khatta khayega) He is bound to come
down on his own. However, when a monkey is climbing up a
tamarind tree and you call him down and say, 'don't do that, this
fruit is no good for you', the monkey will get even more excited
and climb still higher. But if you leave him be, he soon rushes
down when the sour tamarind hurts his teeth."
Even while Maya has a lot of complaints against her husband, she
is proud of the fact that her husband trusts her and believes in
her integrity completely. She tells of many women in her
neighbourhood who are beaten up by suspicious husbands when they
see their wives talking to other men. But in Maya's case, no
matter what time she returns home, no matter who she is seen
talking to, no matter what a gossip-monger might say, her husband
never doubts her fidelity _ a position more secure than even
Sita's. Thus, she has him on a permanent guilt trip. He has
never been able to maintain his sexual fidelity in their
marriage. But she stays faithful unconditionally _ not as a
favour to him, but because her sense of dignity does not allow
her to stoop to his irresponsible, undignified ways or to play
the game by his norms. She despises his norms and his lack of
self restraint and, therefore, will not stoop to his level.
I don't see this resilience as that of someone trapped in an
unhealthy patriarchal ideology. I see this as an attempt by a
woman steeped in her cultural ethos to define her own sexual
mores as a demonstration that she is not living by male-defined
standards. Over the years she has been able to tilt the scales
more and more in her favour. She has been able to persuade her
husband to give up drinking. And she is proud of the respect she
commands. For instance, she says that when she gets angry and
scolds him or even abuses him, he usually listens quietly. In
recent years, his violence against her has decreased
considerably. She gives him hell if he lifts his hand to her.
Maya's deliberate underplaying of her role as a wife and emphasis
on her role as a mother is a strategy Indian women commonly use.
They often move in the direction of suspending the sexual
dimension of their relationship with their husbands, while
retaining the marriage, thus ensuring a measure of security in
the outside world and providing a stable family life for their
children.
Maya lives in a dangerous and poor slum. It is infested with drug
peddlers, sundry criminals, bootleggers, and prostitutes. Her
status as a married woman provides her a measure of security and
safety in this unsafe atmosphere. Yet, so unsafe is the
atmosphere that in the hot summer months she dare not sleep out
in the open with her young daughters. They huddle up in their
jhuggi lest some goondas set upon her or her daughters. But she
is never sexually harassed by any of the men in her community. I
asked her why. Maya's answer was revealing: "They only go after
the loose women. They dare not make a pass at me because they
know I will give them hell." Not too long ago I witnessed what
she meant. A railway employee lives nearby her hut. Maya and
some other women take their regular supply of water from his
courtyard tap. One day he made a pass at her and suggested she
become his mistress. She picked up a broom lying nearby and
threatened to beat him if he dared cast another dirty glance in
her direction. The man never dared again.
Learning to Say 'No'
There is a lot more talk these days of affirmation of women's
sexuality. However, in my view, the key to a dignified life for
women is learning to say "No" to sex when it comes on humiliating
terms. Those who do not know when to reject sex end up far more
messed up than those who can do without sex when it is available
only as part of an unsatisfactory relationship.
Here is an example from a friend's life who went though years of
severe battering by her husband. Describing her predicament, in
those years she told me, "One of the most humiliating things
about our relationship was that I could not resist sex with him
even after he had beaten me black and blue. I got to hate myself
when I found that after giving me a brutal beating along with
awful verbal abuse, he would come to me for sex. As soon as he
touched me to arouse me I would find myself going wet. I know he
despised me for being so easy to manipulate and for desiring sex
on any terms, but I still could not refuse him." She also told
me that it took her so many long years to break out of that
abusive marriage in large part due to her being afraid that she
could not live without regular sex. After she broke out of her
marriage, living without regular sex has been her most serious
problem, leading to one unsatisfactory affair after another.
Disciplining Husbands
While most women in India do not seem to find it hard to
subordinate their sexual needs in order to enhance the well-being
of their children, too many men think providing a stable home for
him and their children is primarily a woman's responsibility and
that men ought to be free for occasional fun. But it is hard for
to realise the point when this little bit of fun on the side
begins to threaten the stability of their marriage. Maya,
despite all her self restraint, was unable to build a happy
conjugal life for herself. But many women I know have been
successful in building stable marriages by maintaining very
strict discipline on themselves as a strategy for keeping their
men on a tight leash.
My friend Reena explains the subtleties of this game very
matter-of-factly. Her marriage is one of the best I know. She
comes from an educated and well-connected middle class Punjabi
family. She married a man of her choice, a high ranking
bureaucrat climbing up the professional ladder very rapidly.
Theirs is a relationship of mutual trust and respect. But she,
too, feels she has to work hard to ensure that she plays an
active role in defining the norms of their marriage.
Reena is well aware that a man of Deepak's status, power, and
good looks would attract any number of women ready for short term
or long term affairs. She is also aware that he likes the
company of attractive women. With his job requiring him to
travel frequently, anything could happen to jeopardise her
marriage. But she has kept Deepak disciplined by imposing a very
strict discipline on herself. For instance, she refuses to drink
alcohol, even though she admits she enjoys the experience, simply
because she wants to keep control over Deepak's drinking. She
feels men tend to use drunkenness as an excuse for many of their
indiscretions. When they go to parties together, she refuses to
dance with anyone other than Deepak. Even though she does not
forbid Deepak from dancing with other women, she knows her
refraining from dancing with anyone else makes Deepak feel guilty
and rush back to her after a dance. It is not that she that she
considers western dancing immoral. She simply recognises its
potential threat for it provides an opportunity for male female
closeness in a manner that may become the prelude to sexual
involvement. Close physical proximity creates a whole chain
reaction which, in her view, is better kept under check from the
start. Even when they went to live in Europe for several years
she did not change the rules for herself, even at the cost of
being considered a prude.
Committed as she is to her marriage, Deepak, and their happy
family, she says openly that she sees her own sexual restraint as
a device for keeping her husband under check because he, like
most men, might stray when tempted. She has already had a heart
breaking experience early in life. She was deeply in love with
one of her childhood friends. The relationship was built over
10-12 years and she believed he was as committed to it as she
was. After his engineering degree he got a job in the U.S.
Before he left, they got engaged. He was expected to come back,
get married and take her with him. However, within no time he
got involved with some American woman and broke off the
engagement rather crudely, leaving her in a severe emotional
truama. Her opinion of men is not every high even though she has
a very good relationship with her husband: "Men are the same
everywhere. They have few scruples. Society stays sane only
when women set the rules." She too, like Maya (in almost the
same words), says that even if her husband began having affairs,
she would not stoop to having affairs of her own. She is certain
that his guilt would make him so miserable, he could not continue
with it for long without breaking down himself.
I am not holding up Reena or Maya as role models but simply
showing how women's strategies for building a stable family life
often make sexual needs subservient to other requirements women
consider more important.
Children as Allies
Promila comes from a fairly well-off middle class family from
Punjab. At the age of 19 she was married into the Batra family
who run a business in the walled city of Delhi.
Soon after her marriage, Promila came to know that her husband,
was involved with and had wanted to marry some other woman before
their marriage, and that he was still continuing his relationship
with that woman.
About three years after her marriage, Dinesh started a business
independent from his father's and began to make a lot of money.
Whereas earlier the couple used to get no more than Rs 200 as
pocket money from her father-in-law, Dinesh was now earning Rs
15,000-20,000 per day. With that came bad company _ gambling,
liquor and drugs. (By now Promila had given birth to a son and a
daughter). He began spending the money as swiftly as it was
earned. If Promila resisted Dinesh's ways, she would be thrashed
and abused. For years she tried to help Dinesh get treatment for
his addictions. But as soon as he would return from the hospital
and meet his old buddies, he would go back to his old habits. In
the early years, Promila tried to get her parents to intervene,
and to get other relatives to put pressure on her husband. When
none of that worked, she finally simply refused to let Dinesh
into the flat. She told her parents-in-law, who live on the
ground floor of the same house, that their son was their
responsibility while her priority was to protect her two children
from the influence of such an irresponsible father.
Promila is in the prime of her life. She is 35 and good looking.
Since her husband's health and mental balance have been
completely lost because of excessive drug abuse, he is no longer
able to run his business. She gets an allowance of Rs 5,000 from
her in-laws to run the house but that is not sufficient to meet
the needs of her two growing children. Some three to fouryears
ago, she met a man at a hospital she had taken her husband to for
treatment. They became friends and he adopted her as a sister
and eventually offered her a business partnership even though she
had no previous experience. She was provided with a company car
and a handsome, regular income. This upset both her husband and
her in-laws. They began to accuse her of carrying on an affair
with her "bhaiyya". She stoutly denies all such charges and
insists she would "never do such a thing". I, for one, could not
see why, if she so desired, she would deny herself a relationship
with a man who had been so supportive of her and helped her back
on her feet again. Undoubtedly she is emotionally attached to
him, but insists her feelings are "sisterly".
Her reasoning for ruling out a romantic or sexual involvement
with the man is: "My children will not respect me if I do such a
thing" But doesn't she need sex and all that goes with a
man-woman relationship _ especially considering that the
relationship with her husband broke down more than a decade ago
when she was in her early 20s and that since then beatings,
fights and character assassination have constituted her conjugal
life? Her firm answer: "My children need emotional security more
than I need sex or romance. They already have no respect or
trust in their father. If they lose their respect for me, if
they stop feeling secure with me, they will have no emotional
anchor left." Indeed both her children are devoted to her. Even
though they are only in their teens, they are beginning to form a
protective ring around their mother to defend her from her
husband and in-laws. It is indeed likely that if she were to
become sexually involved with another man or get remarried, she
could not count upon her children as her strongest allies _ an
alliance likely to be much stronger and last longer than her
relationships with her own parents and brothers.
Mothers Vs. Wives
Most Indian women, even when their marriages are good, depend
much more on their children for emotional sustenance than they do
on their husbands. They recognise that to enter into a sexual
relation with a man is to enter into a power relation.
Relationships with children are considered far more dependable,
enduring, and fulfilling. This may be related to the fact that
while as a wife, a woman is expected to serve and surrender, as a
mother she is allowed the right to both nurture and dominate and
is supposed to be venerated unconditionally. She can expect
obedience, love, and seva (service) from her children, especially
sons, even after they grow up. Unconditional giving brings in
its own ample rewards. In her role as a mother she is culturally
far more glorified.
As Sudhir Kakar puts it in his discussion on the Ram-Sita
relationship: for an Indian woman, motherhood brings not only
personal fulfillment but is an event in which "the culture
confirms her status as a renewer of the race, and extends to her
a respect and consideration which were not accorded to her as a
mere wife.... it is through their children's instrumentality that
the injustice done to the mothers is redressed and they assume
their rightful place as queens."6 This theme recurs in many
Indian legends and tales: "Thus Ram repents and is ready to take
Sita back from her exile in the forest after he sees his sons for
the first time. Dushyanta remembers and accepts Shakuntala as
his legitimate wife after he comes face to face with his infant
son."7
Even though not all present day Indian women succeed in getting
their rightful due with the help of their young children, Indian
women are frequently able to rely on their children after they
grow up to settle scores with husbands or in-laws who may have
maltreated them during the early years of marriage. Without
doubt "a Hindu woman's `motherliness' ....is a relatively more
inclusive element of her identity formation than it is among
western women. Given her early training and ideals of femininity
held up to her, motherhood does not have connotations of cultural
imposition or a confinement in an isolating role."8 That is why,
when necessary, she is often able to suppress many of her other
needs as a woman, especially her sexual needs, without there
being too many harmful effects on her personality.
Opting for Sexual Freedom
In direct contrast to Maya and Promila is Sunanda. She lives in
a basti (neighbourhood) similar to Maya's but is from a north
Indian community. She also works as a domestic in one of the
South Delhi colonies. Though much younger than Maya, she looks
wasted and rather disoriented. I came to know her some 15 years
ago when she was in her early twenties. She was then a very
vivacious and attractive woman. At that time she was married to
someone who beat her frequently. Many of their quarrels would
start over her not being at home when he returned in the evening
and his suspicion that she flirted with other men. One day she
left her two-year-old daughter and ran away with a truck driver
from another community. However, the beatings did not stop in
her new home _ if anything, they increased. This man encouraged
her to join him in drinking because he told her sex was much more
fun when both partners drop their inhibitions under the influence
of liquor. Within the first year of their living together he
squandered the money she had saved over the years in the form of
some gold jewellery. She got into the liquor habit willingly
because she says she had never before enjoyed sex as much as she
did with this boisterous truck-driver. Even his beatings seemed
less hurtful because he was not as sexually dull as her first
husband.
However, when she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and found
it difficult to have sex, he became enraged, beat her up and
forced her to submit regardless of how painful intercourse was
for her. His reasoning was: "I brought you here for fun, not to
produce babies." On several nights during the last month of her
pregnancy, he would bring another woman into their jhuggi _ often
a prostitute _ get drunk with her, abuse or even beat up Sunanda
for protesting, and have sex with the other woman right in front
of Sunanda. Perhaps due to all the beatings and stress she gave
birth to a premature baby girl who died within days of delivery.
Since Sunanda was too weak for boisterous sex and unable to work
and earn money, her truckdriving lover beat her out of his house.
She returned to her biradari's basti (kinfolk's neighbourhood)
but had nowhere to live.
Her husband had in the meantime married another woman. Her
widowed mother in the village could not support her. In any
case, going back to the village would mean living without a
source of income. Neither of her two brothers were willing to
keep her in their homes because she had "shamed" the family by
running away with a man of another community. Her sisters-in-law
were both hostile and abusive, but one of them agreed to give her
temporary shelter when she offered her the one pair of gold
earrings she had left and the promise of Rs 250 a month from what
she earned.
But now she was treated as a freely available woman by the men in
the basti. She had three affairs in quick succession which
caused nasty fights with her brothers and their wives. Finally
she moved in with one of the notorious goondas of the basti who
had a wife and family, but also had the money to maintain her as
a mistress and provide her with a separate jhuggi. But for him
it wasn't just a sexual partnership. He made her join his very
flourishing business of brewing illicit liquor. He required that
she agree to make herself occasionally available to the local
policemen as a sexual bribe. If she protested, he beat her up
saying that she is hardly a Sita-Savitri to be acting so coy.
Today she is one of the most hated women in the basti. Since
many of their husbands have regular dealings with her on account
of her involvement in the liquor business, the women are very
hostile to her and have big abusive battles with her.
Women vs Women
Women who are promiscuous provoke fear and hostility in other
women rather than inspire them as symbols of freedom. That is
because most women live in fear of their men straying: "Men are
men. They will always run after sex" is how they describe men's
tendency towards promiscuity over which they can exercise only
limited control. But married women fear and despise those women
who make it easy for their men to be promiscuous by being easily
available. Among my own women friends, the few who behave in
sexually liberated ways _ that is those who are willing to have
sex whenever and with whichever man they feel attracted to, or
have no qualms about having sexual affairs with any number of men
_ are generally hated by other women in theirsocial circle for
good reasons. They have jeopardised many a marriage and stable
relationship.
Interestingly, I have also observed that almost all of the
liberated women I know are fiercely jealous and aggressive when
it comes to the man they are currently involved with _ for
however long or short a period their attachment lasts. Women who
consider being sexually attractive to men a very high priority in
life, tend to be fiercely competitive and very mistrustful of
other women. One of my close woman friends who has had countless
affairs with engaged and married men takes no time to drop a
female friend if she finds the man she is currently interested in
is paying the slightest bit of attention to her friend. I
personally have been able to retain her friendship only by making
sure that I avoid meeting her in the company of men she is
interested in. On the few occasions we have met in the presence
of any of her current boyfriends, she has been so jumpy and
nervous, I have had to put in all the effort at my command to
remain totally focused on her, while avoiding conversation with
her male companion so she could be assured that I was not
competing with her for his attention. Despite all of this
effort, her insecurity remains strong. She speaks of other
women, especially if they are young and attractive, in the most
disparaging terms and trusts virtually none of her female friends
and acquaintances.
Relationships of trust between women are not possible if a woman
cannot trust other women to respect her marriage or romantic
relationship. A woman cannot have close relationships with other
women if she cannot feel secure that at least her own friends or
sisters will not steal her husband or boyfriend. If women are
forever insecure about each other, if they are forever competing
for male sexual attention, they are bound to hate and mistrust
each other. This makes them self-hating as women, more
dependent on men and, hence, more vulnerable.
This is not just true in a relatively conservative society like
ours, but is even more true in the supposedly sexually liberated
societies. My American friends tell me that, usually, as soon as
a woman's marriage breaks down, hersocial circle shrinks
dramatically. Most of her married friends and acquaintances will
exclude her from their social gatherings because they are afraid
of her trying to grab one of their husbands. Single women find
it hard to have a close social relationship with married couples
and are expected to socialise mostly among singles where they are
free to pick and choose partners without jeopardising other
women's marriages.
Among my friends who were sexually "liberated" there is not one
who has built a satisfactory personal life. I recall two cases
in particular. During my university days my friend Smita was the
most westernised and unconventional of us all in every respect.
She had spent a good part of her student years in Europe. An
extremely good hearted and generous friend, she believed sexual
desire was no different from physical hunger and, therefore, you
should have sex whenever you feel the urge and with whomever you
felt attracted to. She was one of the few women I knew who was
perfectly honest and open about it and had the courage to
proposition a man in so many words, whenever she felt sexually
attracted to him. A number of our fellow students had sexual
relations with her for brief periods. She was neither possessive
nor wished to be "possessed" by any one man. But over the years
I saw her become embittered over the fact that many of her male
friends used her as a stop-gap between one steady affair and
another, or someone to have a little bit of free fun with till
they found someone in whom they were really interested. Even
though most of her friends _ male and female _ liked her for her
honesty, she could see she was not taken seriously and that the
men she got involved with did not really respect her. By the
time she began to feel the need for a steady and stable emotional
relationship and became dissatisfied with casual sexual
encounters, none of the men in her vast social circle were
willing to consider her as a fit candidate for an enduring
relationship. She is today far from being an inspiring symbol of
liberated womanhood. Most of her friends feel sympathy and pity
for her.
Competing with Men
Equally pathetic has been the case of my friend, Veena. She
married Rakesh after a fairly long courtship and affair. Both of
them were part of university left radical circles and resolved to
have a marriage which did not tie either of them down. In the
early years of her marriage Veena found it a very heady idea that
both of them could exercise the freedom to have relationships
outside marriage. However, when she gave birth to two children
in quick succession, the relationship began to change
dramatically. While Veena was stuck in the house nursing babies,
Rakesh continued to have his flings. Now it began to hurt. But
if she protested she was given a high sounding sermon on her
"bourgeois" tendencies, of trying to treat another human being as
property, and, on resenting his freedom. She had to learn "not
to feel jealous." After much heartache and argument they came to
an agreement that while they would keep the marriage going for
their own sake as well as for the sake of their children, neither
of them would object to the other one having affairs. She really
sees herself as another Simone de Beauvoir and claims hers is a
good liberated marriage and they both understand each other.
During the next few years, Veena, too, went on a competitive
binge and got involved with one man after another. But it became
increasingly difficult for her to find meaningful relationships
as she began to age. For one thing, only married men were
available to pick and choose from. Because of this, most of them
wanted only clandestine sex rather then open and free
relationships for fear of their own wives finding out. However,
for her husband there were no such limitations. He is a fabulous
earner in a position of power working for a multinational. For a
man of his status and good looks, getting young, unmarried women
is no big deal. A touch of silver in his hair only adds to his
glamour whereas Veena, who has greyed and become fat, has found
that it has become harder and harder for her to get men
interested in her. The more interest she shows in men, the more
they play hard to get. She is forever on the lookout for a
meaningful relationship. Apart from wanting an emotional anchor,
she wants a man she can claim to be in love with just to prove to
her husband that she can also succeed at this game. But it is
becoming harder and harder to win. Now I constantly hear her
complain that while Rakesh continues to have "a good time", she
is condemned to repeated rejections and sexual frustration.
A Losing Game
I am convinced that women cannot win if they play the game by
men's rules. Men's capacity for irresponsible sex is relatively
unlimited partly because nature has made it possible for men to
escape most of the possible consequences of sexual encounters.
Moreover, as power relations go in today's world, men, especially
if they are rich and in positions of power, can easily get young
women for sex or for marriage. However, in most cultures and
societies, women find it harder and harder to get men sexually
interested in them once they are past their youth. This is one
of the reasons it is much more in women's long term interests to
bring about a measure of sexual restraint in men, to teach them
to take emotional responsibility for their sexual partners,
rather than for women to adopt a competitive approach emulating
men's casual approach to sex. The 'I am free to have sex with
who I please, when I please' approach may sound radical and
liberating in theory, but in actual fact it works out to be
patently harmful for women in the long run, especially after the
birth of children.
Women in a nuclear family set up have found it particularly hard
raising children in the absence of stable relationships with the
men who have fathered those children. Even in the West where
remarriage and step-parents are so frequent as to be routine,
there is glaring evidence that children become resentful,
insecure and even traumatised when they see their parents have
multiple sexual relations or bring home new sexual partners in
close succession, especially since fierce nuclearisation of the
family has denied them the nurturance and support of
grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives.
Stable family life plays a far more important role in the healthy
development and well-being of children than material luxuries.
In a nuclear family set up no matter how much the two parents
care for their children, they cannot provide emotional security
to them if their own relationship is not stable, if either or
both of them are carrying on affairs outside of their marriage,
and if both of them feel they are free (or ought to be free) to
walk out of their marriage as and when they please. Sexual
loyalty and restraint are indeed a precondition for the stability
of a nuclear family.
Extended Family Buffers
It is perhaps only in matrilineal communities with their complex
extended family system that women have been able to excercise a
large measure of sexual freedom without having disastrous
consequences for children. For instance, in the maramakuttayam
system which prevailed in Kerala till a few decades ago, women
stayed with their own families even after entering into a
marriage or regular sexual relationship with a man. A husband
merely had visiting rights in the wife's family home. Children
belonged to the matrilineal joint family called the tarwad and
enjoyed inalienable inheritance rights in the mother's tarwad.
A woman was free to terminate her relationship with her
husband/lover any time she pleased by merely placing his slippers
outside the door as a symbol that she wanted him out of her life.
The brother-sister relationship was far more important than the
conjugal tie on account of the siblings being members of the same
tarwad. Consequently, maternal uncles played a far more
important role in the lives of children than their own father.
In such a large extended family, children got emotional security
and nurturance from a large variety of relatives and were not so
dependent on their biological parents, least of all their
fathers, as in a nuclear family. Therefore, the comings and
goings of men in their mother's life were not a source of much
disturbance and anxiety for the children.
This is not to project the marumakattayam system as an ideal to
be nostalgically revived. It had many problems of its own. For
example, this arrangement of visiting husbands could not have
been very fair on Namboodri women who lived in patrilineal
families while their men were free to have relations with Nair
women and raise parallel families with them while taking little
responsibility for the latter. I give this example merely to
point out that exercising sexual freedom in a nuclear family set
up causes far greater damage to children as well as to women's
emotional stability whereas certain kinds of extended families
act as buffers.
However, too many of the votaries of women's liberation seem
simultaneously enamoured with nuclear families and the supremacy
of the conjugal tie, to the exclusion of other relationships.
They see any kind of extended family situation, including those
that provided valuable support to women, as an encroachment on
their personal freedom.
Nuclear families may look liberating on the surface but they put
an excessively heavy load on women for the raising of children
and maintaining a stable family life. In societies where the
man-woman relationship and the nuclear family have come to occupy
the central place in people's personal and emotional lives, at
the expense of other relationships, women's emotional lives tend
to become far more fragile and excercising sexual as well as
other types of freedom becomes a high risk venture.
By contrast, supposedly traditional Indian women rooted in the
extended family tend to be far more resilient because they do not
put all their energy into being sexually attractive to men.
Thus, they avoid letting men play too large a role in determining
their self view. Consequently, they seem to have a stronger
sense of self definition as well as of the special requirements
of womanhood. They can more easily cope with emotional
incompatibility and other kinds of stress in their conjugal
relationship because they invest their emotions across a whole
range of relationships within the family _ parents, in-laws,
sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews, and especially, among
their own children who usually occupy a far more important place
in their considerations than husbands. Since today most women
live in patrilineal families, which demand of women sexual
loyalty and restraint as a pre-condition for a stable family
life, they try to stick to the rules of the game far more
determinedly than men.
It is over simplistic to interpret their opting for sexual
restraint merely as proof of their subjugation to "patriarchal
norms" as is often done in feminist literature. I see it as an
effective though costly strategy to win over the sympathy and
support of the rest of the family, which can by its disapproval
of men's irresponsible sexual behaviour excercise a large measure
of restraint on them, thereby bringing about a slow but definite
shift in the power balance somewhat in a woman's direction. This
is not my idea of an ideal situation if we subject it to the test
of attaining full freedom and equality for women. But then we
are not living in an ideal world.
The names and some details regarding the people mentioned in this
article have been changed to ensure anonymity.
References
Madhu Kishwar
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