My Grandmother’s Memories: Breaking The Silence
by Rita Banerji
My grandmother’s story is perhaps the story of thousands of Indian women even today. As a vivacious, young woman, she had attended college more than 73 years ago, at a time when most Indian women, even in the middle and upper classes were illiterate. She dreamed of becoming a lawyer someday, like her father. Even now she fondly recalls how in college she had played the role of Portia (who takes on the disguise of a male lawyer to save a friend’s life), in Shakespeare’s, The Merchant of Venice. But my grandmother never got to be Portia in real life.
She was soon forced to marry a man that her family considered to be a good match for her — an engineer, who had just returned from England, and had his own flourishing firm. However he did not appeal to her and she made that clear from the start. But her wishes and desires were of little consequence, and she was pressurized into the marriage. It was not just a marriage that was the equivalent of rape, but for more than 50 years she also had to endure terrible emotional and physical violence.
The first time that my grandfather had slapped her, she had turned around and walked out of the house just as she was — barefeet and in her dressing gown. She walked that way right across town, back to her parents’ house, and refused to return to her husband. It is something that women in the middle and upper-classes in India simply did not do! And still don’t. For a society that places the highest premium on “a family’s reputation” — the pressure is that much more on women in the educated and elite sections to remain silent, and return to their marriages to keep up social appearances. In the end that is what my grandmother too had to do.
I look around, among the middle and upper educated classes in India, and see my grandmother’s story repeating over and over again, even today!! How do these women endure the betrayal of their own parents, snuffing out their dreams and forcing them into unions that are nothing more than rape? How and why do they endure the continuing violence — and a society that remains blind and indifferent to the injustices of their lives, while it continues to exalt marriage and traditions as it supreme altars? Why, when they are educated and working, do these women not break their silence; break the tradition of enduring torture in the name of family and honor? These were my reasons for writing ‘My Grandmother’s Memories.’ Read the article ‘My Grandmother’s Memories’ here in The Wordworth Magazine (click on Columns).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rita Banerji is an author and founder of The 50 Million Missing Campaign. The research for her book Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies (Penguin 2009), provided the impetus for the founding of this campaign. To know more about visit her website www.ritabanerji.com
thanks for that story… yes, there is a lot to do on the way to women’s liberation – in many countries …
Dear Rita,
What you say is correct. We are so much consumed with issues involving children, cooking, etc… that we forget to live and stand up for ourselves. Why mothers dont teach sons respect the girls and teach them to cook and clean the house as much as they make girls do? In this modern world girls are equally educated and get jobs like boys. They have started to earn and share the financial burden like men but the household chores are not shared by the men.
In marriage even educated men and women dont put a stop to dowry. Why…?
Once a girl is married, her life revolves around her husband and in-laws and children while husbands do so. Am trying to find out why this is happening to Indian women… Hope I will understand before it is too late.
Cynthia
Rita,
Thank you for sharing your grandmother’s heartbreaking story. You are so right. The voices and stories of these women need to be heard until people start to realize that not all traditions are worth keeping.
My mother is from Colombia, and in my own family, there are many sad stories of injustice against women. Daughters were taught to do domestic work day and night to please the males in the family; sons were taught to feel entitled in every way. My mother learned how to iron handkerchiefs at the age of 4! Some of the women were abused by their male cousins or husbands, and instead of supporting them, they were shamed and practically abandoned by their parents and siblings. Although things are improving, it is still a male dominated culture in many ways.
The struggle continues in many parts of the world. I want to share a song by an artist from Burkina Faso. There is a movement there by the younger generation to speak out against arranged/forced marriage. In this song, she says that she will marry the man her parents have chosen for her in order to obey them, but reminds them that a marriage without love is a life of pain and sorrow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScExJt5LSKU
This is important work!! In solidarity,
Melanie
Thank you Melanie! The right link is in now
We hope that women will soon learn to sing that they won’t marry to please their parents. That it is their body and no one has the right to control it or subjugate it to their will in any way.