On World Mental Health Day, the Health Minister of Karnataka Dr K Sudhakar made a statement that has ruffled a lot of feathers. He was speaking at NIMHANS, Bengaluru where he spoke about the stress of modern lifestyles, their deleterious impacts on health, and the reasons behind this as he understood it.
Stress management is an art he says in this short clip. Yoga, meditation and pranayama are great tools to combat this. There could be some inaccuracies about the ‘thousands of years back’ claim but yoga, meditation and pranayama have in fact been seen to effectively combat stress. Fine so far.
And then the health minister goes on to speak about how the choices that women make are threatening our society. He also uses that old trope about it all being western influence that is somehow ‘corrupting’ Indian women; how modernity is somehow antithetical to the Indian ethos.
After the backlash that the minister's statement prompted, he issued a ‘clarification’ that he was defending family values. He said that his words had been taken out of context. However, his clarification also reiterated the same thing – that he believes that the joint family system is the solution to modern-day problems. His original statement as well as his clarification both seem to point to his belief that women and their choices are responsible for society's increasing stress levels.
It has always struck me, that it is women who are supposed to ‘keep the family together’, or protect /uphold ‘family honour’ (whatever that means) and follow tradition and so on. Also notice that while large proportions of women wear traditional Indian clothing such as the saree, we rarely see Indian men in traditional Indian clothing. The minister himself is wearing a shirt, whereas his female counterpart at such an event would definitely not be wearing ‘western’ clothing.
It is only women who have to change their names after marriage; men do not. Women sport all the symbols of matrimony: the sindoor, mangalsutra, chooda etc – men do not. Women will leave the homes and families they were born into and accept and serve families they marry into. It is the woman who is expected to dutifully serve the parents and the family of her husband, regardless of how she is treated in her marital home.
Women’s choices are routinely restricted in favour of so-called family values – she will study, work only if the family needs and permits. This term ‘family values’ is profoundly patriarchal, because it actually robs women of their choices in the guise of the ‘greater good’ of society. This regressive thinking constantly calls upon women to sacrifice their own dreams and to prioritise the family’s needs over their own. This is expected even at the cost of a woman's own health and wellbeing.
Why are the Minister – and so many others – perturbed with the idea of women not marrying and producing children? Surely a woman who wants to stay single will be happier as a single woman than if she is forced to getting married by parents and/or societal expectations? Surely she will be less stressed if she can make her own choices and is in control of her own destiny? Or do the stress levels of women not matter in the minister’s scheme of things?
There is another flaw in his argument. The minister seems very worried about the wellbeing of parents in their old age. So why should he mind if some women choose not to marry because they worry about the wellbeing of their own parents? In the world view of the minister, women should marry and become a part of their husband’s joint family --- doesn’t that leave her own parents vulnerable? If a woman decides not to marry so that she can look after her parents in their twilight years, that would be a solution for social stress, right?
All in all, the ‘health’ minister seems to be saying that if a woman decides to make her own choices and chart her own course ---- she must be a terrible, terrible person who will bring ruin to her family and to society at large! His mindset seems to be stuck in a bygone era – where women are blamed for basically everything that goes wrong in society.
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