Posted:
I have been feeling this for a long time, and quite frankly, I feel that though Bhairon is portrayed as righteous and truthful and just and fair and all that blah blah blah blah blah...
I really feel that he uses anandi as his pawn to carry out his own decisions and she somehow is a proxy for him. He manipulates her.
The first instance i can remember is making anandi the go-between for the funding issues between him and jagya. I feel that if he wanted to fund jagya there was no need to bring anandi in the middle. Conversely, if he did not want to fund jagya, then he should have just said no. However, he keeps his conscience clear by saying "maine bete se naata tod diya" to delude himself into believing that he is on the side of right and truth and just and fair ... but then keeps an escape hatch open through anandi as the frontman for the money.
The second instance is this most recent manipulation of having her give the justice decision ...when any other member of the panchayat would have sufficed to do this justice. It is more like he had some kind of proxy war going on (undercurrent, not explicit) with Bhairon so he used anandi as his proxy by telling her to take her position as sarpanch. He was the one who felt it was unfair ... and the matter could easily have been resolved by bhairon paying the one month's salary quietly. But nooo... Bhairon gave a speech on justice and truth and all that.
Yet, if he felt that anandi has to do the right thing, he should have forced her to take action against jagya in the panchayat or the legal system. While people may say that he was speaking to anandi now in her professional capacity as a sarpanch ... and the jagya issue was anandi's personal matter... I really feel that ethics are ethics, and values are values, and principles are principles.
What is the difference between personal and professional really? Are they not in alignment?
How can one have two different value systems?
If a person is honest with money at home, they dont embezzle money from the office.
If a person steals money from his mother's purse, then he wont hesitate to embezzle money from the office either.
The value system doesnt differ.
Could the arjun and krishna speech not have the same applicability in anandi's personal situation as well?
But no, Bhairon is an escapist as far as his son is concerned. So he took anandi's kasam.
He took her to the lawyer to soothe his guilty conscience, but i am sure there were many legal options available to him as well to punish jagya without anandi filing a case. There are so many illiterate women in indian villages who sit at home with ghunghats and who are very docile and quiet who might not be able to go to court on their own.
I highly doubt that the supreme court puts the entire onus on only the wife (aggrieved party) to file a case. There has to be some option for a male elder in the family to file a case on a young girl's behalf.
The point is that Bhairon goes this far and then something happens, and he bails out and either manipulates anandi to take a decision or uses her in some proxy capacity.
I have ceased to respect him for some time. I feel that actions speak louder than words...and that his righteous words have no meaning when compared to his actions that conflict them.
Anupamaa
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