Posted:
There were no winners in yesterday's episode - not Shireen nor Dilshaad nor Razia nor Haseena nor womankind. With the language they used to demean one another "chhodi gayi" and "doosri" they basically managed to undermine the status of women everywhere.
The man behind it all, as usual, got away scot-free. But the women dishonoured themselves. Their thinking is wrong, not just flawed, but morally wrong. By uttering and reacting to those insults they gave further credibility to those who see women as a man's property. They supported the view of parts of the society that women have no identity or standing of their own minus men.
This flawed view is despite the very real fact that Dilshaad has visibly achieved so much in her life on her own. She was the breadwinner of her family for seventeen years, and brought up two children successfully. That is no small achievement.
And inspite of her "second wife" insecurity, no doubt kept festering by Raashid's emotional unavailability and Razia's taunts, Shireen has achieved the love and trust of her children. That is no mean achievement either.
But instead of celebrating their meaningful lives, they, Razia and Haseena, and all the women and men who did not intervene in the fight yesterday, continue to see themselves, their achievements and the achievements of women in general as secondary to their status as wife or ex-wife. Dilshaad did not deign to accord the insult to her as "wife" with any response. That was wrong. The CVs should have found a way for her to rise above patriarchial labels and stress her achievements. But perhaps they thought, it would have alienated a largely home-maker audience. They must have also assumed that women can not celebrate the achievements of other women in any other sphere without feeling threatened. Very divisive thinking, if that is true! Perhaps it wasn't dramatic enough and no doubt such a response from Dilshaad would not move the plot of the serial forward.
Whatever the consideration, by allowing those insults to be uttered and not negated immediately, the CVs have added their voice to the regressive view that a woman's successes must be relative to her acceptance or rejection by a man. The damage that is inflicted by reinforcing this view of women as a function of men is insidious, but all the more enduring for it.
