Can IIT-BHU Also Design Course For Grooms & Would-Be In-Laws?

IIT-BHU (Banaras Hindu University) is developing a three-month crash course to help new brides adjust into matrimony. According to Deccan Herald, this course supposedly prepares women to make adjustments and de al with situations that emerge after marriage. The course is designed to train girls in improving self-confidence and impart inter-personal skills that help in dealing with members of the new family in addition to problem solving skills, stress handling and computer skills.

Perhaps they will also use scripts of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii as textbooks. Are they also planning special guest lectures from centenarian grandmas on how not to talk back to your mother-in-law? Or maybe a course on how keep that pallu from falling off your head, while you do daily chores of your household and look at your graduate degree with a sigh big enough to change the course of monsoon.

Don’t teach girls that they have a duty to adjust

Adjustment is certainly one of the many words which comes to one’s mind when we think of marriage

But this word mostly comes when we think from a bride’s perspective. Since she is considered to be the secondary gender in our society, a woman must accept her inferior position in matrimony and bow down to numerous dictates laid down for her.  Also, adjustment doesn’t mean which side of the bed you will be sleeping on, or what chair you would occupy at the dining table. It means wiping off your pre-matrimony way of life. After that, you code your brain with the norms, rules and workings of a new household (hence, the computer training, I guess.) It basically means subservience in every possible aspect of your life.

SOME TAKEAWAYS-

• IIT in the Banaras Hindu University is rolling out a three-month crash course to coach new brides on adjusting into married life.
• The course is designed to train girls in improving self-confidence, inter-personal skills, problem solving skills, stress handling and computer skills.
• Which basically means training girls into being subservient in every possible aspect of their married lives.
• What we need instead are courses which could educate families and men on equality and empathy towards women.

From letting your husband take your consent in bed for granted always, to tuning every body-movement according to rules of the matrimonial household. These rules could be as benign as sitting down for a meal after men have finished theirs, to as demeaning as not stepping out of the house without permission from the elders. It could mean trading household chores for a well-paying job. Or keeping mum if your husband or in-laws mistreat you mentally or physically.

Adjust is a small word, but it weighs a lot on shoulders of women. Because the task of adjusting in a marriage majorly falls on one person here

But despite knowing all this, why do people still uphold adjustment on part of brides to be the key to successful marriages? Why are we not teaching boys to become better husbands? Why don’t we tell conservative families to stop taking away liberty and individual identity from their daughters-in-law in the name of traditions?

We don’t need any courses to develop “problem-solving skills” or “stress-handling”. But we do need courses which could educate families and men on equality and empathy towards women. Because when a marriage is founded on cornerstones of equality, there is lesser stress to handle or problems to solve. But for that to happen, our society, including IIT-BHU, will have to first accept there is a problem with the way marriages unfold in our country. That wives deserve more respect and adjustment from husbands and in-laws in Indian marriages. Perhaps we should start with a course which helps you address the elephant in the room then.

(Pic by MyAdvo.in)

Also Read: The Indian Marriage Market And Its Obsession For Beautiful Brides

Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section.  The views expressed are the author’s own.