Can society stop brainwashing women against their bahus and let them be friends?

Control your daughter-in-law, she roams around the colony wearing jeans. She always has a comeback ready during any argument. We have never seen her do any work around the house, you are spoiling her. Look at the way she has got your son wrapped around her pinky. Numerous women are told such things either in hushed voices, behind the backs of their bahus, or openly, on the dinner table, with no efforts made to hide the intention to fuel animosity between the two.

Society has long insisted on controlling the lives of women- from what they wear to what they eat. Even today women and girls have to fight tooth and nail for things as basic as the right to education, have their consent for sex valued and the right to marry a person of their choice and live life-based on their sensibilities. Before marriage, it is their parents and family that police all their life choices, after marriage, the onus falls on their matrimonial family. What is amusing though, is the fact that it is women of the household, especially mothers-in-law, who are expected to keep bahus in line and police their lives as per the customs of the family.

A woman has spent most of her life appeasing people who value orthodox beliefs more than a person's wellness is expected to rush another woman into a similar ordeal. She must tell her bahu to stop dressing a certain way, to be polite even when she is spoken to harshly, to tire herself out performing household chores and to always walk a step behind her husband. But it is high time women put their foot down and refuse to interfere in the lives of their bahus. Women need to be each others support system and not a cog in the wheel of patriarchy whose only aim is to crush dreams and roll out any liberal outlook that a woman might carry into her marriage.

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The saas-bahu relationship in India is marred by a tussle for control because society conditions women to see each other as rivals. It is your word against mine, your decisions against mine. Thus instead of becoming each other's support system, women end up harbouring animosity in this relationship for each other and that needs to change now. A saas and bahu can be so much to each other- a helping hand, friends, a shoulder to cry on, a guide on issues that are beyond one's expertise, and a bank of experience from which the other person can draw as and when needed.

While women need to make an effort on their part to ensure that their relationship with their daughters-in-law is not marred by long-held stereotypes, society needs to stop meddling as well. There is no need for anyone to encourage a woman to control or police her bahu's life. One of the pillars of a symbiotic relationship is knowing your boundaries and focussing more on encouraging each other rather than peddling discouragement. If given a chance, all women can find more in their relationship with their bahus than a sense of bitterness and resentment.

Views expressed are the author's own.