Daughter-In-Law = Housemaid?! Do We Really Need A Court To Spell Out That This Won’t Do?

A daughter in law is often treated like an unpaid maid, even among educated people. Does it need the Supreme Court of India to force mindset change?

In May 2016, the Supreme Court of India commented on this social problem while upholding the sentence of a man convicted of serious domestic abuse, leading to the suicide of his wife. Read the full story here.

Quoting from the news: “A daughter-in-law is to be treated as a member of the family with warmth and affection and not as a stranger with respectable and ignoble indifference. She should not be treated as a house maid. No impression should be given that she can be thrown out of her matrimonial home at any time,” a bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said.

Reading the news,

• Women and hopefully few men too were happy to see the statement. Something they wanted to scream and say to their parents/in-laws was now out in open. They must have folded the paper with this news at top so that it could be read by their parents or in laws.
• People identified with the concern Supreme Court expressed. The news was religiously shared on social media for the public who uses social media sites as their news source.
• As for me, the news at first amused me, then disturbed me, and then I felt ashamed.

The highest court of India had to guide millions of Indians on the way to behave with their daughter in law. Do we need to tell people, is it not obvious?

As obvious as the values we received in our moral science class?

• YOU should respect your elders
• YOU should never cheat
• YOU should help people in need
• YOU should never make derogatory remarks about someone.

Or as obvious as the lessons a girl is bestowed with when she is about to marry?

• YOU should always stand beside your husband and help him grow
• YOU should treat his parents as your own
• YOU should accept the new family wholeheartedly.

Sadly, the reported facts of India tell a different story, and hence the aforementioned statement from the court. If read by the intended audience it would deter them from treating their daughters-in-law badly, hopefully!

For the future generation, I think we need to also include the following in the moral sciences lectures:

• Treat your daughter in law with dignity
• She is not a maid
• She is a living & breathing human being.

Hopefully, in the future generations the facts and figures would be different.

Published here earlier.

Image source: shutterstock

Smita Sarda

A software engineer ,who loves to travel.A writer by heart.

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