What actions should HR and business leaders take to curb mental harassment at work? Share your thoughts.
A matrimonial app is circulating slyly on family and friend WhatsApp groups for 'finding your partner in your caste' and uses fear tactics aimed at women to do its work. Ugh.
A matrimonial app is circulating slyly on family and friend WhatsApp groups for ‘finding your partner in your caste’ and uses fear tactics aimed at women to do its work. Ugh.
“Dating apps don’t help”, caution the words, “they get you into serious trouble”. The illustration alongside this declaration shows a father slapping his semi-clad daughter across the face as a young man escapes from her room.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of Jodable, an app that’s a cross between Sima Aunty and Let’s Pretend We Live in the 21st Century.
(No, we’re not sharing a link to the app and abetting this toxic, casteist bunkum. Feel free to conduct your own Google search with the keywords ‘dating app Jodable’ if curiosity overwhelms you).
When a friend sent the link to this app to me, shared by an acquaintance on a Whatsapp group, I thought it’s got to be a joke. The kitschy artwork that depicts blissed out families when everybody speaks the same language, and abject misery and the wrath of the gods when diversity enters the picture has got to be satire, right?
Wrong. With hashtags like #brahmin, #lingayat and #kannadabrahmin on nearly every post on their now-abandoned Instagram page, this app is apparently the face of an India that “yearns for traditional togetherness” but don’t want their parents to say “We told you so!” It exists in a universe where women cannot be sexually active without facing violence from their birth family, or looking like they were coerced into contorted positions when they’d rather be steaming idlis.
And all is well and happy when you find a partner from your own caste, because apparently that’s what decides how abusive partners will get.
This line above takes me back to living rooms where ‘progressive’ families ‘allow’ a prospective couple to…(gasp!)….talk to each other to decide their lifelong suitability in four and a half minutes. Even as the makers of this app use violence against women, lack of female agency, and hardcore patriarchy to make their point—without any trace of irony—this new app on the block declares that dating is too western a concept, and people marrying for love outside their caste (never mind community or religion) shred society’s fabric like Edward Scissorhands on crack. Chhee, chhee, chhee!
On the other hand, it acknowledges that instant marriage may not be for everybody (you don’t say!) and peddles this “find your caste partner” as a halfway house that leaves families happy, mothers- and daughters-in-law in seamless harmony, and the patriarchy alive and kicking.
Ekta Kapoor called. She wants her money back.
On their YouTube page (not providing a link to that either!), that has fewer subscribers than a toddler’s teeth, one lone video claims to have the solution to “India’s marriage crisis”.
Umm, excuse me? That would be that we have far too many, right? Around every corner? Every fortnight? All year, every year? We’re the country that reproduces like rabbits and only those darn Chinese are taking that medal away from us? Oops, wrong again! It is that the “youth don’t want to get married!” An India without band, baaja, baarat and no grandchildren before Paati passes?! What post-Ramsay horror can this be?!
I will be the first to say that the cultural iceberg in any ‘outside your caste/ community/ religion’ marriage is real. And many people just don’t want to spend the rest of their lives doing what they believe tantamounts to reinventing the wheel. Why learn another language? Why adapt, demonstrate curiosity or try another cuisine? Why risk the iron-clad guarantee that your mother and wife will be deliriously happy with each other because they belong to the same sub-sect of a sub-sect of a sub-sect?
Fine, you stick in the mud traditionalists. Go forth and shrink that gene pool till it’s a sodden puddle. Produce little clones of yourself whose parents only differ by gender and are awash in the soothing scent of cultural homogeneity. But using women as the target audience of your messaging and trying laughable fear tactics to enforce your asinine casteist, misogynist and patriarchal arguments is a new low, even for those practicing casteism for millennia. And especially for those who believe the “institution of marriage is under threat” in a country that sees 10 million weddings a year.
Maybe dating apps do get some of us into serious trouble. Like the #brahmin who met this castleless heathen on a dating site and is still married to me more than a decade later. Oops! How unsanskaari of us!
Image source: Jodable
Dilnavaz Bamboat's heart occupies prime South Mumbai real estate. The rest of her lives in Silicon Valley, California, where she hikes, reads, hugs redwood trees and raises a pint-sized feminist. She is the read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
I wanted to scream with excitement that my daughter chose to write about her ambition and aspirations over everything else first. To me, this was one of those parenting 'win' moments.
My daughter turned eight years old in January, and among the various gifts she received from friends and family was an absolutely beautiful personal journal for self-growth. A few days ago, she was exploring the pages when she found a section for writing a letter to her future self. She found this intriguing and began jotting down her thoughts animatedly.
My curiosity piqued and she could sense it immediately. She assured me that she would show me the letter soon, and lo behold, she kept her word.
I glanced at her words, expecting to see a mention of her parents in the first sentence. But, to my utter delight, the first thing she had written about was her AMBITION. Yes, the caps here are intentional because I want to scream with excitement that my daughter chose to write about her ambition and aspirations over everything else first. To me, this was one of those parenting ‘win’ moments.
Uorfi Javed has been making waves through social media, and is often the target of trolls. So who and what exactly is this intriguing young woman?
Uorfi Javed (no relation to Javed Akhtar) is a name that crops up in my news feeds every now and again. It is usually because she got trolled for being in some or other ‘daring’ outfit and then posting those images on social media. If I were asked, I would not be able to name a single other reason why she is famous. I am told that she is an actor but I would have no frankly no clue about her body of work (pun wholly unintended).
So is Urfi Javed (or Uorfi Javed as she prefers) famous only for being famous? How does she impact the cause of feminism by permitting herself to be objectified, trolled, reviled?
Please enter your email address