The more I read about rape, suicide, family troubles, unemployment, toxic masculinity, excessive religiosity and hysterical jingoism, the more I feel we have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
We have been funding NGOs, holding summits, creating policy and demonstrating and what-not―all focusing on improving the status of women. But maybe what we really need to do is to focus on our men.
I don’t need to quote statistics to convince you that alcoholism rates are significantly higher for men than women in India. Same goes for drug addiction. Same goes for addiction to pornography. We have normalised this behaviour so much that nobody even raises an eyebrow about it, with literally every working woman sharing the exact same story with her colleagues during the lunch break―that her maid’s husband is a drunkard who hits her and steals her money and that she has either left him or is planning to. It’s a trope that has been milked for comedy for decades (from Keshto Mukherjee back in the day, to Danish Sait’s wildly popular ‘Bevarsi Kudka’ sketches on Instagram) with nobody pausing to ask why exactly these men are choosing oblivion in a manner that hurts their families so hard both emotionally and financially, that it is akin to self-harm.
Illustration: Deni Lal
Most damningly, while twice the number of Indian women (compared to men) report being depressed, the suicide rates for men are roughly triple those of women. So women are depressed, but men are the ones dying by suicide, with as many as 31 per cent of them citing ‘family problems’ as the trigger.
Now patriarchy is a system canny old warlords perfected to maintain their stranglehold on power by turning young men into killing (or be killed) machines in the service of the warlord’s armies, and women into baby-making machines to replace said men who got killed. The fallen men (and their mothers) were valorised for their ‘loyalty’ to ‘God’ and ‘land’ and paid handsomely. Thus, the patriarchy values men only for loyalty (to their masters) and brute physical strength, and women only for obedience (to men), health and fertility. It deems all other qualities―intelligence, wit, kindness and creativity―as entirely useless.
Indian women, powered by ancient female lore and our pantheon of goddesses, and more recently by government initiatives, women’s own gumption, and the lack of shame around unburdening to friends or seeking psychological help, are taking assured steps towards financial self-reliance.
But Indian men, increasingly under pressure from a sluggish economy and job scarcity, are not taking similar steps towards either domestic self-reliance or seeking help by sharing with friends/psychologists, as society still judges this behaviour as weak, loser-ish and effeminate.
What they are doing instead is watching films where heroes cry, yell at their fathers and push women around, or joining religious groups, or vicariously applauding the macho antics of the Trumps and the Musks, or worst, worshipping at the alter of the unholy trinity of drugs, porn and rape.
As a society, we need to let men know that in a healthy world, healed of unnaturally imposed rigid roleplay, women and children would love to see them shatter the glass ceilings on the home front, and excel as nurturers, masala dosa-makers, pram-pushers, baby-rockers, salsa dancers, nursery-school teachers, floor-sweepers and occasional weepers.
Hopefully, the planet’s first generation to be raised by so many working mothers―the notoriously ‘unemployable’ Gen Z, with its obsession with work-life balance, gender neutrality, and total disregard for Boomer-era structures and hierarchies―is going to be the one to show us all the way.
editor@theweek.in