This Is How Indian Culture Raised Me (And Why I’m Not Okay With It)

The world has a lot to praise about how wonderfully diverse, yet beautiful the Indian culture is. How everything about it just makes everyone fall in love with it even more.

Well, that is one way to look at it. The other side is just ruins and has nothing mesmerizing about it.

I am an Indian woman, and there is so much that I wish I could change about the way that 80 percent of the female population of India is brought up.

To begin, the entire nation mourns at our birth. No one wants a daughter to be born in their families, yet they want sophisticated wives who walk with their head veiled and bowed.

Female foeticide is a crime, but people don’t seem to care about it and it’s fine as long as nobody gets caught. This is one of the major reasons why sex determination of the baby before its birth is also banned. But in India everything is legal until we actually accept it.

The saddest part about it is, not only men, but also women are a part of it; a part of killing someone of their own likes. If not that, then they are part of ending a life even before the child actually breathes air outside the womb. No woman nourishes a child just to see it die in her own womb.

Even if we are privileged enough to be born, half of us aren’t lucky enough to get educated. They think, what is the need? She only has to take care of her family and cook. 

But is it that all we’re good for? Are we born only to serve and have no real life of our own? Are we prepared our entire lives just to raise kids and please our husbands?

They say that if a girl is educated, she starts using her head and speaking too much. She raises her voice and develops an opinion which can destroy her family. If there is nothing wrong with a man being rational, then why should a woman be treated like a vegetable and like a slave?

As we grow, we are married to some stranger who we spend the rest of our life with. We are no longer considered part of our family. We now belong to him. We are to obey what he says. We are to never say a word against him. We are to adjust, no matter what, and we are to stay.

We wake up, we cook, we wait, we cook again, we go off to sleep and then repeat. Things change once we have children, but only a little. Now, we cook thrice. Anything apart from this, is considered a nuisance and too bold for a lady.

Sorry if I’m being too rude, but please, define lady. We sacrifice our whole life. We do exactly as they tell us to do, we be what they want us to be, and in return well, there is no return. Expecting is a sin in the life of a woman. Our only job is to give, and give, and give until the end.

You say the times have changed. Girls study, women work, minds have evolved. Think again. Have they, really?

We are stared at if our clothes are too short. It somehow becomes our fault if we are raped; we are characterless if we drink or smoke (and men are still manly when they do it); we are shameless if we fall in love or even have male friends for that matter.

Should our sexes be a part of who we are as human beings? Should people judge us just by what we do or who we are friends with? Should we be assaulted just because of what we’re wearing? I think not.

What still doesn’t make sense is that people don’t want daughters and they don’t approve of their son marrying another man, either. It solves none of their problems. They can even adopt a male child but, (yes, there is always a but) adopting is also no less of a taboo.

Indians want wives, but not daughters. Honestly, it will never make any sense to me. It’s time we grew up and changed. Drop the chains that hold you back from development.