Mardaani or Misogyny

“Khoob ladi mardaani wah to jhansi wali Rani thi”- can you recollect all these lines from Hindi Book of NCERT currriculum of class 6, while reading these lines we feel a sense of pride and courage but do we ever really look at the portrayal of women in such poems? and the sensiblities they tend to promote?are they some conscious construct or part of what is prescribed as gender roles and attributes?

A recent crime thriller starring Rani Mukherjee also talks about something similar..The title itself is ‘Mardaani’, when you look through the content you realize that a certain kind of quality is highlighted for the valour- to be precise its ‘manly’ or manliness of it that matters for the creators. Its as if there is no way to describe bravery without making it a masculine quality.

To make the matter worse the whole evolution and scientific reasoning from early man’s time is given to justify the use of such terms. It seems like standard of the hardcore attributes is decided by how a man does it, instead of how a situation demands it and how a human does it irrespective of gender. This reflects a cultural blind spot: bravery is imagined as battle, confrontation, or physical dominance — all coded as male.

Before we move ahead we need to ask ourselves — do we actually realize the places where woman have been brave and has it been the same kind of bravery for man? A bravery in battle for instance supersedes the bravery shown by some woman domestic or formal spheres, who constantly struggle with harassment, unbearable burden of work and ungratefulness of the family members who take their work for granted.

This can also be observed in other public sphere, for instance — gym is a place where strength of a man and his ability to pick weight and do push-ups and pull ups supersedes woman’s but its barely highlighted that their leg strength is not as good and that most of the man are not as strong as is the stereotype of masculine man.

To sum it up ,there’s a need to look at the woman’s world through woman’s lens their bravery womanly courage which is still appreciable for being a Lioness and the Queen bee. You can call it Nari shakti or janana-junoon ya mahila shaurya simply. Reproduction of certain tropes in cinema or popular culture is a normalized practice without critique.

Language shapes perception. When courage is shown as manly and the reference point for measuring it then women’s courage is an exception only if it mimics it. Therefore its about time we invent new metaphors and make them a part of our vocabulary.