Suffering silently

Women continue to play regressive roles on the small screen

I have a problem with channels which claim that through many of their respective serials they support women’s empowerment. Not just that, many serials have tickers running while women characters in them routinely get abused. “Through this serial we want to condemn the atrocities faced by women in the country even today,” mentioned a ticker while an episode showed a young woman getting physically abused. The other time this ticker came alive on the television screen, an episode showed a group of men killing a pregnant woman. All this while the ticker solemnly pledged the channel’s belief:

“We condemn any sort of violence meted out to women in our country.” Oh, then there was another serial which showed how three young women, daughters-in-law from one household, get forced into prostitution. The ticker diligently read, “We condemn this.” Then, an episode in another serial where a wife, attempting to flee from an alcoholic husband, gets slapped and bruised and stripped, but oh, “the channel condemns any domestic violence against women”. Or, for that matter, another serial where a spate of child marriages continue to take place, but the channel swears to “condemn it”.

After the I&B ministry insisted on restraint in showing violence on Indian television (especially after serials like Na Aana Iss Des Laado on Colors showed trailers of a group of men drowning a baby girl in a tub of milk), most Hindi entertainment channels have compulsory tickers running throughout the time a serial is aired to claim that channels are against any acts of violence faced by women. But guess what, that’s exactly what they show. Why? A director of one of the bestselling serials once told me: “That’s what the audience wants.” I also remember speaking to a writer of another serial which revolved around the theme of child marriages and he had said, “I know exactly how my serial will end, but the audience wants so many subplots that we do end up looking regressive.” Actor Neena Gupta, in fact, in an earlier interview had confessed to finding serials on Hindi television very regressive.

She had also confessed that some of her scripts, especially after the success of her directorial venture Saans — one of the very few serials on Indian television which sensitively portrayed the dilemmas of a housewife whose husband is involved in an extramarital affair — are routinely shot down by channel heads, perhaps because they don’t revolve around the theme of poverty or archetypal beliefs that don’t — or shouldn’t — exist in our country any more.

Someone like Gupta wouldn’t like to show what NDTV Imagine is showing in Rehna Hai Teri Palkon Ki Chaaon Mein, a serial where a young widow is shown sleeping in a cow shed (yes, cow shed), cooking separate meals, wearing solemn white sarees and basically braving kitchen politics at home. I can bet a million dollars that forthcoming episodes will not show this woman being encouraged to work and emerge as a smart, young, independent woman.

Episode after episode we’ll see her crying silently while the rest of the household tramples all over her. “That is exactly what the audience wants, that is what grabs eyeballs,” argues another television serial writer who says that his brief from one such channel included “churning out stuff which will show women suffering”.

So much for Indian television growing at a steady pace, no?