Harassment

 Harassment as a concept is a binary as far as the in-law relationship is concerned. In a country like India, it is often believed, for instance, that the mother-in-law would harass the daughter-in-law. That was the old equation. 

My generation onwards, the scales were completely turned upside down. Most often always, in my generation, it was the daughter-in-law, ably helped especially by her bossy, boringly interfering mother,  who would without fail be the harasser, and the traditional victimiser, the son's family, got downsized to the role of the victim. 

Multiple were the reasons. The major one, however, was the legal issue. Till its recent amendment, the law was such that for the first seven years of a marriage, if the daughter-in-law so much as complained, the entire in-law family would be incarcerated without any counter-check. Against the complaint of the daughter-in-law, it was the legal bounden duty of the in-laws to prove their innocence. 

Unfortunately, in the urban, middle class and the upper class families, many brides/newly married women took extremely unfair advantage of this legal provision. They literally made the in-laws dance to their tunes and/or ruined not only the mother-in-law, but the entire unfortunate family. Peoples' innocent lives were thus devastated, careers destroyed.

Often the shallow feminist support to such scheming daughter-in-law female seemed to overlook the fact that the other ladies  involved, the mother-in-law, the sister-in-law were women, too! Lives were thus ruined by the manipulative daughter-in-law who would have basically married a walking/talking ATM to begin with! 

Well, some solace it should be to such victims that the shrewd, shrewish, manipulative, lying through the teeth daughter-in-law tarnishing the innocent in-laws is not merely an Indian phenomenon!

The erstwhile  master, the British royal family, in fact, is currently experiencing many such consciously cooked up charges by Prince Harry's wife. It is the hot debate there, raging like wild fire.  As a woman in her forties, she obviously knew whom and into which family she was marrying, and yet she has managed a huge rift in the family, tarnishing its reputation through her trumped up charges. The sad saga is monetarily manipulated, too.

Well, harassment IS harassment, whatever pretensions may get paraded!

Pratima@ Sceptre and crown are made to tumble down when manipulation marries in to a family. Like death, the scheming smartie of a daughter-in-law is thus a leveller, too!