- The primary life aim for females in India has historically been marriage, and they are raised to be good mothers and wives.
- I went to a lunch meeting of twenty women on Sunday at a Caribbean bar in south Delhi. There was a lot of animated conversation and laughter throughout the space.
- All of the women belonged to Status Single, an Indian Facebook group for metropolitan single women.
But many women are now preferring to stay single as they carve out their own independent, solitary paths.
I went to a lunch meeting of twenty women on Sunday at a Caribbean bar in south Delhi. There was a lot of animated conversation and laughter throughout the space.
All of the women belonged to Status Single, an Indian Facebook group for metropolitan single women.
The community’s founder and creator, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, urged the group to cease referring to themselves as widows, divorcees, or single people. “Let’s just say we’re single and proud of it.”
The female audience applauded loudly.
There is still a lot of shame associated with being single in a nation that is sometimes described as being “obsessed with marriage.”
In rural India, unmarried women are sometimes viewed as a burden by their family; thousands of widows are exiled to revered cities like Varanasi and Vrindavan.
The women I encounter in the Delhi tavern are different from Ms. Kundu. They consist of educators, professionals (mostly from the middle class), doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, activists, writers, and journalists. Others never got married, while some are widowed, divorced, or separated.
Wealthy metropolitan single women are increasingly being seen as a business prospect, and banks, jewellers, consumer goods businesses, and travel agencies are courting them.
With web series like Four More Shots Please and Bollywood movies like Queen and Piku featuring single female heroines, solitary women are also gaining representation in popular culture.
Additionally, the Supreme Court’s decision in October recognising that all women, including those who are not married, have an equal right to an abortion was hailed as a victory for unmarried women.
However, despite these positive developments, society’s attitudes remain strict, and as Ms. Kundu points out, being single is difficult for everyone, even the wealthy, who are constantly criticised.
As a single woman, I have experienced discrimination and humiliation. In Mumbai, members of a housing society questioned me about my sexual activity and drinking habits.
She has encountered gynaecologists who have behaved like “nosy neighbours,” and a few years ago, when her mother placed a personal ad on behalf of her on a prestigious matrimonial website, she met a man who inquired about her status as a virgin “within the first 15 minutes”?
“Apparently it’s a question single ladies are often asked,” she continues.
However, single stigmatisation is inappropriate in a nation where there are 71.4 million single women, more than the combined populations of Britain or France, according to the 2011 Census.
From 51.2 million in 2001, this represented a 39% rise. The Covid-19 outbreak has caused a delay in the census for 2021, but according to Ms. Kundu, by then “our numbers will have crossed 100 million.”
The fact that India’s marriage age has increased and more single women are now in their late teens or early 20s can help to explain some of the increase. The fact that women often live longer than men is also reflected in the data, which also include a significant number of widows.
However, Ms. Kundu notes that “many more women now who are single by choice, not only by circumstances” and it’s necessary to recognise this “changing face of singlehood.”
“I see many women who claim to be single by choice. They reject the idea of marriage as a patriarchal institution that is unfair to women and has historically oppressed them.”
Her attention on solitary women stems from the prejudice her mother—who became widowed at the age of 29—experienced.
“Growing up, I watched how a woman, unaccompanied by a man, was marginalised in our patriarchal, misogynistic set-up. She was undesired at baby showers and during a cousin’s wedding, she was ordered to stay away from the bride as even a widow’s shadow is deemed bad.”
When her mother remarried at the age of 44, she once more attracted the “ire of society,” with many asking, “How could a widow not be the sad, sobbing, asexualized, pleasureless lady that she’s meant to be?
She claims that the humiliation of her mother had a significant effect on her.
I firmly believed in the fairy tale that marriage would bring acceptance and banish all of my darkness, so I grew up frantically yearning to get married.
However, Ms. Kundu claims that after two failed relationships that were physically and emotionally abusive and coming very close to getting married at age 26, she realised that the traditional marriage, in which a woman is expected to be obedient to a man, wasn’t for her.
She describes her ideal connection as one that is founded on “respect, accessibility, and appreciation” rather than culture, religion, or community.
It’s a fair request, and many of the single women I spoke with on Sunday agreed with it.
But India still has a strong patriarchal culture, where more than 90% of marriages are planned by families and where women have little control over who they marry, much alone whether they want to get married at all.
But 44-year-old life coach Bhawana Dahiya, who hails from Gurugram (Gurgaon), a city close to Delhi, and has never been married, notes that things are changing and the rise in the number of single women is reason for joy.
Even though we may only be a drop in the ocean, she asserts, “at least there is a drop now.”
In the past, all conversations focused on the husband’s career, his aspirations, and the children’s school, with little consideration given to a woman’s options. However, those dialogues are now changing. The more examples we have of women being single, the better it is.
We are “dentifying the universe.”
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