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Manusmriti’s prescriptions that a girl child is dependent on her father during her childhood, on her husband during youth and on her sons during old age were invoked by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in the fourth edition of Chhatron ki Goonj programme organised in Pune exclusively for women to signal the message that such scriptural injunctions robbed women of their distinct identities and independence throughout their lives.

Therefore, while stating that there is nothing wrong with a woman’s relationship with her father, husband and sons, Rahul Gandhi emphatically stated that it must not imperil her separate and independent identity to be her own self. That was the reason why he issued a thundering call for smashing patriarchy and breaking the cage that sought to confine women.

He described prime minister Modi getting a cultural shock because girls, at Jantar Mantar protests against Paper leaks, used abusive language against him and remained silent on abuses hurled by boys as the mindset shaped by Manusmriti.

Gandhi blamed Smritis For inferiors status of women

What Rahul said in an exclusive meeting of women concerning the patriarchal society according them subordinate status and subjecting them through their entire life cycle to the control of men is evocative of Mahatma Gandhi’s speech at Bhagini Samaj (Sisters’ Society) delivered hundred and eight years back at Bombay on February 20, 1918. In that speech Gandhi attributed the degeneration of women in society relatively to men not just to Manusmriti but to all Smritis.

Against the backdrop of the extremely low status of women in society in 1918 he emphatically remarked that, “What the authors of the various Smritis have said about women can in no wise be defended.” “Child-marriage, the........

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