y it. Since ancient time in India marriage has been regarded not only as a necessity, but also as a social and religious duty. This religious patriarchy is subjugating women in India.
Women in India are universally subjugated through ancient scriptures and Puranic texts. As Karthika V.K. says: “The story of subjugation of women had its roots in the myths and legends which are popular in India.” ( Karthika, 2015) The stereotypical myth depicts archetypes of Indian womanhood, such as Sati, Sita, Savitri, Gandhari, Behula showing women in suffering, self-sacrificing roles, and reinforcing conventional myths in a patriotic manner. Society creates such prejudices and stereotypical images for women and those who conform to them are considered as pious and pativrata. Women in Indian society are expected to be passive or submissive. Third World Grandmothers are successfully accomplishing the task of in calculating the woman like qualities in the girls through their stories. These myths are used to train them as faithful wives in order to celebrate the purity and chastity of mythological models. Mythologies, Upanishads, Puranas in India validate the subjugation of women in patriarchal culture.
The dominance of fanatic attitudes, the complexity of caste, class and religious identities in India subjugate women to stereotypical roles. In Third World India, marriage occurs in the same castes or cultures such as Muslim-Muslin, Hindu-Hindu, Shikh-Shikh, and tribe-tribe. Otherwise, it is not acceptable if it happens between different classes or castes. In this story, the marriage between Hindu Pipeelika Trivedi and Muslim Aijaz Khan is not acceptable to the eye of society as they belong to different religions. European ideology motivates them to possess secular ideas. But in Third World society, non-inter-religious, non-inter-cultural marriages are not acceptable. That is why; Hindu-Muslim marriages are hated in Indian terrain. To the eye of society, such marriages are not complete, pure or honourable. Such secularist wives like Pipee are marginalized by the prejudiced fundamentalist ideas.
The Third World women cannot raise voice regarding important issues like their rights to their body, number of pregnancies, decision of conceiving babies, abortion etc. Everything is decided by their husbands. In Third World Social System, a wife is always forced to follow the instructions of husband while the husband does not care for the feelings of wife. Female body becomes the site of forced colonization which the male master uses and abuses according to his own sweet. In Third World context, a wife has to submit willingly or unwillingly, to the demands of husband’s body just because she is his wife. The following conversation in this story echoes the marital tragedy of a Third World wife through the character of Astha:“Why? I’m your husband. So what? So everything. You think marriage is just sex.” (Kapur: 275) Such marital prerequisites of Third World wives colonize their body, sense and sex. The Indian women are still facing the trauma of exploitation and sexual abuse. It is very common in Indian age-old patriarchy which is re-colonizing female body.
Internalized notion that is passed woman after woman is another important obstacle in Third World families. It is the woman herself, who often ill-treats the woman in Indian traditional families. The old women in Third World Indian society are the guardians of patriarchy. They are the followers of the age-old beliefs because they have been already internalized by the thought of patriarchal values. The mother-daughter; mother-in-law-daughter-in-law; and sister-in-law-daughter-in-law relationships lead to the continuous dilemmas.
In this story, mothers want their daughters to like them but daughters want to learn from their own experiences. In this story, Sita-Astha relationship echoes such truths. Sita tries to arrange her daughter’s marriage when she was only sixteenth years old. When Astha is in second year, Sita starts arguing with her husband why he is so indifferent regarding this serious matte