The silence that fails our daughters: Kanyadaan is not abdication

 Cruelty exists and leads to terrible acts. But the silence surrounding that cruelty — the refusal to see, question, intervene or even acknowledge distress — is just as culpable. The responsibility of parents towards a daughter does not end with marriage. Not when her safety, dignity or emotional well-being is at stake. 

Parenthood does not end with the ritual of a daughter’s marriage. Her moving to a husband’s home is a social transition, not an ethical abdication on the part of her birth family. Parental responsibility and morality are deeper than any ritual or tradition, and cannot be outsourced through a ceremony. Being a parent is an enduring moral responsibility that lasts through life.

What spells the end of parenthood is when parents stop caring, listening, protecting or supporting their child. Or, when they fool themselves into believing that the problem that stares them in the face, will resolve itself in due course. 

God and the courts will take care of those who perpetrated the horrendous crime against Twisha Sharma, who died just five months into her marriage to lawyer Samarth Singh, son of retired judge Girbala Singh. And, spurring them on to ensure there is no lapse, is an enraged public and media. The criminals will not escape justice. 

But cruelty and inhumanity are not the only reasons that tragedy happens; the silence that surrounds cruelty is just as accountable. Sometimes daughters do not talk about the nastiness they are facing for fear of burdening parents who have just passed through the financial and emotional difficulties of marrying off a daughter. At other times, as in Trisha Sharma’s case, they convey their situation very clearly, but parents do not act in time, hoping for the problem to go away. 

Trapped by constant abuse and dowry harassment, Twisha repeatedly asked her mother to take her back home. “Please come and pick me up from here tomorrow,” she pleaded five days before her death. By the time her parents acted, she was gone – three days before they had booked her ticket back to them. 

To have a daughter pleading to be saved, dead before the parents could act, and to live the rest of their lives with that regret, is an unimaginable tragedy. It is not that Twisha’s parents didn’t believe her. They just delayed action, caught up in middle class mentality and social pressure to give a marriage time and allow it to work, rather than ending it. Now they deeply regret not having pulled her out sooner. In an interview her father said, “One of the greatest misfortunes of our tradition is that every middle-class family wants a marriage to succeed. The pressure – the social pressure – is so immense… No one ever entertains the thought that the marriage should end.”

Why not? If you make a mistake, why can you not take steps to wipe the slate clean? Religion and our ancient scriptures do not insist that marriage must continue under absolutely all circumstances irrespective of cruelty, violence, abandonment or injustice, even if most religions do consider marriage a sacred bond.  It is only later social interpretation that has brought in the rigid social stances. 

Indian epics and ancient Dharmashastra texts acknowledge that a marriage can fracture under social pressure and moral conflict. In the Ramayana, Rama does not formally ‘divorce’ Sita in a legal sense, but he does send her away, and the marriage breaks. Ancient Dharmashastra texts like the Narada Smriti, Parashara Smriti, and the Arthashastra, which have influenced social norms and legal thinking in different periods of Indian history, show us that ancient Indian traditions were not as singular or rigid as later social morality suggests. Patriarchy hardened and women’s autonomy narrowed much later. People today may believe that our scriptures did not allow separation, but that is not true. Our ancient texts were shaped by dynamic philosophies and evolving customs, and contain discussions around marital breakdowns, widowhood and remarriage. 

Kautilya’s Arthashastra had provisions suggesting that marriages could dissolve under circumstances such as cruelty, incompatibility and desertion, and remarriage was possible. Women were allowed to leave husbands who were missing, impotent, abusive, outcast or those who abandoned family duties. Ancient India was not as inflexible on marriage as people today like to believe, living in more restrictive interpretations of social morality as we are. 

As for parents intervening when a daughter is in trouble, the biggest example from our epics is that of Draupadi and her father Drupada. When she is humiliated in the Kauravas court, Drupada publicly condemns the insult to his daughter, treating it as an affront to him and kingship, and goes on to use his political and military power to restore her dignity. King Drupad treated his married daughter’s humiliation as a continuing moral responsibility, not as a closed chapter. And, so must we treat the injustice to our daughters today!

The Mahabharata presents the silence of elders and family as a moral failure – and the epic repeatedly reinforces that a woman’s humiliation is a collapse of dharma itself. Her disgrace is a collective responsibility, and not something for her to endure alone as a matter of family honour. And so is the killing of Trisha Sharma not just a matter of individual or family honour, but the collapse of dharma and the morality of an entire nation, nay, of humanity!

In the Ramayana, King Janak continues to have a deep emotional bond and concern for his daughter Sita. Ancient Indian thought certainly never suggested emotional abandonment after a daughter’s marriage. Our epics and myths repeatedly show that the failure for not being able to respect and honour a woman lies with families and with societies that choose silence over protection. 

I am not blaming Trisha’s parents at all. Theirs is the greatest loss and tragedy, and obviously if they had known the outcome, they would have acted sooner. They did what most parents in their place would do – hope for the best. I just want to make sure that any other Trishas reaching out for help – or not – can be saved by timely action. 

It is important that parents maintain a healthy engagement with daughters after marriage and do not pressure them to ‘adjust’. A married daughter must have the reassurance that her family remains present. Extremes never help. Supportive families do not rush to judgement, nor do they abandon their daughters in the name of adjustment. A married daughter must never feel emotionally orphaned. 

Daughters must be taught that though compromise is healthy, humiliation never is. And patience is admirable, but fear is not normal. Anything that makes them fearful must be flagged urgently. Insist on daughters retaining financial and emotional independence. Adjustment and compromise must always be both ways. Girls must understand the difference between adjustment and self-erasure. They must never abandon their identity and constantly walk in fear.

Safety is more important than appearances. Girls must not hide issues. They must reach out early if something feels wrong. And, no man must ever object to his wife’s close bonds with her blood family. Doing so should be considered a red flag!

Beti bachao! Stay alert and sensitive to potentially dangerous situations and take timely action. Better to bring back home a married daughter than bid her an eternal goodbye.