Twisha Sharma: When Brahmanical Patriarchy Claims a Brahmin Bride

If Twisha’s mother-in-law—Giribala Singh, a retired district judge—had kept up the charade of a grieving mother-in-law without sharing her comments so generously in the media, this case might have remained just another statistic in dowry litigation. The suicide of Twisha Sharma and the rape of Dalit women are two sides of the same social problem: Brahmanical patriarchy. The more Giribala spoke, the more mechanisms of Brahmanical patriarchy made themselves visible. Twisha Sharma’s Death and the Cruelty of Public DiscourseHistorian Uma Chakravarti first coined the term ‘Brahmanical Patriarchy’ in her 1993 essay, Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class, and State. She built upon Dr BR Ambedkar’s insight that endogamy is the bedrock of the caste system. She argues that a shift to an agricultural economy between 800 BC and 600 BC led to an altered valuation of women’s labour and sexuality. The Brahmanical social order is organised along two inseparable hierarchies: caste and gender. The control over upper-caste women is essential to maintain the purity of the caste order and control patrilineal inheritance. The control is central to the preservation of status and landed property. The prohibition of inter-caste marriage is not merely a cultural phenomenon but one that is required to prevent the dilution of capital, status and power that upper-caste groups enjoy. Chakravarti argued that women were made financially dependent on men, their sexuality controlled and subject to the corrosive power of the patriarchal state to maintain caste boundaries. For those women who bought into this social order were venerated as mothers. 'Brahmanical patriarchy' has a chequered footprint in public discourse: a symptom of our times. Recently, a question on ‘Brahmanical patriarchy’ in a history examination at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was criticised for promoting a divisive approach to understanding society. The relevance of Brahmanical patriarchy in unpacking violence against women has not dimmed. How is Brahmanical patriarchy operationalised in the marital family?2 Weddings, 2 Brides, Same Tragic End—Twisha & Deepika's Deaths Aren't AnomaliesWhile social media outrage often fixates on Giribala’s specific remarks, her rhetoric reveals the broader regulatory function of the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law does not simply oppress her daughter-in-law; she functions as an internalised node of surveillance that enforces social norms vis-à-vis the upper-caste community, family, the Indian state. For instance, Giribala says that, as Rajputs they thought a Brahmin daughter-in-law would know how to do Hindu rituals well. Her gripe is that Twisha projected an image of a ‘sanskari’ daughter-in-law who liked to cook, dress modestly, loved plants, and perform rituals but over the months she perceived this mask as unravelling. In her public appearances, it is noteworthy when the tide of emotion swells for Giribala. She weeps when she speaks about the role of the daughter-in-law, which, according to her is bigger than that of the daughter because the daughter-in-law connects the family to your next generation: the unquestioned social reproductive role of giving birth to the next generation. “She destroyed everything”, Giribala says and weeps a bit more. Fluent in English and a legalistic lexicon, dressed in a cotton saree, with short hair and armed with 40 hours of training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), she systematically gaslights Twisha. When Giribala shares what are the things, she notices in her daughter-in-law, one can feel her surveillance gaze homing in on Twisha’s shaking hands which Giribala tells us has come from substance abuse withdrawal. In the context of Twisha aborting, Giribala says, girls take these decisions easily and she denied me and my son a moment of joy. Twisha was taken to a therapist. The patriarchal language might look new, but the technique is an age-old mechanism used to shift the blame from the system to the woman who must be branded as mad. Tools of Brahmanical patriarchy have updated themselves with an increase in women’s education, participation in the labour market, and financial mobility. The mother-in-law does not need to be someone steeped in domesticity but can also be a judge who weaponises psychological language, character assassinates, controls the daughter-in-law’s body while denying allegations of dowry harassment and domestic violence.Two Women, One Hindu & One Muslim, Killed by Dowry: Inside UP's 'Dahej' EpidemicBy all social markers, Twisha was a ‘modern’ woman: she won a beauty pageant, acted, and was a successful corporate professional. She met Giribala’s son on a dating app and had a love marriage. They had an inter-caste marriage: even if it was amongst upper-caste groups. In her wedding photos, she beams in what looks like a Sabyasachi-designed lehenga. Five months later, she killed herself.In her text messages with family members, it is clear that Twisha had repeatedly indicated her level of despair, the heightened cruelty in her marital home, and asked for help. Their incapacity to respond might haunt them till the end of their lives. However, this should not be seen as the failure of an individual family, but a disempowering strategy built within practices of Brahmanical patriarchy that further weakens the position of women after marriage.In one of her last messages to her mother, Twisha confessed she could no longer cope and felt suffocated. Dowry deaths which were once seen as a practice in decline, are proving to be resilient, with a 14 percent spike in 2023 as per the NCRB data.Brahmanical patriarchy functions as a unified system of regulation that oppresses women guided by their caste location. Ultimately, acknowledging Twisha’s claustrophobia and helplessness is a naming of the violence inextricably embedded within upper-caste familial institutions. (Dr Ujithra Ponniah is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She is the author of the book 'Becoming Agarwal: The Manufacture of a Close-Knit Mercantile Caste' by Cambridge University Press. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)What It Means to Belong to the 1% of Divorced Women in India

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Twisha Sharma: When Brahmanical Patriarchy Claims a Brahmin Bride

The more Giribala spoke, the more mechanisms of Brahmanical patriarchy made themselves visible.

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