Shanu, a four-year-old girl, comes to my place to play with toys and listen to stories. First, she plays on her own with toys and then sits with me to listen to stories. This week, I noticed a sudden change in her play when she neither asked for a story, nor did she use my toys to play. She instead asked for a dupatta and picked up a toy elephant. Earlier, her favorite role play was reconstructing a classroom in which all the toys served as her students, irrespective of whether they were animal figures, dolls or clay utensils. She would become a teacher who gave class-work, wrote on behalf of every imaginary student and then corrected that work. Shanu's play had observable details. For example, smaller looking students' handwriting had small letters and bigger looking students' work had big letters. She would instruct her students to complete their work soon so that she could take them to the playground. Her role play of a teacher used to reach its peak of visual delight when she would walk in her imaginary class with one hand firmly gripping her waist and the other adjusting her non-existent glasses. She also held conversations with the fictitious parents of her students at the end of the class. In that dialogue she conveyed the exuberance of a confident professional who knew her job well. Like any four-year-old, Shanu would insist on taking all the toys with her after playing with them, so that she could play the teacher-teacher game at her home as well.
Sudden change
This week she refused to play her usual game. She covered her head with the dupatta and took an elephant toy in her lap as if it was an infant. I was struck by that scene because she had fully covered her face with the dupatta and her eyes were downcast. She refused to look up when I insisted on talking to her. She behaved as if she was feeling shy. There were lines of shyness around her eyes and cheeks with a faint smile on the lips. Her restricted body movements revealed the intention to pack up herself in that dupatta . She sat in this posture for long and remained confined to that corner. She enacted a restrained, unsure of herself and scared woman. Shanu wanted me to participate in her play and say a particular line, “ naee bahuu kitnee sundar hai aur uska beta bhee kitna ujlaa hai ”(The new bride is so beautiful and her son is very fair). When I refused, she got angry and told me that this is what they say on the TV.
Shanu's play has changed drastically under the influence of what she watches on television. Her mother told me later that the young child watches all family-based serials with great interest. She added that those serials do not have any adult scenes, so Shanu is allowed to watch “Sajan Ghar Jana Hai”, “Balika Vadhu” and “Ye Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai”. Her mother said: “Shanu particularly enjoys the last two and behaves like the lead characters of these serials. She incorporates the style of Anandi, Dhaani and Akshara and keeps acting like them all day.”
“Balika Vadhu” is a soap opera which has been running for the whole of this year on television. Its central theme is the marriage of an eight-year-old girl, Anandi, with a boy of the same age in rural Rajasthan. The sub-plots are about her transition from childhood to womanhood and acceptance of the complexity of adult relationships and responsibilities woven in the backdrop of the lifestyle of Rajasthan's rural elites. “Sajan Ghar Jana Hai” is a new soap opera in which Dhaani's husband is forced by his parents to marry another girl because she is rich. However, Dhaani decides to stay in the same house by becoming a maid in her husband's family, so that she can be close to him. The tag line of this soap opera is, Mera sindoor bantt gaya lekin main patni dharma nibhanungee (my vermillion got shared, yet I will stick to a wife's virtue). The third serial, “Ye Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai”, is the story of a young man and woman who have an arranged marriage and then fall in love with each other. The sub-plots are based on traditions, rituals, festivals and ethics. The story revolves around Akshara — a shy, demure, obedient daughter — who has been brought up in a traditional Marwari family. She has a very protective upbringing and has only experienced relationships which emanate love and protection. The marriage brings her into complex situations which she had never experienced earlier.
Shanu gave up her role play of a teacher and has been drawn towards these serials. Within a few months the characters of these serials have become the objects of her role-play. One of the characters is a child bride and the other is a subordinated woman who accepts her husband's second marriage. This drastic change in Shanu and her mother's approval of this change made me realise that child marriage and bigamy are now being perceived as themes of entertainment and are no more treated as social evils. As for Shanu, some people might say that it is a normal tendency of young girls to imitate the role of a wife or a mother, and this imitation prepares them for their future role; so, there is nothing alarming in Shanu's behavior.
Wrong role models
Television has powerfully drawn Shanu's fancy towards role models which are weak and suppressed. They represent social evils and outlawed practices. Many current serials revolve around glamorisation of social evils. The colour and gloss of television images distract us away from the misery of the victims of child marriage and bigamy. Rather, the colorful screen makes the sufferers look attractive. This is exactly what has happened to Shanu and her mother who got hypnotised by TV in their own ways. Apparently, the mother stopped feeling even the normal revulsion that she would have otherwise felt seeing someone in a miserable condition. Her mind got so numbed that child marriage failed to bother her when it got served as a theme of daily entertainment, and even when her own daughter adopted the serial's child bride as her own role model.
The change in Shanu's play conveys that small children not only make meaning of what they see on television, but also live those meanings. Children's play is not like adults' play: its impact on the mind is deeper. The educator and philosopher Maria Montessori said that children learn through play. ‘Play is child's work'. Children's play refers to an extremely varied range of activities which provide to the child a means of defining the world. Therefore, it has a significant role in shaping children's attitude and life-long orientation towards objects and social processes.
Major influence
The fact that children imbibe values and attitudes through exposure to media is a major daily event unfolding in our life. Our media are pushing young girls into becoming submissive, coy and servile. The media pretend to enhance their capacity to take on the challenges of modernity whereas in fact, it is training young girls to accept oppression as a way of life. Television serials are indoctrinating girls like Shanu to get domesticated, so that she can prepare herself to become a kind of wife who submits willingly to the life-long muzzling of her personhood. Many of these serials legitimise oppression in marriage and, therefore, undermine several prevailing laws which intend to provide dignity and equality to women.
We can also look at this issue from the perspective of gender difference between boys and girls. Boys generally get the opportunity to follow a wider variety of role-models, whereas little girls are pushed into the limited world of matrimony and motherhood. Little boys learn to identify with sportsmen, army officers, engineers, doctors and businessmen; on the other hand little girls learn to focus on the role of being a dutiful wife.
