Britain’s badass bahu and the drama around her agency

Meghan has portrayed as the selfish outsider who has stolen the nation’s favourite royal

NOTTINGHAM: Once upon a time in a land far away, a fairy tale played out in real life as the world watched. A woman met her prince and fell in love. There was a beautiful wedding and they were all set to live happily ever after.

Except… she wasn’t a sleeping beauty or a mermaid willing to sell her voice for a man. She was an intelligent, strong woman with a career and opinions. And the prince was not a plastic knight in shining armour, but a real man with his own grief and crosses to bear.

This was not a fairy tale and the story did not end at the wedding.

Over the past few weeks, news headlines - specially in the UK but also across the world - have been overtaken by the ‘shocking’ news of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step back from royal duties and set up another life in Canada. The media has been in frenzy and the story seems to have turned from a fairytale into a desi soap or something you’d catch on Star Plus. Everyone has an opinion and there is no end to the jokes and memes.



The notorious British press is clear on whose ‘fault’ this is. The attacks on Meghan had started not long after the wedding, with the Duchess being labelled a ‘fame-obsessed’ ‘diva’ amongst other things - often accused of breaking protocol for doing the same things other royals have done before her.

She had been blamed and scrutinised for everything from the expensive renovation of the couple’s new residence to cradling her baby bump in an ‘attention-seeking’ way. The resulting protective reaction from Harry did not help. Where is our playful party boy gone, the press asked? How did he go from a ‘fun-loving bloke to the Prince of Woke’, mourned one tabloid?

Incidentally the ‘fun-loving’ playboy prince, the British media is lamenting the loss of, used to dress up as a Nazi and use language that would be classified as a hate crime. This is nothing but an improvement, you could argue!

Who could be responsible for this change in the eyes of the press, other than his mixed-race, feminist wife? Meghan is the selfish outsider who has created a rift between two brothers and is stealing the nation’s favourite royal.

The parallels between media coverage of Meghan and narratives in South Asian society about daughters-in-law are hard to miss. Whether it is a couple making the decision to live independently or other household turmoil, more often than not it is the woman that is held responsible and made the subject of gossip. It is the bahu that leads the son astray, the bahu that stops the son from fulfilling his duty, the bahu that breaks familial relationships.



Where is the agency of the man - Prince Harry in this case - in all of this? The Duke of Sussex is an adult very capable of making his own choices and surely it is a disservice to present him as a puppet in the hands of his wife.

He is educated, he has served in the military, and he holds countless positions for charities across the world. He is sixth in line to the British throne, a position that could make him Head of State in 15 countries. He can be trusted to do all of those things but apparently he cannot make his own decisions about his life without being manipulated by his wife as per the media.

This narrative, whether applied to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex or to an everyday Pakistani couple, is inherently sexist not just in how it represents women but also in what it says about men. Men very much have the ability to make their own choices and decisions, regardless of the opinions and influence of their wives. If Harry wants to give up his place in the royal family, that is his decision. It is his family, his history and his responsibilities he is changing his relationship to, for better or for worse.

We will never know what really happens behind the closed doors of palaces just as we never really know what the reality of people’s lives is within their homes. It does not matter if this decision was Meghan’s idea or not, it does not matter if it is her influence that has led to it.

However we judge these choices (if we must, although really, why is it any of our business?) - whether we cheer them on and hold them up as brave, or we label them as cowardly - they need to be laid at the feet of the person making them. Sometimes that person is a Prince of the United Kingdom and sometimes that person is our son, brother, nephew, grandson, friend.

HIGHLIGHT

The parallels between media coverage of Meghan and narratives in South Asian society about daughters-in-law are hard to miss. Whether it is a couple making the decision to live independently or other household turmoil, more often than not it is the woman that is held responsible and made the subject of gossip

BIO

Zaimal Azad has completed her MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities from London School of Economics. She currently works in the hate crime field in the UK.  She tweets @ZaimalA

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