The mother-in-law trope in India

Written by Audrey Dmello in Indian Express Opinion on 2 June 2026

The dominating mother-in-law occupies a prominent place in India’s social imagination. She is the villain of television serials, the subject of jokes, and a recurring character in domestic violence cases. Giribala Singh’s comments about Twisha Sharma’s personal life — policing her body, sexuality, and behaviour — have reinforced the trope. There is an uncomfortable paradox at the heart of this stereotype: The mother-in-law who was once a young bride herself, subjected to control, humiliation, and violence, later inflicts the same on her daughters-in-law.

The television serial Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi popularised the constant battle between the saas (mother-in-law) and the bahu (daughter-in-law). While often exaggerated for entertainment, these narratives reflect tensions present in many households where women are pitted against one another as rivals competing for authority.

Real-life cases reveal a more troubling reality. In prosecutions involving dowry deaths and domestic violence, mothers-in-law frequently appear as accused. National crime data shows complaints often involve female relatives, too.

Public discourse treats this as evidence that women are “women’s worst enemies”. Such explanations obscure the larger patriarchal structure that produces such conflict. Women did not design the dowry system, create patrilocal marriage, or establish inheritance structures — systems that favour men. Yet women become agents through which these systems are maintained. Daughters/sisters, however loved, are taught to obey their fathers/brothers. Wives, however independent, are expected to defer to husbands. As women, their value rests on the extent to which they sacrifice for their male family members.

In a patriarchal society, women are subtly, but consistently, socialised and trained to police one another. Saas over bahu. Jethani (elder sister-in-law) over devrani (younger sister-in-law), nanand (husband’s sister) over the bhabhi (brother’s wife). The resentment is not personal rivalry but structural conditioning. It starts when little girls see female relationships steeped in jealousy, competition, and backbiting. They grow up believing that female relationships are fragile and shallow. When a paternal grandmother insults her mother, leaving her mother feeling isolated, the girl learns that women don’t stand together.

Marriage involves a woman leaving her natal home and moving into her husband’s family. Traditionally, she enters the household with little power, expected to serve elders, perform domestic labour, and conform to family expectations. Many women report facing emotional abuse, restrictions on mobility, pressure to bear children, and, in some cases, physical violence and dowry-related harassment.

A woman’s social status improves with age, particularly after she becomes the mother of sons. The son becomes her source of security, influence, and identity in a society where women’s access to property, income, and independent social status remains constrained. When the son marries, the daughter-in-law enters a structure in which authority has already been hard-won by older women. The arrival of a daughter-in-law is perceived as a threat to that authority and emotional security. Conflicts over household labour, financial decisions, childcare, and attention from the son are expressions of deeper anxieties about power and relevance. The tensions are less about personal incompatibility and more about competition within a system that offers women very little power except over other women.

Turkish feminist scholar Deniz Kandiyoti described this phenomenon as the “patriarchal bargain”. Women, oppressed by a system, participate in sustaining it because compliance offers social rewards and resistance carries significant costs. Thus, the abusive mother-in-law is not an exception to patriarchy but one of its products. Patriarchy does not survive solely because men enforce it. It survives because its values become internalised and reproduced within families. Women are its most effective gatekeepers. A young woman’s clothing is scrutinised not by her father but by her grandmother. Her movements are restricted not by her husband but by her mother-in-law. Her choices about work, marriage, or motherhood are questioned by other women long before any man voices an objection. This is what makes patriarchy so resilient.

Understanding the structural roots of these tensions does not absolve individuals of responsibility. But it does point us toward solutions. A revolution to dismantle patriarchy is possible when women stop seeing each other as rivals and start recognising each other as allies in the struggle for dignity, freedom, and equality.

The writer is the director of Majlis, a legal centre for women and children. Views are personal