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Sushant Singh Rajput and the burden of being a ‘Shravan Kumar’ in toxic Bihari families

TV interviews of Sushant Singh Rajput's father K.K. Singh and allegations made in FIR led Indians to call Rhea Chakraborty a witch.

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Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s case has now finally been handed over to the CBI – but not before everyone from his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty to Bollywood filmmakers Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra, Salman Khan, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Ekta Kapoor and Mahesh Bhatt were blamed. But what has escaped popular attention is the toxic family structure of cow-belt India, especially Bihar, and how it treats its precious sons.

Sushant Singh Rajput’s father K.K. Singh’s allegations and his family’s posts should also be put under social and cultural examination. A ‘witch’ and a ‘gold digger’ are routine tags given to women by typical mothers-in-law; and blaming a son’s big-city girlfriend for all that is wrong is how families cope with sons’ autonomy. Not to undermine their grief, but the way the family has reacted says a lot about the burden of being a son in a Bihari family. He has to be no less than a Shravan Kumar all his life.


The son is always a kid  mera laadla

A grown up man is always a kid/baby of these families. His independent choices are frowned down upon, especially if it concerns marriage. If he goes against the family’s traditional decision-making, either his friends’ circles or his girlfriend or wives get blamed. There is hardly any talk about mental health in these families. Even if it is there, it’s always patriarchal in nature. For example, a son/man cannot exhibit emotional weakness and stress. It is seen as some kind of enfeeblement or emasculation. He has to be the perfect version of the ‘adarsh balak’.

Families don’t accept any other version of the son other than the one they create for them. All those people who came out to speak about Sushant’s life hadn’t met him for several years. For them, it was like, ‘we knew him as a happy-go-lucky 10-year-old, how could he become depressed in his late 20s?’ In fact, the actor’s father even said that until he met Rhea Chakraborty, Sushant had no mental health problems. And that his career was flourishing until Rhea walked into his life, and that she even conspired to take away his savings.

Such families have only one view of their son — he is never depressed, never makes mistakes, never gets bullied, and never marries outside the family’s choice.


Also read: If your Bengali girlfriend knew ‘black magic’, she would erase misogyny, not waste it on you


‘Girlfriend/wife separates the family from the son’

The familiar trope in Bihar is one of a guile-less son who loses his way because of an enchantress.

Short Stories by Rabindra Nath Tagore’, a famous series on Netflix, perfectly explains this theory. Mahendra, a young man, gets married to a charming woman named Asha. He falls in love with her and forgets all his duties towards his widowed mother. Now the mother-in-law sees Asha as a villain who has corrupted Mahendra. Asha is seen as someone who took away her son.

There are many local songs in Bhojpuri that portray Bengali women as villains who trap Bihari men in their charm. They perform black magic on men. A Kajri song, usually sung during the month of Saavan, targets Bengali women as:

piya more gailen calcutta o rama,

bengalin bitiya kai dihali o jadua

tohara ko debo bengalin daal bhari sonwa o rama,

chhod di na hamro sajnawa o rama!

The man has gone to Kolkata where he has fallen in love with a Bengali woman. The family asks the woman to take gold instead and leave the man.


Also read: Bollywood to politics to police, everyone has a ‘theory’ about Sushant Singh Rajput’s death


Families that can’t stand ‘girlfriends’

This ‘home breaker’ angle is not limited only to Bihar. North Indian families have a special dislike for girlfriends. The family thinks that the girlfriend has corrupted the son’s mind even if he starts wearing a different coloured t-shirt.

Families don’t approve ‘girlfriends’ who don’t fit into their ‘perfect Bahu’ category. In Sushant Singh Rajput’s case, there was a middle-class Bihari family and a modern Bengali girlfriend. The family lawyer also remarked in a video released by Rhea that she has never worn salwar kameez in her whole life. What does it have to do with criminal charges against Rhea other than showcasing a dislike for her? This detail is present in the FIR too.

This whole episode reminds me of a friend from my college days. He often used to counsel his mother, who lived in a remote district in Bihar, because she felt that her  new daughter-in-law was trying to take her son (my friend’s brother) away from her. My friend could never convince his mother that it’s just that his brother’s priorities have changed in life after getting married.

Moreover, in our society, young boys grow up into men who believe they can have multiple affairs but they will eventually marry within the caste/class/religion/region. Their affairs will be cheered upon as their personal achievements but their decision of marrying a person of their choice will be looked down upon. Invariably, the man’s family will have an upper hand in the marriage.


Also read: Nirmala Sitharaman or Shaheen Bagh protesters: Why angry women make everyone uncomfortable


The familial ‘disconnect’?

Sushant Singh Rajput’s father K.K. Singh claimed in the FIR that Sushant’s interaction with the family was limited in the past year. A family cannot believe that a grown man doesn’t need a woman to tell him about his interaction with the world. A grown man can decide if he wants to distance himself from a toxic environment. Whether it is work, home or love life. In fact, these families even expect the daughter-in-law to carry the burden of being a bridge between them if the son goes truant.

It could have been the other way round as well. What if it was Sushant who didn’t want to talk to the family because of their discomfort with his girlfriend? What if he only wanted to stay with Rhea?

If one goes through his interviews, it’s only his mother that he refers to in the family. He rarely spoke about his family and of his father. On his social media accounts too, Sushant only mentioned his mother. He often said he doesn’t have friends. At the peak of his career, he was planning to go to Nasa and do other things.


Also read: Instagram influencers with open DMs aren’t therapists. They should stop acting like one


Depression is seen as defeat

Depression is perceived as a defeat in these families. And a man, especially from a middle-class family who has made a successful career in Bollywood without a Godfather, can never be accepted as defeated or depressed. Sushant’s sister posted a picture on Instagram and wrote that he was not suffering from depression. His brother-in-law Vishal Kirti wrote a blog, saying that though he lost touch with Sushant a year ago, he still can not believe that he was depressed.

The fact that the family doesn’t want to accept that their son could have been depressed even after his death, shows how little they know about this issue.


Also read: Truth shall prevail, says Rhea Chakraborty over accusations of abetment to suicide


Kaala Jaadu?

Sushant’s father has claimed that Sushant wanted to do organic farming in Coorg but Rhea stopped him. That Rhea warned him about his haunted house and forced him to move to another place. That she even took his phone away from him.

This is how the entire country got a right to call Rhea a witch. Bihar’s Janta Dal (United) leader Maheshwari Hazari even called Chakraborty a ‘vishkanya’ who was sent to entrap Sushant in her love.

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932 COMMENTS

  1. Whatever you have written miss Jyoti Yadav is absolutely correct. But I think you failed in your research that this is more or less scenario at majority of Households of this nation. So, I think you should take care of that too. Ofcourse having Bihar and Sushant’s name make your article more attractive at once but it seems like you started concluding things at the very first paragraph.

  2. Brave article. The toxic comments to defend Bihar culture will haunt you. The truth that wants to be hidden for centuries, will not have any buyers. Social reforms in India have been the slowest compared to any western or progressive country. Mysogny wins. Women in such cultures are vultures for other women! Men are validators of their khoopsoorti and cooking skills. A women anything more will be burned alive. Rapes in India have barely seen an national uproar. Feminism in India is a sham, limited to selling clothes that can make a woman look attractive to man – such paper deep freedom must be torn away. Why sharia law exists, and now Indian law will actupon the horrors designed by mother-in-law insecurities

  3. You have said that “family structure” in india is “toxic” . So tell us what is ideal family structure ?? If you can’t say things on facts .. than don’t write this illogical , Indian value system bashing .
    sorry this is your job to write this kind of propoganda , but I hope you should check your facts … If your moral grounds are so high th;en you should also question “Rhea’s family” structure and its toxicness

  4. bengoli always see bhojpuri bihari as traditional labour class be it manual or educated(ias ips or engineer also educated labour class).
    a culture can not defined by noukri class people but there age old scientist and capitalist .that is the mirror of real IQ.check fact check scientist series in wiki vs Bihar.anand Kumar a math teacher termed as mathmatician,😂,in what state they stay ! No Capitalist power .only caste politics of ‘ham Bara ‘attitude.

    there culture so different from bengoli.
    rhea chakraborty, a real poor mad, in what sense go to love from this blood lines!! Really old proverb ‘kal ‘attaracts .

    a Brahmin bengoli very much different from bhojpuri class.how she cope up with for few months with relationship!
    though
    Bengal and Bihar share border there is no blood relation in last thousands of years due to mismatch.it seems in high society she forget it.later realised.
    it is good for modern day bengoli all over worrld also to analysis fact check that mentality psychology of traditional villains if not bimaru or r **e state.kitne had tak wo gir sakte hai or real mentality comes out in crisis .

    • Yes bongs are the day urban naxal’s and mind it without any class.
      Your such long para on drug peddler rehea speaks a lot about you bongs, such spineless culture less nonsense.
      And yes bihari’s are famous as labourers, but u bongs are famous blood peaches and are famous for bitches.

  5. its amazing to see the family’s love on social media and all the publicity they are getting. Simple fact: Sushant was alone in days leading to his death. Not his sister or his father was with him. Rhea wasnt around to stop them, so whats their excuse.

  6. Perpetrating racism does not need courage, but standing against it does. I had written an open letter to the respective media, which couldn’t dare to print. So i share the letter here for readers.

    Dear Ms Jyoti Yadav and Mr Shekhar Gupta, Chief Editor, The Print

    I read your article in The Print on “toxic Bihari families” and how the estranged wife targets the Bengali woman during monsoon in a kajri. By allowing such opinionated and prejudiced views to be published, the bar of objectivity and fairness has hit the dust; it’s the lowest when you go to the extent of categorising your labels, which stem from a mindset, naturalised in denominating Biharis as culturally backward and unscrupulous. But then, I was reminded of the shabby standards which we all point the other of being in, while standing in mess ourselves.

    India, admittedly, has a misogyny problem, more apparently felt in North India for its violent variety, but your journey from the particular of Rajput’s case to the ‘generalised deduction’ of Bihari families as toxic, has made the laws of physics come real in fantasy-anthropology. But, attitude toward women, considerably varies in character in different regions within North, which needs exploration and commenting in the context of its socio-cultural past, and not preset perceptions. Why would you choose to write an article on Bihar, a state you never experienced first-hand, evident in your distaste and lack of knowledge of its people and culture throughout the article, and not on the toxic masculinity of Haryana (which you belong to), which is directly or indirectly responsible for the dismal sex-ratio of the State (still the lowest in the country), and the heart-wrenching anecdotes of female infanticides? Why would you choose not to write an article on the toxicity that Bollywood spreads in the name of entertainment of the “ab karunga tere saath gandee baat” sorts, having petrified the female actor as a voluptuous object for long? Why would you wilfully choose to ignore Bihar in its tragic flood destiny and write an article that instead defends Bollywood’s extravagant notoriety, to say the least. You have displayed not just insensitivity but lack of wisdom in denying to choose from a wide variety of issues which would be of a much greater social relevance than this, that you’ve produced in the name of liberality; so much for fashioning yourself as a journalist of social issues!

    In all the articles that I read, written by Bengali women themselves, to rebut the repugnant slander of ‘black magic’ hurled at them on various social media platforms, the point sent home was how such profiling of any people or gender can precipitate an existing bias and misrepresentation into stereotypes, besides demeaning and hurting the subject. In times of populism, stereotypes have damaging consequences of discrimination and premature value judgements. Your piece is ‘one of its kind’ for two reasons: – first, it presumes to critique an existing stereotype by setting an equally (or more) nocuous stereotype; and second, such cultural stereotyping is ridiculously strange because it is carved out at the expense of the ‘receiving subject’ rather than the perpetrator. Every ‘Bihari family’ should think ‘twice’ before lodging an FIR against a Bengali woman, because in doing so they would risk, however unwittingly, exposing their illiberal ‘Bihariness’, their patriarchal and parochial attitudes to the Bengali, ‘black-magic-doing’ woman, and be reprimanded in future such articles to come.

    Black magic has found expression in cultures of every region in the subcontinent. Some references in literature or unique explorations, of the occult might have conferred the special status in black magic to Bengal in ancient or medieval India, by seeping through the oral narratives in most States today. Indian intelligentsia remains indifferent to the history of pre-Independence immigration from Bihar to Calcutta and abroad, which left a deep impact and imprint on Bihari society and psyche. To use the words of Arvind Narayan Das, “If soil (referring to saltpetre here) itself was a precious commodity for colonialism, and the produce of the soil more so, the sons of the soil were not left out of the trade”. The folklore that you mention has this context, where the beautiful modern Bengali woman’s attractiveness is married to magic in the amateurish imagination of a forlorn wife set in a primitive world, who is ready to offer all her gold for her husband’s return from the far-off pardesh of Calcutta; the union of black magic and Platonian misogyny can also be read in the metaphor of ‘Bombay’ as the woman that entices, the archetypal maya or mayanagri to be precise. As the twentieth century ran its course of socio-economic changes, in the face of modernity, the notion of black magic managed to survive, now in distortion, may be because the fear and power of ‘Bengali baba’ could be encashed by both Bengalis and non-Bengalis, or the agency and confidence of many Bengali girls must be unsettling to other cultures, or who knows. Today, Bihar on the contrary must have shed many of its stereotypes about Bengal, given its proximity, and vast populations that lived and are living in each other’s territory.

    Since the early days of Permanent Settlement and Zamindari system, Bihar failed to diversify its economy. The idea of ‘Shravan Kumar’ is a means to create the necessary moral conditions to aspire a service-job, which remains almost the only route to socio-economic upliftment in the middle class; while in the lower class, it helps rest of the unemployed family members to survive on Shravan’s earnings, who besides having to dissever his family, is paid and treated low. Whose funny bone do you tickle, when you apply this analogy to SSR? The only similarity that Sushant and Shravan have are in the letters ‘s’ and ‘h’. I am sorry, you are unaware of the real Shravan Kumars of India and not just Bihar; Sushant Singh Rajput could not provide the devil of a Bihari mother-in-law (dead long ago) for Rhea Chakraborty and did not need to make ends meet, he was a well-off Bollywood actor, whose upper middle class family held values not fitting your Shravan-family-profiling (or have they mended their beliefs after his experiences in live-in relationships for ten years until death) and could’ve survived without his “Shravan-ness”, as it will now. But, Shravan developed an Oedipal complex now and what specifically needs mention, as far as the social trajectory of Bihar is concerned, are the million micro mutinies in families, which have lead to necessary social transformation pressure and surge in inter-caste marriages unlike anywhere else.

    The prejudice against Biharis has already done a great damage to their identity and culture, as they continue to endure name-calling unabated and the word ‘Bihari’ continues be an infra-dig. I hope you pay attention to my genuine offense on behalf of a community and don’t let it pass like a hypocrite person-of-influence does. Finally, you owe a deep apology for disrespecting a whole community. The revered Shekhar Gupta has both shocked and assured by publishing and applauding the article.

    Wishing you wellness and wisdom,

    • This will not be easy for people to read or even understand This premise. We are so focused on family ties and that there can be nothing wrong in motives of blood relative, that we lose perspective. Often, we are guilt ridden if we are angry with our families or relatives. We have ‘default setting’ – he is my father/she is my sister so they have my interest at heart. It’s amazing how much ‘love’ is being shown on social media by the family. Yet the basic fact is that there was no loved one with him in days leading to suicide. If my family member is suicidal/depressed or even if being ‘manipulated by someone else’, I don’t think I would be in another city/country.

    • Ha ha ha… that definitely is the case… only someone out of their mind can come up with this nonsense… please can Justine hang up the journalism boots, pen, paper and keyboard please

  7. i dont know which family you came from.but that is for sure you have no sympathy for deceased family but total support for proven drug addict or drug giver.your parents will be proud of you

  8. madam jyoti,
    i dont know which family you came from.but that is for sure you have no sympathy for deceased family but total support for proven drug addict or drug giver.your parents will be proud of you.

  9. Finally I chanced upon a sensible article on a sensitive issue. Cowbelt culture – wow that’s a new vocabulary for me. Actually I agree with your point. The stress of being a Shravan Kumar is so much that the pressure can make a dead body to grow up to 14 feet in the time span of a few hours. But then you are already aware of this trend because your article seems to be well researched on Bihari culture. Trust me it takes guts to put an article like this. You’re giving tough competition to Rajdeep Sardesai. Afterall how many have the courage to do things which only results in being insulted publicly. Don’t worry, you can still publish such things when you’re high on MJ. Just my opinion you see like yours I had to bear.

    • May be because ms Jyoti the Jatin is on withdrawal symptoms, as her bestie rehea the murderer s in jail, don’t worry you along with others like Rajdeep are going to be cleansed from the shit gutter of rehea culture in which you are drowning.
      Wish u speedy recovery from drugs.
      Next time sasta mat phukna

    • Author’s analysis is a total crap. The truth is staring at us and still we choose to support the wrong people. Karm and karma goes hand in hand so you will get what you give. Even though I am bengali women I will not support the wrong doer. Sushant is getting so much support because he was a genuinely nice person and an exceptional actor. And it is only after he is gone that I am getting to know him and feeling so helpless at his loss. What is causing me much grief is knowing the pain he must have endured. Life has been very unfair but let our prayers give him peace. Know that you are much adored and loved by many. Rest in peace !

    • Yes, of course, writing garbage needs a lot of courage. Absolutely shameful article. I don’t know what cow belt family you come from, but most north indian families are not rigid like you claim. Why don’t you quote some research paper on your subject and stop pulling shit theories out of your ass.

  10. I don’t agree with your viewpoint completely. Although, I am aware that such kind of families does exist but not Sushant’s family. Had his father been obsessed with him, he wouldn’t have let him drop out of his college. Regarding his relationship, SSR had a relationship with Ankita Lokhande for 7 years, if his family would have had objection, then he would not have een able to do so. If you really think that Rhea is innocent, then why is her lawyers not supporting CBI inquiry and why had she disappeared after FIR was filed against her. Lastly stp using the term “cow belt” for referring to the entire Northern region. It’s very irresponsible of you to use such racist terms.

    • Sir, you are too mild in your manners. But I will not stop short of calling this article the smelliest piece of human shit I have ever come across. These paid PR people don’t deserve any respect.

    • Dear friend he is now GF of godfather family of Maharastra from a biggest and well known family person.

      So she has no fear now and now you can see if she is really very Sad and fealing lonely without SSR then how could she use a ward your asss???

      A girl who lost his BF which she used to ward call his future husband her whole world, after few days of he passed away she is using this ugly words???

      Can you imagine that wat this girl really is???

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