Following Bengaluru-based Atul Subhash’s highly-publicised demise in December — alleging harassment by his estranged wife’s family as the reason why he took his own life — two more suicides by married Indian men have been getting a lot of attention. Manav Sharma died in Mumbai on February 24. In a video suicide note, he alleged harassment by his wife, and was particularly upset that she had had a sexual relationship prior to their marriage. He had attempted suicide before, and his widow alleges having experienced drunken physical abuse from him on multiple occasions, which her in-laws ignored. Manpreet Singh, a young Jat Sikh man from Punjab, died by suicide days after his wedding in 2017, upon discovering that his spouse’s mother was Dalit. This event has returned to social media circulation, presumably because of increased public discourse on the topic.
Quotes from Sharma’s Hindi-language video indicate that he said, “Please, someone should talk about men. They become very lonely.”
The term “male loneliness epidemic” has gained traction not only in the West but in India too. There are two sides to this coin. There is the way that the existence of widespread male loneliness is being used to promote regressive and especially misogynistic (although also casteist, homophobic, transphobic, communal — you name it) actions, under the guise of “traditional values”. The suicides of married men are being weaponised by anti-feminist activists and organisations to further their cause. There is also the flipside: that the antidote to male loneliness ultimately lies in the deconstruction of the patriarchal order, not its upholding.
A feminist, intersectional politics of care gently and intelligently brings male loneliness into its sphere of impact. At least two of the three men in the cases mentioned here would still be alive if they had been taught, for instance, that virginity and caste are social constructs (as intersectional feminism teaches). The third may still be alive had a functional understanding of equality within marriage been a part of India’s socio-cultural milieu, which it starkly is not. Male loneliness is real, and tied to patriarchal stoicism and fear of vulnerability.
A long time ago now, at a time when I was too young and yet it was already too late, I knew someone who told me that he had contemplated how best to hurt me, and had decided that his death by suicide would be the most effective measure, because I would never recover from that. Of course, he shared this idea only to frighten and control me. I remembered this particular episode of abuse while thinking about this new trend: that of men choosing to end their lives and very publicly blaming women for their decision, subjecting them to permanent damage.
One can have sympathy for individual men like Sharma, Subhash and even Singh — for their mental states, their ignorance, or the futility they felt no matter where it came from — without having to turn their deaths into a parade. Indian women homemakers, Indian farmers and Indian students are groups who face high suicide risks, and increased awareness of improving conditions for these groups would be more productive than getting caught up in a misogynistic smokescreen.