Manusmriti, Women’s Independence and the Debate Over Respect: What the Verses Actually Say

Can a text be said to respect women if it also says they should not be independent? That is the question raised by an Instagram reel that cites the Manusmriti, recalls B. R. Ambedkar’s opposition to it and challenges public figures who have praised its treatment of women. The answer needs both parts of the text: passages encouraging people to honour women, and passages prescribing male control over their lives.

What the cited verses say

Manusmriti 9.3 places a woman under her father in childhood, husband in youth and sons in old age, and says she is not fit for independence. The language of protection can be understood as a duty of care by those defending the verse, but its final restriction on a woman’s autonomy is explicit. Another passage, 9.2, likewise places women under male family control. These are not simply instructions to treat women kindly: they deny women an equal right to decide for themselves.

Manusmriti 9.15 describes women in terms of inconstancy, lack of affection and possible disloyalty to their husbands even when closely guarded. Manusmriti 2.213 portrays women as capable of leading men astray and tells men to remain cautious. The precise English words vary across translations, but the negative generalisations about women’s character are not inventions of the reel.

There is an important error in the reel’s graphic: the statement about natural heartlessness is associated with 9.15, not 9.17. Verse 9.17 makes a different set of negative assertions about women. Getting the verse number right matters, especially when a public argument asks people to examine original passages rather than slogans.

What about passages praising women?

The text also includes Manusmriti 3.56, commonly translated to mean that deities rejoice where women are honoured, and that religious rites are fruitless where they are not. This is real counter-evidence against claiming the book contains no favourable words about women. Yet there is a difference between respect offered within fixed family roles and the freedom to choose one’s own life. A call to honour women does not cancel a rule denying them independence. A fair reading must acknowledge both and assess the restrictions as well as the praise.

How public figures entered the debate

At a FICCI event in August 2022, Delhi High Court Justice Prathiba M. Singh praised the position given to women in Indian scriptures including Manusmriti and referred to the importance of honouring women. Media reports also recorded her advice concerning support from joint families for working women. These were comments at a conference, not a Delhi High Court ruling. In a separate controversy in 2020, BJP politician Khushbu Sundar was reported to have said the text contained no words demeaning women. That categorical claim is difficult to reconcile with verses such as 9.3, 9.15 and 2.213.

The reel also addresses Yogi Adityanath. But its challenge to him is a question posed by the commentator, not proof that he endorsed each of these verses. Criticism should focus on statements actually made rather than assume a politician’s position from a rhetorical challenge.

Why Ambedkar and the Phules matter

On 25 December 1927 at Mahad, Ambedkar and his supporters publicly burned a copy of Manusmriti as a symbolic protest against the caste order. The Supreme Court’s historical account confirms this event. Ambedkar’s criticism linked social status and inherited hierarchy to the wider demand for human equality. Jyotirao Phule challenged caste oppression, including in his 1873 work Gulamgiri; Savitribai Phule and Jyotirao worked to expand girls’ education. These reform movements mattered because they questioned who had the right to learn, decide and live as an equal member of society—not merely whether women received polite praise.

Respect must include freedom

The verses should not be mistaken for a complete description of Hindu beliefs or how all Hindu families have lived. Manusmriti is one historical normative text; interpretations, religious practice and social change have never been uniform. Nor does citing a text establish that any individual today follows all its prescriptions.

Still, judged against the equal dignity and independence of women, rules that deny women autonomy and attribute moral failings to them as a class are unjust and discriminatory. The crucial distinction is not between respecting tradition and rejecting it altogether. It is between acknowledging a text’s historical importance and treating every one of its prescriptions as an authority for present-day life. The reel is right to demand attention to the actual verses; its mistaken attribution of the ‘heartless’ wording to 9.17 should be corrected, not used to dismiss the wider and well-supported problem.