Darpan letter · No. 826 September 2026

Half of a split pea

On a father drawn at the stove in a Class 1 textbook, Yājñavalkya’s image of the two halves, the Gītā’s reminder that even the body’s journey runs on work, and a teacher who told his students to copy only the good

प्रिय साथी,

Among today’s heavier stories, the caste count, the nuclear doctrine, a sailor killed in the Gulf of Oman, there is one that is easy to skip. Andhra Pradesh has brought out new textbooks for Classes 1 and 2 in which half of all the household chores shown are done by men. A father works beside the mother in the kitchen; men and women stand together in the queue at a public tap; girls play drums and violins. The earlier books, an official said, had shown such work done entirely by women. “The aim is to avoid gender stereotyping from the first grade itself,” said N. Lokesh Naidu, the State’s Human Resources Development Minister. It is a small change of pictures. I want to spend this letter on it, because small pictures seen at six decide a great deal of what we think is natural at thirty.

Start with the oldest image I know for the two people who make a household. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, telling how the world came into being, says that the first being was alone and found no joy in it, and so: स इममेवात्मानं द्वेधापातयत्। ततः पतिश्च पत्नी चाभवताम्। तस्मादिदमर्धबृगलमिव स्व इति ह स्माह याज्ञवल्क्यः। — sa imam evātmānaṃ dvedhāpātayat, tataḥ patiś ca patnī cābhavatām; tasmād idam ardhabṛgalam iva sva iti ha smāha yājñavalkyaḥ — he split this very self into two, and from that came husband and wife; therefore, as Yājñavalkya used to say, each of us is like one half of a split pea (1.4.3). A split pea has no larger half. Neither piece is the pea and the other its helper. Whatever else the passage means, and it means a great deal about the self, its image of the household is of two equal halves of one thing.

Be honest about the rest of the inheritance too. The same Upaniṣad, a few chapters later, contains lines about wives that no one should defend today, and for centuries our homes, like homes almost everywhere, gave the kitchen, the water pot and the care of the old to women alone. The textbook the Andhra officials replaced was not inventing that pattern. It was faithfully copying it. So the question is not whether our tradition speaks with one voice. It does not. The question is which of its voices we choose to teach.

Here the Taittirīya Upaniṣad gives us something remarkable. At the end of his studies, the teacher sends the student home with instructions: speak the truth, practise dharma, treat mother, father, teacher and guest as divine. And then he adds a line that few teachers in any civilisation have had the humility to say: यान्यनवद्यानि कर्माणि। तानि सेवितव्यानि। नो इतराणि। यान्यस्माकं सुचरितानि। तानि त्वयोपास्यानि। नो इतराणि॥ — yāny anavadyāni karmāṇi, tāni sevitavyāni, no itarāṇi; yāny asmākaṃ sucaritāni, tāni tvayopāsyāni, no itarāṇi — whatever actions are blameless, those you should practise, not the others; whatever good conduct you find among us, that you should follow, not the rest (1.11.2). The teacher is telling his student that the elders are not wholly good, and that the student must sort. A textbook that redraws the kitchen is doing exactly this sorting on behalf of six-year-olds: keeping the warmth of the household, and dropping the rule that only one half of it works there.

Why does housework matter so much that a Minister talks about it? Kṛṣṇa answers in the third chapter, where Arjuna is tempted to think that stepping back from action is the higher path: नियतं कुरु कर्म त्वं कर्म ज्यायो ह्यकर्मणः। शरीरयात्रापि च ते न प्रसिद्ध्येदकर्मणः॥ — niyataṃ kuru karma tvaṃ karma jyāyo hy akarmaṇaḥ, śarīrayātrāpi ca te na prasiddhyed akarmaṇaḥ — do the work that is yours, for action is better than inaction; without action even the journey of your body could not be sustained (3.8). Śarīrayātrā, the body’s journey from one day to the next, is not an abstraction. It is cooked food, fetched water, washed clothes, a child bathed, a sick parent turned in bed. India’s Time Use Survey of 2019 found that women who did unpaid domestic work for their households spent about 299 minutes a day on it, against about 97 minutes for men who did such work. None of it is counted in the GDP. All of it is counted, silently, in the hours a woman does not have for study, for paid work or for rest. The verse does not say the journey of the body is sustained by her action. It says: by yours.

And why begin in Class 1? Because children do not learn from what we say nearly as much as from what they see us do. Kṛṣṇa says it plainly: यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जनः। स यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते॥ — yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tat tad evetaro janaḥ, sa yat pramāṇaṃ kurute lokas tad anuvartate — whatever a leading person does, others do the same; whatever standard he sets, the world follows (3.21). For a six-year-old, the śreṣṭha is not a Minister. It is her father, and the father in the pictures of her first book. The word pramāṇa is exact: the picture becomes the measure of what is normal. That is why the officials’ own admission matters. For years the school system set the wrong pramāṇa, and the world followed.

There is a limit, and you should state it in any answer you write on this. A picture competes with what a child sees at home, and home usually wins. The textbook will work only if the teacher does not laugh at the father at the stove and does not ask only the girls to sweep the classroom; Andhra’s recruitment of 16,000 teachers is a chance to build this into their training. And the hours women spend fetching water and cooking on smoky fuel are reduced faster by a tap in the house and a gas connection than by any book. The book changes who is expected to do the work. Infrastructure changes how much work there is. A good answer needs both.

For your preparation, three things. In GS1 answers on women’s work, use the Time Use Survey, the Periodic Labour Force Survey on female participation, and Sustainable Development Goal Target 5.4, which asks for “shared responsibility within the household and the family”; the Andhra books are a concrete example of that last clause. In essays on social change, remember the Taittirīya teacher: reform in India is strongest when it sorts the inheritance, keeping what is blameless and letting the rest go, rather than rejecting it wholesale or defending it wholesale. And in GS4 case studies, notice that the most powerful standard-setter in any office is the officer’s own conduct. The collector who clears her own tea cup is teaching her staff something a circular cannot.

One more thing, and it is about you. Many of you are preparing at home, and someone in that home is cooking your meals and washing your clothes so that you can study. Tonight, do one of those tasks yourself, without being asked. It will cost you twenty minutes. It is also the first practice of 3.21 that anyone will see from you: the standard you set at your own table.

The Upaniṣad’s image is worth carrying into your office one day. A household, a village, a nation, is like a split pea: two halves of one thing, neither of which is the helper of the other. A child who opens a Class 1 book this year and sees her father at the stove has been shown that, before she can read a word. अर्धबृगलमिव — like the two halves of a split pea. Neither half is lesser, and neither should carry the whole.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.3 · Bhagavad Gītā 3.8 · Bhagavad Gītā 3.21 · Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.2