MY VIEWS ON INDIAN SOCIETY WITH RESPECT TO ATROCITIES ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The menace of atrocities on women and children is not merely the problem related to women and children, it is the problem related to entire culture and civilization. The recent brutality in Delhi gang rape incident has drawn attention of entire nation and brought the issue of "women and her safety" into the nation's mainstream debate.People from different parts of country started protests for immediate justice on the issue and to amend the legal law on sex and sexual abuse to make it further stringent. I felt so happy when a needful and rightful protest, against inhuman activities on women, has been getting strengthened by consolidating rightful reactions from different parts of the country.But, the demands, to fight against these evils, should not be restricted to only legal measures.Mere stringent punishments doesn't stop this problem, punishment plays very minimum role in curbing the evil of this kind. We should extend our demands further more comprehensive to curb the dangerous evil. In my conscience there is no justice in this world for rape and sexual molestation. Any kind of justice or punishment can not mitigate the problem of a rape victim. The nature of rape is totally different from other crimes.Here the victim's loss is not any kind of materialistic item to recover from judiciary system but the loss is peace of life and social liberty which can be hardly recovered by judicial system.

So, the real justice, in case of rape and sexual molestation, is ensuring the society not to happen such  heinous crimes. Other than this no legal proceedings can restore the previous life of victim.

The threat against women is not only the rape and sexual assault, it also includes domestic violence, marital discord,honor deaths, women trafficking,extra marital relations,forcible prostitution, ill-treatment in manual scavenging and slavery,female foeticide,infanticide and also cultural,religious and economic discrimination on the basis of different social constraints.

    In this context we should see the problem of women with holistic view and should know rightful demands to eradicate this social evil on women.

Indian social architecture is highly complex with the factors of different religions, varying cultures and multiple linguistics.The change in any of these factors resembles the clear cut difference in their social customs  with respect to other.The social customs which are inherited from past generations will play dominant role in regulating lives of people belongs to that particular social customs.This social customs varies from place to place,community to community,child to adult and also male to female.


As per historical accounts, during pre-vedic period around 3000 years back from now, there was a perfect social balance with required moral and ethical code of conduct.I prefer to call this society as value based society. In this value based society women given equal priority in all activities on par with men. The mode of education is through oral transmission and it is open to all children who crosses 14 years of age irrespective of their gender.The main emphasis in education system was on character building of the student. Students were not taught in any class rooms,but their education starts and ends in the presence of nature, environment and society.Nature and society are two main components for their course of study.People lived in harmony among themselves and with the nature.It was basically an egalitarian society with no presence of casteism. People lived separated by small-small groups called tribes. There were presence of different social hierarchies in these tribes starts from Rajan to dasis. But all these different posts are open to all adults from their tribe irrespective of their gender, there is no hereditary for any of these posts.People had to prove their abilities and should occupy their respective desired posts.Women enjoyed utmost freedom and dignity during this period of time.Women allowed to marry a person of her choice and allowed to remarriage in case of husband's death or divorce.Women actively participated in economic activities.The nature of economy  was mainly pastoral.

In the latter ages of vedic period women started loosing her recognition gradually. The patriarchal form of society started emerging as all the power as the base of economy taking it's shift from pastoral to agrarian.
The slowly increasing complexities in work culture made women dependent on men because of physiological and biological differences between men and women. Brahminic society emerged as predominant and started preaching everything on the grounds of rituals. Performing all sorts of rituals were strictly prohibited to women. Caste-ism and hereditary of different posts taken it's birth during this time.The domination of men on women started first in aristocratic families and slowly entered into next line of families and finally to entire society. The priesty class started dictating the society with illegitimate rules.Women and untouchables were not allowed to access education which was open to all in pre-vedic period.

In due course of time women gradually became dependent on men for her livelihood.This gradual process had taken away her economic freedom permanently and made her complete dependent.The complete financial dependence of women led her to loose social security and liberty. She lost her say and significance in her family's financial and other important decision making.Finally society started to see her as tool to produce children. Women also convinced herself, without revolting against, and started accepting men dominance. This acceptance proved even more dangerous and gave them many social evils as gift.So, this evil gift to women was partly by men supremacy feeling and partly by women acceptance.

With all these kind of degradation, slowly she had entered into most dangerous ages where  'sati sahagamana' and child marriages were dominant.In the name of religion, the selfish priesty class had indoctrinated the society to accept sati kind of inhumane and ruthless practicesses as sacred paths for a widow to get moksha. In the name of sati, the widow has to be burnt alive in the funeral pyre of her husband.This is such an inhumane, ruthless, heinous and shameless practice against women that I ever heard in the history of human civilization.The concept of 'sati' has come from the concept of 'anumarana' which was seen during pre-guptan period.Unfortunately all these social evils taken it's shelter in Hindu religion because of some useless peoples' religious misinterpretation.In real sense these evil practices are not the spirit of Hindu religion, but these are brain childs of religious misinterpretation. Furthermore the status of women as depicted by Manu in The 'Manusmriti' was also discriminatory for women.

PRACTICE OF 'SATI'

As I mentioned in the starting itself India is a country with different religions.All these different religions played considerable role in determining the status of women in different times.I hope, I have given little account on how Hindu religion had been transformed from Vedic to Brahminic society.The other ancient religions which born against the social evils of Hinduism were Budhism and Jainism. Budhism had given proper place to women. Budhism allowed women to be educated and preached the importance of women in family building.The jainism was little women discriminatory on the grounds of their faith towards attaining salvation. The Jainism preaches extreme non-violence and vegetarianism in order to attain salvation.But attaining salvation is not possible to women as it treats women as impure. As per Jains women becomes impure and not deserves to get salvation because she kills many germs in her blood as part of her monthly menstrual cycle.

The other major religion during latter periods in Indian history is Islam.Islam started in India with Arab traders and muslim invasions  of 7th and 8th centuries. Islam as a religion preaches equality to all on the grounds of wealth and sex.The original doctrines of  'quaran'(noble book of Islam) and 'sharia'(the code of conduct for muslim) has given equal treatment to men and women.Infact it was the muslim rulers(especially Mughals) of India who strongly opposed the practice of  'Sati' in their territory. Humayun, Akbar and Aurangajeb were well known in fighting against the evil practice of sati. But, even in Islam also the latter periods religious encroachments started depriving women privileges. Oftentimes I used to see in 'The Hindu' news paper about harsh punishments given to women in some Arab countries.A women involved in adultery was given stone on to death punishment,but not to men who did the same thing.

 The one more important religion in India is Sikhism. Sikhism is very recent religion traces back to 15th century.This religion treats both men and women as equal entities in all respects.According to Sikhism, men and women are two sides of the same coin of the human. There is a system of inter-relation and inter-dependence in which man takes birth from a woman, and woman is born of a man´s seed. According to Sikhism a man can not feel secure and complete during his life without a woman, and a man's success is related to the love and support of the woman who shares her life with him, and vice-versa. I would like to quote a sikh poet's quotation on women which follows as below:

"A woman, is the favourite in her parental home, loved dearly by her father and mother. In the home of her in-laws, she is the pillar of the family, the guarantee of its good fortune... Sharing in spiritual wisdom and enlightenment and with noble qualities endowed, a woman, the other half of man, escorts him to the door of liberation."

I WANT TO LIVE

Living under such a great religion with sacred norms in their doctrines, Punjab is struggling with declining sex ratios.People are reluctant to accept girl child as they have to pay huge dowry for her marriage.Female foeticide and infanticides are very high in Punjab.I have red a case where a poor women gave birth to female child. After her birth she was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs ate her.It was very shivering for me while reading this news. Her only fault — she was the fourth girl born in a poor family. Such an evil practices are seen today across India, as per some statistics, India killed 10 million girl childs in 20 years.

With all these kind of discriminatory historical background women entered into modern world in India. With liberalized economic concepts over the last few decades, India established considerable market in services sector.The work nature of these services made Indian women once again to take equal participation in economic contribution of her family.Even in agriculture and it's allied activities also women contribution is more and it is being recognized slowly.So, on general perception comparative to medieval era's women the present women empowered considerably and in the process to become fully empowered.In spite of some matured customs in modern society still many women and children are facing some inhuman brutal activities with one or other reason .I am not getting any words to describe such wicked acts where small babies of age 2-10 years being sexually molested and raped by lusted buffalo like persons.On one side a big agitation against Delhi gang rape was going on, at the same time, I have seen plenty of such an incidents reported in newspapers on daily basis.Why all these evils became persistent in Indian society?,What causes these?.

I WAS ATTACKED WITH NO FAULT OF MINE

I can not attribute these evils to any religion as it happened in ancient and medieval periods.I would like to attribute these evils to the way the Indian society has taken it's transformation over the last three or four decades.Indian society has seen a paradigm shift in the recent years, the social values and human relations has been encroached by commercial, market and luxury orientations. People started measuring a person's social status based on his/her material possession instead of human values and character. This social and psychological feelings can be seen in majority of people now a days. We are clearly seeing this kind of transformation very much in rural India also.I feel we are in transition zone to see this transformation, there has been a clear cut differences in the social practices and living style of people from my childhood to till date in my village(located in coastal area of Andhra Pradesh).

The change of social priorities from human relations to material possession is the main root cause for many evil practices in today's world, atrocities on women is one of the component among these evils. It is very clear that the primary need of the person became money and material. This need drove our education system from value based education to market based commercial education. The pattern of education that we have today is very much interested in promoting corporate interests and money making but least interested in ethical and moral conduct of student. We see the study of ethics being offered as a master course of study in some universities. This clearly representing the degradedness of our education system. I wonder how can this course of study could be delineated from other courses of study. When you are offering it as separate course, does it mean the other course students do not require it?.We can divide physics,biology,polity, economy,etc into many sub streams and can be offered as separate course of study, but we can't afford to do same with ethics and moralities.This ethics and moral science should never be a separate subject, it should be the inner soul of every subject right from elementary school to a university study.A nuclear science student primarily should be a humanist to use his knowledge for peaceful purposes otherwise it leads to devastating effects.Likewise, every person in the society should have some moral values to recognize security of any woman is same like security of his own mother,sister and wife.

SAVE THE FUTURE

The other dimension of  changing culture lies in fashion and luxury:

Luxury: People are successfully trapped in big psychological game being played by corporates in the name of consumerism.In the process of promoting consumerism especially for luxury items(basic needs never requires promotion), there has been lot of evil impact on women.The tool to promote consumerism is mass media and public boardings. This mass media and add agencies are using women as passive sex objects to promote their clients'(corporates) product.I don't appreciate a half nude woman promoting men innerwear. This kind of adds in public are really an insult to our great Indian women.I may appear that I am pointing out small small issues, but these are not small issues, these kind of patterns will have great impact on the status of women and on the minds of young India.

Fashion:  Fashion has crossed it's frontiers and entered into dangerous zone in our society.It is encroaching our rich Indian culture and tradition and degrading our values.Fashion means not only the outer appearance, but also includes the inner attitude of a person.Modern or advanced culture doesn't lies in western dresses, it always lies in thought process of us. We can not call a person as modern who is fully dressed up in western, graduated from IIT and lives in abroad, but still harassing his wife for dowry. The present day movies are playing great role in ruining our tradition and building erroneous culture to our youth.During early ages of movie, we were shown how to respect a Guru(respected teacher), but now a days we are being shown how to tease the same Guru in class room.The story of the movie also promotes erotic feelings than the family values.People have been seriously started believing beauty of maerials and status would be recognized by fashion and luxury respectively.

 I would like to make it very clear that I am not against to fashion or luxury.It is everyone's freedom to enjoy. But our freedom should not promote any wrong signals to society, it should be practiced with proper care and awareness.

The real beauty of person never reflects in cosmetics and western dresses, rather it reflects in inner manifestation of character. Without character our dress-up is not complete, we are still nude.


Apart from all these many of our children are not being paid proper attention by their parents.The recent economic activities made the greed to conquer over the need.We have such a parents who likes to pay lakhs of rupees for corporate schools but don't like to spare time to monitor their children activities.I am not exaggerating anything here, this is real scenario that we are observing these days.

Finally, it is very clear that,from ancient to modern world, the problems of our women is more social and cultural than anything else.The remedies for these problems also lies in social and cultural aspects.We should  move forward with changes in education system first which promotes value based science than only science. Govt has to focus more on this. We need stringent punishment for any atrocities on women and children, at the same time ensuring every child is being exposed to holy and noble thoughts is more important. Today's criminal is one day's child and there had been some serious problem in his upbringing for today's act. Punishing him is utmost important to send a warning to other same mindsets and taking actions to see where the problem lies in is also equal or more  important to curb/minimize the problem in future.

We see sometimes some incidents of atrocities turn into political game in the name of caste and religion. Everyone should understand the situation and should not attribute the criminal to his caste or religion. As a human being we are all one unit though the social practices divide us multiple, when we fight for justice it is good for us to disown our general tendencies and fight together as single unit. Splitting ourselves on any line is buying the future problem directly into our home.

I AM THE FUTURE

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Thanks a lot for reading this article.I personally requesting you to excuse me for using some objectionable terminology in this article and also if I hurt you on the grounds of any religion and gender.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         -----