Off lately I have been writing a bit about Issues and Laws concerning ‘women’ in India. They have been on critical topics such as Child Marriage, Laws Governing Rape, Importance of Marriage Certificate, Domestic Voilence and Women being used as commodity by the advertising media. I have also written on Successful Women, who have become a role model for many, men and women in our country.
Not being too biased or overly feminist, I have also written about how some women are mis-using the law for their own selfish needs.
However, some individuals think that my views are mostly in-favour of the feline (maybe they are, but I feel for the right reasons). And have received some-what dis-approving comments, for the above mentioned posts. If I wanted, I could have simply deleted or edited these comments but I did not do so since I completely believe that everyone has a right to their views and should not be stopped from expressing them.
This morning I get an e-mail from an individual named ‘Maksim Gorky’, who it seems has put in loads of effort to come up with 29 suggestions that would be helpful in ‘Improving Gender Sensitivity in India’. After reading his ‘so-called gender equality’ suggestions, I was simply appalled. I wanted to e-mail him back, with counter suggestion to each of his 29 points but then I thought, it would just be a waste of time, since I have addressed most of these issues in my posts.
Anyways, If you have time do read his views. I have pasted them in my post (along with my reply) not because they are worth reading but simply for the reason that this person has put in so much time & effort in writing them AND afterall he has a right to be heard.
I won’t write any further on this e-mail, as I don’t want you to judge it based on my views and opinion. I am sure most of you out there are smart enough to differentiate between right & wrong, fair & un-fair, logic & stupid, baised and non-baised views/opinions.
Ps…i did check out the websites he has mentioned in his mail and I am compelled to say that they were equally dis-appointing as his e-mail.
Here is the e-mail.
From: maksim gorky
To: blog@sakshijuneja.com
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 10:55 AM
Subject: Gender Sensitivity Training in India
How to Improve Gender Sensitivity in India…here are some suggestions…..
1) Women must not be imprisoned even if they kill. They need to be put in reformation homes.
2) As soon as a woman marries, she must get 50% rights onto husband’s property.
3) Large scale single parenting by woman must be encouraged with maintenance provided by husband. Research shows that children who are not allowed to see their fathers after divorce for years grow up very healthy. In India, Gender Sensitive judges must allow the women to
decide whether she allows the father to see the child after divorce or not.
4) Any violence committed by woman against others(including murder) must be considered as done in self-defense.
5) The disparity between life expectency rate difference between men and women need to be brought to the levels of that of developed countries. In India, women live 2.4 years more than men on an average. This difference in life expectency has to be brought to the levels in
US and Europe where women live 7 years more than men on an average.
6) If a man cancels the enagagement, he needs to be punished with imprison up to 5 months. If a woman cancels engagement, she must be compensated with 30% of man’s annual income.
7) Any woman who commits suicide within 7 years of marriage, a dowry harassment or other harassment case against the husband to be put by default. He must be imprisoned for 1 year for not taking care of his wife.
If a woman complains of domestic violence, the man must be imprisoned immediately and bail can only be granted by a court. All the joint bank accounts must be frozen. Woman has to right to stay in the matrimonial home(husband’s house), till she gets divorce. If the women has an adulterous relation, till it is proved (beyond doubt), the husband must allow her to live in his house or must provide alternate accommodation. The typical example for benchmark is the case in movie “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam”. Husband is also expected to help the women achieve her adulterous goals. If he can not directly help, then he must provide one third of his salary towards the wife till she marries her boy friend.
9) A man must do half of household work even if his wife is not earning.
10) After marriage, a man must not stay with his parents or allow his parents to stay prolonged period with him. He must allow his in-laws to stay in his house for the same amount of time his parents stay in his house. If he violates these rights of the woman, he can be
imprisoned for not taking equal care of his in-laws.
11) If in-laws of a man “feel” their daughter and they are not properly treated, the man should be thoroughly counselled. If he does not mend his ways, stringent laws be made (even provision for lashing) for rectifying him.
12) The ratio of male:female suicide rates in India to be brought to the levels in west. In India, 50%(about 25000) more men commit suicide than women. This is much lower than the western standards where about 150% more men commit suicide than women.
13) The richer and the more educated the men are, the more should be pressure on them. They should provide the wife with a lifestyle equivalent to their status and they must also spend quality time with family.
14) Women in rural india and poor women suffer due to ignorance and they can not afford legal help. So, the legal provisions must be used only in urban india. The rural women must be discouraged from approaching police or courts as they can not afford to pay bribes. The
rural women (women in villages) must be empowered with better employment and they must be counselled to live healthy life in traditional family system and respect the decisions of family elders. This way, it can be shown that laws on women’s rights are UNDERUSED. That will help the urban women to MISUSE the law and file false complaints. That will give good business to Feminist lawyers and Human Rights lawyers and provide good bribes to the police. Of course, the booty is ultimately settled between police and Women organisations. The extortion for a Techie goes upto 1 lac and for NRI it goes upto 4 lacs. If the techie does not pay up, the NGO must send the police to harass his landlord, friends and boss in workplace.
15) The rural women do not suffer from domestic violence. Hence domestic violence laws must be used more stringently in urban india only.
16) Men had much better life than women since ages. Men fought wars and always had good food in plundered lands when their women remained in hunger.
17) 25% of software engineers are women, so does 50% of medical students. The men whom these women marry must get bigger salaries than these women and must have higher social status than these talented women. Women must always marry up.
18) Men who do not like their wives wearing revealing clothes(including low-jeans) are old fashioned. In stead of divorcing them, their wives must use threat of section 498a (anti-dowry laws) to get the old parents of the man imprisioned, so that men can be counselled to change and learn tolerance.
19) Designers who plan to design revealing clothes for men must be banned for spreading vulgarity. Wearing revealing clothes is a right solely meant for women.
20) All judges who do not follow gender sensitivity and give judgements against women, must lose their right to pension.
21) Crime Against Women (CAW) cells must counsel the men such that men realise that if they do not bend, then their parents,sisters even grandparents can be imprisoned and tortured. CAW cells must also counsel the men not to commit suicide by telling them in detail
various methods of committing suicide. Men committing suicide must always be listed as suicide due to financial reason even if he commits suicide arranging dowry for his daughter.
22) As prevalent in Govt. services, any man accused of harassment against his wife, must be fired from job. Special camps must be set up by govt. in each state for these men to reform. Only hard work can make them learn patience and considerate behaviour. “Work Brings
Freedom”, “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Their property must be confiscated by the state and donated to the NGOs working hand-in-hand with sincere police and benovelant lawyers for betterment of women.
23) Many human rights organisations have created examples of gender sensitivity by championing against giving bail to innocent old and sick in-laws of women who complain of mistreatment. In fact, to iradicate dowry evil in India, these old and sick people must be
imprisoned without investigation so that their sons can learn lessons for not caring the sincere and wise advice of their wives and in-laws.
Even “Amnesty International” has opposed bail to sick and infirm in-laws of a woman as suggested by a gender insensitive former high court judge. 25000 women dying of dowry is a much bigger problem than only 10000 parents of men falsely getting jailed. Only a handful of
old in-laws of the woman have committed suicide due to false dowry cases than the number of women dying in dowry problem. Of course, who know better about “prisoners of conscience” than Amnesty International.
24) Human rights orgnisations have gone a long way fighting against POTA and TADA. Because even terrorists have the right to international law. Dowry evil is much bigger than terrorism. The number of women getting killed by dowry is much more than the number of people killed by terrorists. So, Human Rights Organisations must campaign for continuation of present laws where the old parents of NRIs and Techies are jailed with just one line of complaint from their daughter-in-law. Even if the complaint is false, arrest of old parents of the man sends a clear message to the society which oppressed women since ages.
25) Recenly, many human rights activists protested against the judge who gave a order criticising imprisonment of 3-year old girl child who spent 3 days in Tihar jail with her whole family (facing dowry harassment charges). This kind of organisations need generous
donations by the people who want to change the world.
26) The fight for women’s rights will never end. So, lets campaign for the people in this world to donate for this great cause. After all, woman’s development is human’s development.
27) Many NGOs in India and abroad have collected millions of dollars for causes of women. Because woman’s development is human’s development and women’s rights are human rights. Because of their dedicated actions in bringing in funds has helped in arresting so many
sick and old people in false dowry harassment cases in urban india. Many of these old in-laws of women have committed suicide out of shame when their daughter-in-law got a bargaining position by filing false dowry cases against them. Because of these generous funds donated by many benovalent people in US, these people can commit suicide. Otherwise, these old people are just a social nuisance. What can be a greater social service than to iradicate social nuisance and create social justice.
28) Recenly, an old couple were arrested in Kerala and transported like animals to Delhi on train to face charges of dowry harassment. Even though they never stayed with their daughter-in-law, but it gives a clear signal to the society that its time the dowry be iradicated.
Please donate to all the NGOs and human rights organisaions generously. Research shows that when more and more women live as single parents, that children become healthy. Children of single mothers in US have become great scientists, researchers and social
reformers. The same needs to be emulated in India so that India can develop.
29) Many NRIs have donated generously for the foreign visits of women’s rights activists. These activists are responsible for bringing patriarchy in India to its knees by championing in favour of detention of all people including old and minors against whom a woman complains
of dowry harassment. Of course, it does not matter even if the in-laws never even stayed with the woman and the case she filed is false. What is important is the social deterrent it creates. India Today reports 55% of divorce cases filed last year has women as primary petitioners.
This must increase to 75% in next few years. The more the divorces and single parenting in india, the earlier we will achieve gender equality.
Indians living in US, who run NGOs and donate to NGOs are as truthful as their own President and propaganda based media. Their perceptions are also as accurate as perceptions of an average American. They also want to change and improve the world just the way
US is improving the world. God will certainly give them and their children long happy life. After all, changing the world by funding extremist feminists which leads to arrests “without investigation” of old and infirm is indeed a noble act. Finally, Karma will give us what
we give to others. As sick and old who can not walk properly make rounds in court, God will bless us all for standing for fighting against patriarchy and conducting garrulous arguments with rigid mindsets brainwashed by media in stead of seeing the subtleties in
social issues. Since ages, we know reductionism (cutting, solving and pasting) solved all great problems !!
Those innocent people who got jailed, whose innocent parents died due to legal terrorism, whose innocent sister can not be married because of multiple criminal lawsuits against her, have got nothing more to lose. Today, they take time out of their “multiple court cases” to help and advise those are abused but not yet 498aed. But, they will do everything to bring to book all those people who have lied or are lying all along.
http://www.saveindianfamily.org/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saveindianfamily/
http://www.pariwariksuraksha.org/
Accidents can happen to anyone. 498a also happens to anyone( including feminists, gender sensitivite people, male feminists, judges, police officials, politicians, actors, techies). There were 50,700 cases of 498a with every case has an average 4 people accused. Judges tell that one in six case is genuine.Even in the study done by Feminist NGO csrindia.org 10% women admitted to filing false cases.How many more are there who did not admit ? Regarding CSRINDIA, “We can always ask a wolf to tell how many lambs it has eaten.” Even six percent comes out to be 3000 cases (12000 innocent people) per year. www.csrindia.org campions for retaining 498a as it is (arrest of sisters, mothers, old/sick, children and men) without investigation).
My reply to Mr. Gorky.
From: Sakshi (blog)
To: maksim gorky
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: Gender Sensitivity Training in India
Dear Maksim,
Thank you for your email.
You seem to have a perfect knowledge of most of the laws pertaining to women and your ideas on how help in gender-equality in India is simply appalling.
However to me, they appear to be VERY much one-sided. I agree, women in India and all over the world do mis-use the law BUT then don’t men do the same.
It is upon individuals like us, to bring forward the correct and non-biased knowledge to our society via whatever means that we can. Just because few women follow unethical behaviour, you cannot blame the enitire women clan for it. I agree, some women have taken the advantage of law and harrassed men and their families and not that only, there are many mother-inlaws also who harrass their daughter-in-laws over dowry demands (a classic case of women against women).
What I am trying to say, is that we should keep an open mind and not be biased towards a particular gender.
But then again, these are my views….and you have an equal right to follow what you believe in.
Have a good day.
Sakshi
wanting to scream out loud, hoping that so-called “TV gurus†would hear our plead one day. This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 9:02 am and is filed under Lists, Humor, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 46 Responses to “The old “idiot†box…†sowmya Says: October 28th, 2005 at 12:08 pm First time here. Your post took me through a nostalgic journey down DD lane. Indeed the
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