By Shrishti Shree
In our Indian society, where a man worships goddess ‘Durga’ in the morning, the irony remains that it is this same man who never misses an opportunity to eve-tease a passing lady. On one hand, women are supposed to cover their faces with their ” pallus” so as to maintain the dignity of the household. Yes, it’s the real India! Despite of the fact that millions of women are joining the workforce every year and the continuous bragging of the women upliftment by the government, the truth remains that the real change is yet to come in the mindsets of common people.
Every year frameworks are set, plans are made, and even the budget is allocated. But the only change that is evident is the increment in the number of rapes, more and more cases of female foeticide, physical and mental harassment on women and not to forget the discouraging attitude of our own society. And this does not only include males but even, a large proportion of the women.
When a woman is expecting her first child, the first person to demand a baby boy is none other than the mother-in-law, who herself is a woman. This is then gradually nurtured into a practice which starts the vicious circle of superstitions, beliefs that condemn against the basic morals of 49 percent of our country (not to forgot, the power of 49%).
The core of this malice is that we never realize that we ourselves are inculcating in our society that women are the ‘Honour of the house’ and male counterparts are taught to be” masculinistic”.
Rakhi, a traditional event where a sister is supposed to be protected by her brother as if she just can not take care of herself and always needs protection and a guard around her. This very festival ignites a sense of dominance in the males of the household.
‘Karwachauth’ another tradition where a wife is supposed to fast for the long life of her husband whereas the opposite never happens. ‘Pati’ signifies ‘owner’ in literal meaning. How can one expect equal status in an intimate relationship of two souls when one of them has already been entitled the power?
A man has a name of his own but the woman’s identity is entirely dependant on either her father or her husband.
No one dares to question these never ending traditions. These ideas and notions have gradually sharpened themselves to a form of passive acceptance by all.
The Nirbhaya case urged the conscience of every common man, attracted media attention, people marched and protested at Janpath. But the irony remains that even during the Nirbhaya march our well trained Indian boys did not stop their typical male peculiarity.
We had comments from many eminent persons mocking about the incident. Some said that it was the girl’s dress that provoked the rapists, others said that the timing was not appropriate for a girl to be outside her house and some others even went on to the extent that the girl should have actually begged the rapist to let her go. Amazing traditions! Hats off to our culture!
Here even our godmen are rapists.
It’s already too late to realize what are heading towards. Manipulation and modifications of the cultural notions are taking place. Evil ideas are put forth with wrong justifications to present a clean mirror image of our society.
Nobody can change it except us. It just takes a little effort from each one of us, to achieve atleast a fearless society for women where they can live with dignity and peace of mind.
