Pritam K. Rohila : Escalating incidences of sexual violence against women and female children, as well as ever-increasing reports of corruption in India are a great source of concern to many.
Neither sexual violence nor corruption are new to India. Even the immensely revered Hindu epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, when presumably things were “great” and “wonderful”, contain stories of sexual violence and corruption.
It is true that India is not unique in these respects, and many other countries of the world have their own share of these shameful practices, at least to some extent. But it is certainly worth pointing out that these evils are so widely prevalent in a nation, where some of its citizen as well as leaders often proudly proclaim moral and cultural superiority of India over others societies.
Even though this bitter reality may be difficult for us to admit, we can no longer bury our heads in sand, in the face of facts revealed in some recent media as well as research reports.
Gender discrimination, which probably lies at the root of violence against women, is quite widespread in India. It is evidenced by the common practices such as abortion of female fetuses; killing by neglect or by other means of female newborns; preference for boys over girls in many homes with respect to nutrition, education, and career opportunities; and maltreatment of women who produce female children.
I wonder to what extent the evils of corruption and sexual violence against women stem from the need of Indian youth for instant gratification of their cravings, in any way they can, regardless of its effects on others.
Are these evils, in some way, linked to the ever-increasing accent, among young Indians, on instant gratification, via a large variety of gadgets, they use in daily life?
Could it be because, in the last few decades, there has been an overwhelming emphasis in the Indian society on science and technology, and very little stress on literature and humanities, which used to be important ways inculcating moral values in young people?
Are these evils also possibly related to the way, Indian these days are raising their children? Parents seem to be too busy in pursuit of more money, more prestige and more power to care enough for the moral upbringing of their children. It is easier for them to give in to their children’s cravings, and to turn a blind eye to their misdeeds.
Would teaching of ethics and good citizenship in schools help us mend our ways?
These are some important questions for all of us Indians to ponder, so that we can arrive at a suitable plan to act on individually and as a nation. We can no longer afford to leave these important issues to governmental and administrative bodies.
*Dr. Pritam K. Rohila is Executive Director of the Association for Communal Harmony in Asia
Feminists’ talk of Women Empowerment is hollow. The terms “Feminist” and “Women Empowerment” are well known today – thanks to the voluminous media coverage and societal attention they enjoy. For decades, the feminists have been ranting about the need of “Women Empowerment” and holding society, especially men, at ransom for the same.
So a couple of questions came to my mind like,
Who are the feminists?
How genuine are their claims?
How tangible are the measures they propose?
How serious are the issues they rant about?
What if, they are ignored?
Let us try to answer each of these questions based on the data available.
Q1. Who are the feminists?
The feminists are none but a bunch of loser women who have never had a happy life and thrash out their sadistic concerns onto the society, especially men, and constantly keep on asking about one or the other concessions for women. Also, the feminists are big-time liars and they do not even refrain from uttering white lies even on national media to the extent of getting exposed. For example, yesterday, there was a TV debate going on in a very popular media channel and very famous and well-known women’s rights activist aka the Feminists were shouting at the top of their lungs that the proposed “property-division clause post-divorce” will apply only on property acquired post marriage. However, the truth is, as per a modified draft of the bill, it will apply blindly on all properties in the ownership of husband.
In another instance, they claimed in the media that, in 70% of the cases women are denied maintenance on grounds of adultery, which is causing grave financial hardship for women and thus, even adulterous women must be granted maintenance. However, when an application under the RTI Act was filed to know the source of the data of such horrendous and extravagant claims, the reply received was “The organization, that had earlier made the claim, had no such data”.
Feminists make huge hue and cry in the media about “Dowry-Deaths”. However, as a matter of fact, as per law, “any death of a married woman within 7 years of her marriage”, is to be ‘registered’ as a dowry death. Which means, even before investigation, the death is registered as a dowry-death in the official statistics and the same are never rectified, if later, it is found that the death of the married woman was not due to dowry harassment but some other reason like accident, insect bite, snake bite, disease etc. And, when they are confronted with the data about suicides by married men they vehemently deny that any such data exists.
As a matter of fact, data is available with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a unit of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Ironically, it’s the same department, whose report on dowry-deaths is used as a basis of unconstitutional, undemocratic and inhuman and anti-male dowry laws, that have been instrumental in getting millions of innocent people being thrown behind bars without trial or investigation and has also abetted the suicide of millions of innocent young men.
And the biggest blame for this social massacre goes to feminists, because they created such a big hoax about the so-called dowry harassment and dowry deaths of women that the society has gone blind in pursuit of a section of society popularly known as husbands and their families.
Q2. How genuine are their claims?
Majority of the claims of feminists are either false or highly exaggerated. For example, there have been umpteen number of cases where “dowry-death victims” (women supposed to have been killed by their in-laws for dowry) have returned alive while their husbands and in-laws rot in jail, as these women roam freely, putting a false case. And feminists support such women.
How can we just ignore the famous case of Nisha Sharma, who shot to fame in 2003 for allegedly calling off a marriage citing “additional demands of dowry by groom and his family, just before the marriage”? Fact of the matter was, Nisha, was already married and to hide her marriage, she falsely accused the groom and his family and ruined their life with a false criminal case. And, feminists hailed such a liar as “Icon against fight in dowry”. Well, when their icon herself is a big liar, one can just imagine the truthfulness of their own claims.
Feminists have never taken up the cause of young unmarried girls facing harassment from their own parents, in their natal homes, or the cause of widows who suffer social bias, or the cause of old women being harassed in their families, especially old mothers-in-law tortured by their daughters-in-law.
Feminists have readily taken up and blown the trumpet far out of proportion for young and newly married women because the money lies there. It is a highly politically correct issue to create channels of tax-free wealth transfer from husband to wife because the social role of a PROVIDER has been ascribed to a man and there is no concept of responsibility on a woman, nor are there any penal provisions for a woman not fulfilling her responsibility as a wife in a marriage.
Claims by feminists are highly bogus and when they are challenged with actual data, they come up with hollow analogies like Sita and Savitri.
First of all, these are all mythological characters and there is no evidence at all if they existed and the stories that we’ve been hearing about them since childhood have any iota of truth in it.
Secondly, assuming, it was true, how relevant are those analogies in today’s time, whence every year 72000 crores of annual budget is allocated for “women welfare” and none for men?
Feminists claim that men have historic advantage, but what exactly is the advantage that men have? Men, have always protected women, children and elders in society by taking maximum risks upon themselves, exploring unknown areas and making them safer for others to dwell and prosper. So, how can someone who lays down his life for others be oppressive?
Feminists never admit that women can be cruel and always justify abuse by women as their right. So, for someone who justifies abusive behavior as a right, one can imagine the genuineness of their claims.
Feminists are extremely vicious characters who simply exhibit, propel and emanate male-hatred. In fact, so deep is their hatred for men, that they are fine with not providing any redress mechanism to women, but are not ready to share the same with men.
I will not fail to cite here the example of a proposed bill called “Sexual Assault Bill, 2010” which talked of preventing rapes/sexual assaults of women inside police stations. When men’s rights activists demanded that the bill be made gender neutral because lakhs of male prisoners have been sexually denigrated, sodomized and raped inside police stations, the feminists simply withdrew the bill. This only proves their sadistic nature.
Q3. How tangible are the measures they propose?
All of the solutions that come from feminist have the same undertone – “Hard earned money of a man must go to a woman”. And they call this as women empowerment! How can someone be empowered when they are treated worse than kids and provisions are created that you complain and walk away with a fortune.
No self-respecting woman would ever support such an empowerment paradigm. In fact, those women, who do, are not real women. Undisputed sign of empowerment is entrustment of responsibility.
However, feminists call “imposing responsibility on a woman as her oppression”.
This single statement should tell us their thought process and any solution proposed out of such a thought process can never be tangible. For example, they are asking the Govt. of India to amend the Hindu Marriage Act in such a manner that in the event of a divorce a woman gets the children, half of husband’s property (irrespective of when purchased and who contributed) and alimony as well.
So, they are calling Incentivization of divorce as a sign of empowerment. In short, they are promoting breaking of family and unfortunately this misandrous society is not challenging them. They are promoting father-less society and thus contributing to growing crime in the society, as it is an established fact that a father acts as a role-model for children and children from broken families and grown up without a father are 8 times more likely to resort to crime.
Also, feminists are leaving no stone unturned in turning marriage into a crime for men from all angles. If a man stays in a marriage, he is abused by his wife and he cannot escape as there are no laws to protect a man. Also, feminists have effectively plugged any/all communication channels for men. And if he files for divorce he loses all of his fortune, his peace of mind and ends up fighting lifetime bogus litigations containing all sorts of false allegations.
Moreover, a single man faces a lot of problems surviving in the society. Banks do not give loans easily, getting a rented house is an issue and a single man faces a lot of problems in adopting a child as well.
Hence, feminists are totally focused on cornering men and it is said, “Even a cornered rabbit is dangerous”. So, in coming times, if these cornered men, resort to crime being exasperated and kill their wives, feminists will be solely responsible for this because they left no stone unturned in creating a society that simply exploits men and denies them even basic human rights. By the way, most of these men are brothers, sons and cousins of these feminists.
Feminists are promulgating economic parasitism for women, at the cost of men and are encouraging the women to indulge in victimization. Ultimately, it needs to be realized, are they really fighting for the larger benefit of women or are just unleashing their personal hatred against men because majority of these women, who claim to be women’s rights activists aka the feminists do not have a happy, peaceful and blissed family life.
Q4. How serious are the issues they rant about?
Feminists create cacophony and rhetoric without logic or data.
For example, how can they ignore the constantly rising suicides by married men and claim that women are the weaker sex whereas data clearly shows otherwise.
Or, how can they ignore the fact that, in our society, it’s not the daughters but the sons who are burdened with the responsibility of taking care of old parents?
Or, how can they ignore, that in our society women always marry up and it’s the men who marry down? Hence, in marriages, actually women are treated as second class citizens but no feminist till date has raised an issue about this insubordination of women in marriages?
Now, feminists are claiming that in 70% of divorce cases the women are left with no home to live, which means:
We should be seeing a lot of homeless women, but do we really see? (I have mostly seen, it’s the men who are homeless. Women always get some sympathizer, men get none.)
Feminists must have data about how many married women own properties and how many don’t?
Feminists must also have data about how many divorces are actually happening (it’s not the same as the number of divorce cases filed, because I have seen many of them getting dismissed and divorce not being granted.)
But when even the Govt. of India does not have the above data, how can feminists have? In fact, in the current discussion about the property division clauses, no data is being presented at all. Only arguments in thin air, are flying and media/society are taking it to be Gospel Truth.
These revelations cast a serious doubt on the seriousness of the issue because feminists are merely taking advantage of the general sympathy that women enjoy in the society and residual misandry that the society harbors against men and using both to the furnish their misandrist and saddist agenda of war against men/boys.
There are far more serious issues that the Govt. needs to focus on, rather than feministic issues and some of them being,
Economic reforms.
Price-control.
Corruption.
Bad Governance.
Police Reforms.
Judicial Reforms.
Keeping all this in view, the hollow issues of feminine victimization that feminists raise, majority of which are false, misrepresented and mythical, we can safely say that the issues raised by feminists are not at all serious and can easily be ignored.
Q5. What if, they are ignored?
Lot of good things will happen if they are ignored. The concept of men’s rights and men’s abuse will become mainstream. Abuse of men will stop and this will lead to a more stable society because ultimately it’s the young and disposable males of the society who slog it out to run our systems and if their rights are protected, overall life quality will increase, benefits of which will go to one and all – men, women and children, because, by nature men are sacrificial in nature and do not even think twice before sacrificing their own lives/interests for the sake of others.
No more anti-male laws will be created which will result in reduction of suicides by men. Our beloved sons, brothers, and men would live in a fearless society instead of the current scenario where men are blackmailed day in and day out owing to super-flowing feminist agenda in the societal veins.
Problems of both men and women can be addressed in a gender-neutral manner, as opposed to the current scenario wherein entrapment of men is projected as empowerment of women.
Hence, we see that feminists’ talk of women empowerment is very hollow and is narrowly focused on passing tax-free and effort-free wealth from husband to wife and rest all other issues are buried under the carpet.
Now, it is up to the society to decide:
“Do feminists really deserve the attention and seriousness they are currently enjoying?”
“Should not they be subjected to strong scrutiny about the claims they make?”
“Is it fine to punish a man on the verbal statement of a woman taking the same as Gospel Truth?”
“Should not, the feminists be punished for unleashing crimes against men?”
“Should feminists be allowed to exist?”
On a cool Sunday morning, as Rukma, a prominent men’s rights activist of the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), was sipping tea, his phone rang. Seeing an international number, he probably guessed the purpose of the call (yet another harassed husband as Rukma was a helpline for them), he picked up the call.
To his utter surprise, he found that the caller, who was an Indian calling from Hong Kong City, was a bachelor. As someone who helps married men in distress, a call from a bachelor on his helpline number was a new experience for Rukma. Nonetheless, he received the call.
The caller had called up to know the dangers of getting married in India. His apprehension was, that he owns quite a few properties in India and wanted to know, will his properties be safe, if he gets married?
What with the existing volley of anti-male and unconstitutional laws of the likes of Section 498A, the Domestic Violence Act and more in pipeline like the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill which talks of wife getting 50% of the share in husband’s property if she walks out of the marriage?
The caller was also worried about how he should convince his parents that getting married in India was very dangerous for a man as he endangers losing his entire life’s fortune with one stroke of a false complaint by his wife against him. He was facing tremendous pressure from his parents for getting married soon.
Another incidence was, when SIFF conducted a press conference voicing its grave concerns against anti-male property division clauses in the upcoming Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010 which was followed by good amount of media coverage and the SIFF helplines were ringing with queries from both married/bachelor men on whether they should drop their plans of buying property or cancel their property bookings. The calls clearly reflected a wave of scare, pertaining to real estate shopping, in young men in the society with the new law.
Men’s Rights Association, a Pune based group batting for battered men, faced a sudden inflow of 45 new members in a single meeting just after they conducted a similar press conference in Pune about the dangers that men will face if the Bill, as proposed, becomes a law. Men, from all strata of society and across all age groups were worried just about one thing – “Is my hard-earned property safe?”
These incidents reflect a very sorry state of affairs for the male gender in India, especially young men, in the age range of 25-45, who are extremely vulnerable to age-old social discrimination against men. Young men constitute the most vulnerable section of the society as they are not only required to fulfill skyrocketing expectations from their families (wife, children, parents, in-laws, etc.) but are also left to fend on their own and no one understands their pains and sufferings.
Ironically, it’s this same lot of men who sweat it out, in order to, not only run their family, but the society at large as well, as it is this same lot that undertakes the most menial, dangerous and hazardous jobs, and it’s the same lot that faces societal ire in the form of ill-conceived anti-male laws which invariably attack the hard-earned wealth/property of a man.
Laws are nothing but vicious reflections of social attitudes, mindsets and assumptions. Especially, when it comes to gender-biased anti-male laws, it’s the assumption that takes center-stage.
It’s the assumption that all men are criminals and all women are saints that makes it very easy for a completely bogus and false case to get registered and the innocent man keeps running from pillar to post to get justice, but mostly, in vain. Because, here again, it’s the assumption that women have been discriminated against historically, while men have somehow enjoyed it, that impedes the path to justice for a falsely accused innocent man.
And, it is the same reason that we have only anti-male laws and no anti-female laws. Invariably all laws related to marriage/gender etc. talk only of arresting and punishing the man (the male) and always view the woman (the female) as a victim. This assumption completely overlooks some crucial facts like:-
Women criminals are very rarely punished and are paroled at large on account of their gender.
Historically, it’s the men who have lost far more lives/limbs in order to protect their own city, country, civilizations, contours, etc.
Today’s generations are descendants of 40% of the men who ever lived and 80% of the women who ever lived, which clearly shows the tremendous amount of male lives that have been lost by the human civilization historically.
It’s the men who protected and provided for women, children and elders, at their own cost and sacrifices.
It’s the men who have been committing suicides far greater in numbers compared to women, succumbing to social pressures, skyrocketing expectations and nose-diving acceptance levels.
Not a single law/procedure has ever been formed that will arrest a woman based on a man’s complaint, however, the reverse has been true since decades and uncountable innocent men have been thrown behind bars, tortured, humiliated and often subjected to barbaric conditions, merely at the unverified complaint of a woman.
Above facts, which are merely illustrative and not exhaustive in nature, are only the tip of the iceberg of the reality called misandry (referred to as social hatred against men).
It’s this misandry that stops the society from supporting awareness about men’s issues and also stops victimized, harassed and distressed men from talking openly about their abuse.
It’s this misandry that allows the unbridled creation of anti-male laws that are downright unconstitutional, undemocratic and inhuman in nature.
Whether, it’s Section 498A (popularly known as the dowry law) or Section 125 CrPC (maintenance law) or Section 376 (rape) or The Domestic Violence Act or the proposed Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill or the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, the formulation, drafting and the process of getting laws/bills approved and passed clearly demonstrate the extremely high levels of misandrous blood that flows in the societal veins and arteries.
Somehow, the society, including both men and women, enjoy it when the male gender is vicariously attacked. Anti-male laws, when they are passed, form the basis of celebration.
Men, when they are harassed, become objects of entertainment.
And anti-male practices, as they are practiced and promulgated, become foundations of social service.
For example, let’s see how this upcoming Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill works against the interests of men. What came as a proposal to hasten the process of divorce from the Honorable Supreme Court of India was slowly metamorphosed into an effort free channel of passing tax free wealth from husband to wife.
Seeing, the growing number of divorce cases and the same leading to increase in backlog of cases and couples getting involved in redundant litigation, the Honorable Supreme Court of India proposed to introduce the “Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage” clause in the Hindu Marriage Act, which also talked about waiving off the 6 months cool-down period.
All said and done, any proposal that did not talk about “taking care of financial needs of a woman” was just unacceptable to the feminists who raised a lot of hue and cry against it in the media and owing to rampant social misandry and also internal misandry in the media, the Govt. agreed to introduce property division with the following conditions:-
When a husband files for divorce citing irretrievable breakdown of marriage as the reason, the husband will lose 50% of his property to wife. However, properties owned by wife won’t be considered and also there was no mention about who contributed to the property. Also, it does not matter, when the property was purchased. Also, no clarity was expressed about the existing loans/financial liabilities for and against the property. Moreover, if a woman keeps on marrying and keeps on breaking her marriages, it means she would become a landlord on account of her gender as she ages.
When a wife files for divorce citing irretrievable breakdown of marriage, although, property division is not explicitly stated, however, the wife has powers to withdraw the divorce case if her “financial needs are not well taken care of”. However, husbands have been deprived of a similar right, only wives can withdraw divorce petitions at their whims and fancies.
Hence, in practice, both the clauses boil down to financial extortion of a man for a failed marriage and thus, the imminent question that arises is, “Is failed marriage a crime for men?”
This proposed bill must not be passed in its current form and there needs to be a national debate wherein organizations fighting for men’s rights must be allowed to incorporate their point of views and interests of husbands, otherwise, this bill, if it becomes law, will lead to:
Men refraining from buying property.
Crash of the real estate market.
The home-loan market going downhill.
Instances of divorces increasing, wherein, women would just walk out of marriages making false allegations against their husbands and harness their properties.
Incentivization of family breaking practices.
More suicides by men/husbands.
Men refraining from getting married.
More and more fatherless children as the proposed bill, is silent on child custody matters.
The choice belies with the society if it wants to continue with its frenzy of misandry or take some remedial steps and create gender-neutral laws and policies which work for the benefit of both men and women rather than empowering one gender at the cost of another.