My sister i am there for you

Revolutions have always taken place in respect to give a space or a platform to subordinate voices suppressed beneath the dominant voices. A period of renaissance always arrives when suppressed breaks the hegemony of continuous slavery – by slavery I mean all kinds of slavery mental,emotional and physical. Saturation level for all kinds of injustice arrive but unfortunately no revolution no renaissance take place when it comes to the ill status of Indian women.

After 65 years of independence and 64 years of being a democratic republic ,unfortunately no freedom and no self-right have arrived for Indian women.The poor state has continued its legacy of being poor in mental and social well being.Lack of respect and noble manners towards female communities is deep rooted and hugely practised in all institutions of society .The judicial courts don’t hold as much importance as “the court of public opinion does”. The women in this country have always been a suffering agent , no matter whether they belonged to higher or lower caste ,educated or illieterate ,young or old or fit or differentially abled, the only thing that mattered and continues to matter is their “GENDER”.

From their birth to their death they are treated as slaves .In their childhood they become the slaves of their father and elder brothers, in their young age of their husbands and in the old age of their sons.Never free never the master of her own will. Manusmriti – the most holy text of hindus is full of prejudice,hatred and discrimination against women. For example one of the verses says that men  may be lacking virtue, be sexual perverts,immoral and devoid of any good qualities, and yet women must constantly worship and serve their husbands.According to this text women are impure and represent falsehood.I must say that such ancient literatures bear testmony to the fact that India is a “patriarchal and misogynist society”. When we think of India one more feature that instantaneously comes to our mind is the inherited caste system. The great nation is the harbinger of discriminatory and unjust practices performed under the veneer of caste and communalism. No social system has been left untouched by these ruthless and boorish practices.

Let’s take the case of Dalit women.These women bear unlike their counterparts from other castes the triple burden of “caste , class and gender”.Due to their caste they are not allowed to raise their standard of class and due to their low class profile their gender hardly gets due treatment even from their own men.Everday four dalit women get raped in India.The powerful always targets the weak .85% of the Dalit women are engaged in most formidable occupations such as agricultural laborers,manual scavengers,sweepers and disposers of human waste.They take these  inhuman professions not because of their choice but the only choice their caste  offeres  them. Devadasi system is one more practice that these women are coerced into. Due to extreme poverty the parents of the  girl child in order to burden themselves off sell their daughter to the highest bidder in the temple of Yellama –the Hindu god for fertility.In the name of religion these young girls aging between 7 to 10 are put into prostitution to fulfill and please desires of men belonging  higher castes. Some 80 to 90% of devadasis belong to scheduled castes.A veneer of religion covers the supply of concubines to wealthy men.Presently there are 48,358 devadasis in India. In 1988 the government of Karnataka imposed a ban on the system but still today the practice is prevalent in 10 districts of Karnataka and 14 districts of Andhra Pradesh. An ancient practice if servicing gods and deities turned into a heinous practice of servicing boorish and roudy men.

One more ancient  practice that has still maintained its existence in this modern era is Witch Hunting.In India , labelling a woman asa witch is a common ploy to grab land , settle scores or even to punish her for turning down sexual advances.A woman after being labelled as a witch goes through brutal practices of being burnt alive , being beaten and made to eat human excreta and also forced to commit suicide.They are sometimes shoved off their hair , made to sit on a donkey with colored face and paraded in the whole community or village.A 2010 estimate places the number of women killed as witches in India between 150 and 200 per year. The lynchings are common in poor northern states of Jharkhand, Bihar and the central state of Chattisgarh.I sometimes wonder in my solitude which kind of growth and development the people of this country talk about.Just by seeing clean and prosperous environment around ourselves we forget that an another world of dirt,regress and inhuman sentiments also exists which make women their target.

Due to globalisation the mass selling of all kinds of goods across physical boundaries of nations has given a proliferating birth to Women Trafficking.The practice existed even before pre globalisation era but the free trade and fewer restrictions further enhanced the trafficking cycle.India is a receving ,sending and transit nation.Bombay is Asia’s largest sex industry center. In 1998 three nations namely India ,Thailand and Philippines had 1.3 million children in different sex- trade centres.Every year 5000 to 7000 Nepalese women are trafficked to various red light areas in Maharashtra.These women are demanded by Indian customers because of their “golden skin and docile personalities”.These women are brought to India by false claims of employment and marriage.The procurer-pimp-police network makes the process even more smoother.The devadasi system in south India further aids the system.The “supply zones” in India are West Bengal,karanataka,Andhra Pradesh,Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.These women in dainty brothels are fed just once in a day,are allowed to take bath once in a week but are forced to provide sexual services to almost 45 men in a day. These women go through on an average  40 -45 abortions .They bleed for innumerous days groan in pain but no medical facility comes to their rescue.They are infact coerced to provide services to men even  if they bleed or develop injuries due to repetitive intercourse and penetration.The average  period of this illegal profession is 15 years. Recent trend which has come to be seen is the rising demand for girls falling between age group of 10 to 14 years.There is a very conservative notion attached behind this rising demand i.e, men think having sex with a virgin would rescue them from AIDS and STDs that they acquire from having sex with mulitiple women in order to satiate themselves.India is becoming a prostitution hub due to abundance of child prostitutes , relaxed laws and an ignorent government, who is blind eyed not only towards its own women but also  towards women from foreign countries.80% of women in these brothels are HIV infected.

Thses crimes are inflicted once a woman takes birth and starts to grow.But in our country i.e, India girls are also denied the RIGHT TO TAKE BIRTH OR BORN.2011 census shows how skewed our sex ratio is i.e, 914 per 1000 boys!!The primitive thinking of Indian families that boys/men are keepers of the flame has resulted in such shameful pracitices.People don’t understand that  women  are  EQUALLY procreators of world ALOGWITH  men. Female infaniticide and foeticide are rising alongwith income level and purchasing power. People with money in hands afford foetus identification tests and force their women to go through such acts but fear of expenses that would incur in raising a girld child and in her marriage.Some states such as Haryana and Rajasthan have scarcity of women.A girl child is always a burden for the Indian households.I somehow don’t understand one thing that is how raising a girl child would incur “more expenses” than raising a boy child?? Perhaps we all know the truth but don’t want to accept it because our thinking power has been maligned with such sterotypical thoughts!!

India still is a mentally backward nation. A lot needs to be done to uproot such social evils.Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru once said, I qoute”you can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women”. TRULY SAID.Perhaps this is the only reason why India is still a “developing country”.