Women Women Women

Yesterday in a newspaper, I saw the photograph of a girl holding a placard which said “If I show my legs, it does not mean I intend to spread them”. I could not distinguish whether it was “BOLD” or “VULGAR”??

In any case, the people here in Delhi are fighting for empowerment of women. They want Delhi to be a safe place for women. A place where women can go to work at any hour, can have their opinion, can wear anything they wish to and etc. I agree!!
Let me narrate a short story. A girl from a Yadav family of a sub-urban area in Delhi qualified for MBBS. She was ecstatic, so was her family. While she was doing her MBBS she fell in love a Jat boy who was her course mate. In the final year of her course, her parents asked her about the kind of life partner she would like to have. She told her parents that she had already found one and would like to marry him. When her parents inquired about the guy, she told them everything. Her parents were not ready to get her married into a different caste. On further insistence her parents called the guy and tried to convince him to end their relationship. They guy did not agree to do so. The girl’s parents again tried to convince the girl. She was adamant and did not bow down to her parent’s pressure. Later in night, her father, with the help of her relatives strangulated her to death and cremated her in the morning. No inquiry, no police case, no remorse. The End!!

No one knows this story. There must be many such stories which would have gone unnoticed as they never came out. The only question her parents were left to answer was “Kyun bheja ladki ko bahar padhne? Humne pehle hi mana kiya tha!” (Why did you send your girl to study away from home? We had asked you not to do so).
I am concerned about safety of women who go to work. I wish girls get all the rights, but, at present, I am least bothered about the right of a girl to wear anything or the right of a girl to party all night.

I am most concerned about the girl who will have to stop her studies after this incident, the girl who will never be able to come out of the “Purda” citing threat, the female who will never grow more that a fetus. All this protest does not bring about any change in her life.

Sorry to say, but I feel, the crowds coming out in protest are more concerned (other than getting guilty punished) about the right of the girl to wear whatever she wants to and the girl who wants to be safe during a late night party. I believe that depiction of lavish lifestyle by men and women is also a deterrent to a woman being allowed to go to school or a woman being allowed to shed the “Purdah”. Sad but True!
If modern woman expects a man to be mature enough and support her cause for gender equality, I would also urge the modern woman to think of the woman who lives in backward parts of India who is looking for an opportunity to breathe in free air. I believe that its always the responsibility of the empowered and the educated to make way for the liberation of the underprivileged and undereducated.

Right and wrong is not absolute. Something right for someone could be wrong for someone else! Finally, India is not Hypocritical, India is dual. India has duality in its society which needs to be addressed! It’s a process of slow change and I wish we have a better society in the near future.