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Why is it that we need a Court to step in and empower daughters that they too can and should support their parents? Are laws and rulings alone enough to eradicate patriarchy from India?
A Bombay High Court verdict in a particular Vasant vs. Govindrao Upasrao Naik case earlier this year, is a progressive one and a step in the right direction. As per the judgement, as the married daughter had sufficient means, she is also obliged to support her parents.
Unfortunately, this also reflects that patriarchy is so deep rooted in our society, that something as simple and fair as a child supporting her parents, also needs to go to court and needs a judge to deliver a verdict!
Law amendments empowering women definitely make one feel that we are moving towards being a progressive nation; however does it really create considerable change at the grassroots? I am not so sure.
The Dowry Prohibition Act has been in place since 1961 and the section 498A which makes it a criminal offence, since 1983 – close to 55 years and 33 years respectively. One would think that even if any change in the society takes time to come around, half a century should have been good enough to completely eradicate dowry and the menaces which tag along with it. However it is not so. Dowry is rampant and so are dowry related crimes.
A particular article in the Telegraph UK a couple of years ago says that there were close to 8000 deaths in the year 2012. Another article from 2015 quotes a number close to 24,000 is the prior 3 years. And these numbers are just deaths and official figures around deaths. There would be so many not reported, and so many women who might not die but go through living hell.
This does not mean that we do not need these laws; we definitely do. Along with it, we need a highly focused educational system in place which calls out all our societal evils and educates young minds on the need for fairness and empathy. Empowering our girls and boys and sensitizing them should go hand in hand and it has to start young.
Only then can we have hope to see a society which we are currently trying to enforce by law, but are not yet completely able to.
Top image via unsplash.com
I strongly agree with your post Rumanna. Laws alone are not enough. Education is the key. But here I would like to emphasise that our education must strive more to address these issues. In literature or history we need to shift the focus to highlighting the evils of these social customs that defy common sense. I feel that from school itself this awareness and empowerment should start. Most educated people are as compliant with dowry demands and ridiculous harmful customs as the uneducated in India. This shows the glaring gap in our education system that churns out graduates and post graduates by the thousands but has fallen short in enabling individuals to be thinkers – to use logic and reasoning to understand and frame our world rather than customs and traditions. The whole problem is educated individuals too often just go with the flow, like one of the herd. They feel no sense of disruption or imbalance when their learning is contradictory with there experiences. They use learning and education only to earn bigger salaries yet their way of life and understanding may be grossly small minded and ignorant.
Yes Sonia. It has to be inculcated in our education system. Denouncing some of these social evils.
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