Daughters of
India
At the instance
of Study Hall’s Shalini Chandra, I went through with interest the
article written by Dr Urvashi Sahni, on the Study Hall Foundation website, which
may be taken as some kind of a key-note address on the burning topic in view. The
rejoinders, in prose and poetry, are well-informed, analytical and seem to have
emanated from the core of respective commentators’ hearts, indicating strong
feelings and anguish on the torment and injustice inflicted on our daughters.
Somebody has
rightly said that a daughter is a ‘miracle created by God’. She is forever
loving and caring; she is full of inner beauty and external charm. The very
presence of a daughter lights up a place in the family and spreads an aura of
assurance, a sense of dependability. Parents with sons only and no daughters do
not know what they are missing. A daughter in any house-hold, forms the fulcrum
round which all activities move, be it sweeping the floor, cleaning the house, cooking,
washing utensils, looking after younger siblings and running all sorts of
errands; at the same time, she adds income to the family’s pool, wherever
possible. It is the daughter who stands like a rock behind her parents. Telling
testimonies of daughters’ role in any family are available in plenty in the
saga of ‘Prerna’ ,the formidable school being run by Study Hall for the female
children of poorest families; they not only help their families in keeping
their pot boiling but also study and
excel in academics, sports and cultural activities.
Against this
background, a question which everybody is asking but not finding reasonable
answers is why these daughters, who are vital cogs in any family, are being
subjected to atrocity and cruelty ranging from bad to worse. Daughters are
killed at birth, trafficked when they grow up or raped mercilessly, compelled
to marry as a child bride and are prone to exploitation of all types by those
who hold some kind of sway over them. One shudders to know about inhuman
stories that have recently come to light where even the fathers have committed
heinous crimes of incest on their own progeny. What is alarming is that in
spite of serious repercussions of the recent gang rape in Delhi and the
vehement protests and undying demand for death to rapists in our legal system
as well as formation of fast-track courts to dispense expeditious justice to
sexual offenders, the newspapers continue to report cases of rapes from various
parts of the country.
This leads
us to believe that the criminally-minded are undeterred even by the possibility
of harshest punishment. The mind-set of the people in general, loaded against
women in our country, must be made to undergo the much-needed change. Age-old
social customs and cultural shackles imposed by mostly the male law-makers and
holy men in ancient India, who gave credit to male superiority in their
pronouncements in scriptures, are required to be diluted. Their judgmental
views on the woman-folk have been articulated in religious texts and
mythological accounts where many restrictions are state to have been placed on
women; they have been shown as lesser human beings. Even our revered Tulsi Das
Ji has bracketed woman with rustics and animals, deserving coercion
(tadna). Sita also had undergo the
Agni-Pariksha. Manu Smriti is chauvinistic in its approach to woman. Devdasis
in our temples were required to render rituals and sometimes services of the
dubious kind to religious heads and their henchmen. Centuries of oppression,
instigated by our religious and cultural commands, have subjugated and degraded
the daughters of India. They are considered as burden on the family and have to
be given away in marriage to other families where a new chapter of atrocities
is opened. While the sons are supposed to be assets in the family balance
sheet, the daughters are reckoned as liabilities as soon as they are born. The
male inheritors are invariably preferred in matters of education and imparting
of skills as the daughters have to go out of the family as ‘ paraya dhan’. So
the thinking is- what is the use of investing in their education and equipping
them with gainful skills as the consequent benefits are not likely to accrue to
the family. In this context, our voluntary organizations engaged in the education
of the deprived female children are doing divine work. All efforts should be
made to encourage them with all possible means for the education and resultant empowerment
of women.
An
encouraging trend has emerged where the daughters of the family are also coming
out in the open and fighting for their rights as equals. The recent changes in
the Statute, where the daughters are also eligible for equal share in the
family property, will go a long way to empower them and put them on a higher
pedestal. It will help in bestowing to them their rightful place and give them
a semblance of respectability in the society.
The dynamics
of social change, the vociferous roar for social justice, steps taken for the
emancipation of women and rapid shift in the mind-set of the society is the
only hope for our daughters. It is imperative that they should come out of the
stigma of ‘weaker sex’ and metamorphose into ‘Shakti’ to fight the
rakshasas (demons) of our ‘samaaj’(
society )and emerge with flying colours.
J K Mathur
508, Tivoli
Apartments
37, Wazir
Hasan Road
Lucknow
226001
Cell:
9889823842
Blog:
www.jkmathur.blogspot.com