The Girl Child
Is this Modi's Gujarat?
British student Kaya Eldridge gestures as she stands near the Rani Lakshmibai statue in Ahmedabad on Saturday during a protest.
Eldridge has alleged that she was assaulted by a plumber, Pragneesh Chhatrada, at her home in Gujarat and then humiliated by questioning in court.
Supporters from various non-government organisations wearing black participated in the protest. Eldridge, 23, is in India for a three-month internship with an NGO.
The alleged molester has been arrested and chargesheeted. However, in court, defence lawyer Sanjay Prajapati humiliated Eldridge and her lawyer, the British student has complained in a letter to Gujarat High Court chief justice K.S. Radhakrishnan. In the letter, Eldridge said Prajapati had asked her irrelevant questions, such as whether she smoked and drank and was living illegally in India. Eldridge complained that Prajapati had asked her questions in Gujarati during the hearing, held on Monday. She was not provided a translator, she said, adding that people sitting in the court were laughing at her. Eldridge’s lawyer Meena Jagtap said Prajapati had insulted her too by saying: “If I were a woman and behaved like her (Jagtap), one man would go to jail daily.” “I am also writing letters to the Bar Council, the high court and the state women’s commission describing the entire chain of events,” she said, adding that she was in the process of drafting the letters. Further hearing of the case is scheduled for September 30. (PTI text, AFP picture)
It really surprises me that on the one hand we worship godesses and request boons from Laxmi, Saraswati and Durga and on the other hand we treat the women folk so shamelessly.
We bully them, browbeat them and even burn and murder them for dowries.
We throw acid on their faces if they don't reciprocate our professed love.
We even abort the female foetus so that she is not born and then we wash her feet and do Puja during the Navratra /Durga Puja.
What an irony?
It seems a girl child is good as long as it is born in some other household, not ours.
So much so that now the men of Haryana have started asking their leaders for women to marry off their sons, instead of money or jobs.
Continuous years of aborting female foetus has skewed the population ratio (861 female to 1000 male)so much that the boys are not getting brides and have to seek them outside the state.
We see another Mahabharata in the offing when one Draupadi may have to marry five men and the men will have to bring in dowry.
This is presently being done in the Adivasi areas where men are idle and drink all day and the womenfolk work to maintain him.
He has to give cows, buffaloes, goats and other items to the brides father before he can marry the girl.
Even the Nairs of Kerala also follow this system but in their case it is not because of skewed population ratio. Theirs is a matriarchal society.
Well done, Haryana.
You have started recognizing the value to the girl child.
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