I was reading national news in yahoo news page and i came across this news put up barely an hour ago. On December 7, a woman in Korba district of Chhattisgarh tried to burn her husband alive. She was arrested and what she said in her defense was that she was "fed up of her husband"!
I really could not push what she said to the back of my brain. To be so fed up of a person to try and burn him/her alive? And that too your husband? Another important fact in this case was that the wife had filed a case of dowry harassment against her husband but the matter was dissolved between them...the story continues.
Curious about dowry cases, i typed dowry in Google and clicked on news and a long list of dowry cases appeared; my eyes were drawn to dates and the number of pages. Disgustingly, there was a dowry case put on Google almost every single day and the list goes on and on, starting from a dowry case on the very day i searched where a village sarpanch in punjab was arrested in dowry case. And just think that hundreds of dowry incidents go unheard.
A country that claims itself to be a fast developing nation, is India moving to the developed and urban side for the better, or are the ghosts of our "so-called" uneducated/rural social evils lingering about and mutating into an urban beast with us and sinking deeper into us?
Being born and brought up in a small town in Jharkhand, i never understood the "why" behind the female foeticide n female infanticide cases my mother and her colleagues used to talk about; probably because my family setup was very different, or atleast i believed it to be so. But after getting a bigger picture of life, i understood that dowry system is one of the root causes of the biased gender ratio. And i also understood that dowry thrives in the urban, educated India too.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/20/20101207/1416/tnl-woman-held-for-trying-to-set-ablaze_1.html
"Dahej Pratha" has amazingly come down to a large extent, and by time it'll fade away from the society as well (Girls say Amen to that).
ReplyDeleteBut i'll blame the Govt. for that instead of the Society. Coz most of the cases being reported are from the remote/small towns/rural areas, which again is rural coz the Netas feed on the funds meant for its upliftment.
And never to look upon on Law for any favor in this context. Coz Panchayat Raj & Policewallahs are above the Law in these Godforsaken land.
And thank God you didn't write much in appreciation about the small town in Jharkhand from where you come... :-D
lol...nick...i can go on and on about the small town we come from....u know better...
ReplyDeletebut trust me, dahej pratha is rooted in urban society too, only it is masked under many facades. And not only girls, boys too should say amen to that. one day your sisters (and daughter :P) are going to get married too...:)
Hi..very inspiring I really like your description...All the best
ReplyDeletethanx sanoop..:)
ReplyDeleteya definitely...but we don't follow such traditions and neither my parents did/do. So i'll never have to worry about it (including my sisters & daughter/s) :-)
ReplyDeleteAmen!!!
Quite interesting!
ReplyDeletenick : m happy about tht then.:)
ReplyDeletethanx pallavi.. :)