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| Jessica Lal |
Bonita’s plight is no different. Her pathos took birth when, barely 14 years, she was married to a blind man Bidyadhar. Today, this middle-aged old woman epitomizes what ails Kalahandi—a dead poor, remote region in Orissa typifying the actual ragtag area of any third-world country.
The report about Bonita’s woeful life was carried in the on-line issue of the Daily Telegraph. Bonita has just gone through a tubectomy at a government family planning centre to qualify for a dole of few hundred rupees. With the money, she fed her blind husband, five emaciated children and an infirm mother-in-law. However, the surgery has left her debilitated and crippled. It’s a miracle Bonita still survives. For the Indian nation, she is Kalahandi’s living analogy for grinding poverty and government apathy for herself, she is a loyal wife and authenticated mother.
With nothing to eat and little to wear, Bonita’s family of eight lives in a small dark and windowless mud hut. Inside it are a few broken utensils and some tattered clothes, the family’s only possession. Landless and among the dirt poor of Kalahandi, the family does not even qualify for the low-rate rice, meant for those living below the poverty line because of official red-tape. Bonita, nonetheless, is never stonkered. She, undettered, strives to survive at her own cost for her hungry children and the blind man to whom she had been forcibly married.
Bonita and many of her unknown counterparts in India, bring a touching spectacle of endless suffering which is experienced by a major chunk of women in India. Reeling under the scourge of poverty, illiteracy and other social disparities and dogmas, their lives are no better than dumb animals. What emancipation, what rights, what reservations—they live in a smothered world of their own, stymied by umpteenth of mere survival questions unlikely to be answered ever by any lib, forum or brigade. They continue to be social under-weights, suffering from violence and victimization. Small wonder that incidences of gang rapes, criminal offenses, molestation, abduction, dowry deaths, bride-burning, wife battering, eve-teasing and widow denigration have become rampant. De jure gender ‘equality’ is definitely enshrined in the Indian Constitution but de facto gender despair is the ground reality. Roop Kanwar, Shah Bano, Bhanwari Devi, Jessica Lal, Priyadarshini down to Naina Sahni of tandoor ghastliness represent a cultural distortion too hard to be checked by laws and policies.
In fact, there exists a paradox with regard to state of women in India. One view is of the abjectly downtrodden women representing perpetual behavioural reality, whilst the presence and participation of a few in political and social arenas depicts a rosy picture. Sushma Swaraj and Mamta Banerjee maybe the vociferous political crowd-pullers; Medha Patkar and Kiran Bedi may be the iron-ladies; Sushmita Sen and Lara Dutta may be the paragon of Indian ‘beauty’. Yet the myth that Indian Women have come a long way is blown to smithereens. That girls are still hitched a marital knot with stray dogs to ward-off bad omen, is a shamefully self-speaking fact!
It would be naive to expect a special position for women in India or for that matter the whole sub-continent in the face of continuous onslaught from West—cultural, economic and political. The plight of Indian women is not unexpected or surprising when viewed against a large background of the general status of women around the world. The only debatable argument is that how far Hinduism, the majority religion, goes in empowerment of women and their upliftment in the society. Going by the dictums of ancient Indian law giver Manu who says Na stree swatantra marhati (the woman does not deserve independence), the plight of women in India should be worse than what it is at present. For those who profess by the Hinduism contained in the Vedas, ambiguity and confused interpretations boggle their minds as to the place of women in society and their rights, if any. Then there are those who are swayed by the Hindutva—another variation of Hinduism that virtually upholds “Hunting with the hounds, fighting with the wolves”. However, the commoner’s knowledge about women would not go beyond Vastar Haran, Agni Pariksha and Kanahya’s adventures with Gopis on Jamuna ghat.
Apart from the fact that Hinduism and Christianity in spite of their being earliest religions could not retain their pristine form based on divine revelation, the latter day variations in the scriptures of these religions, confounding the confusion about God, life and Nature is amply clear. It is but natural, therefore, to expect chimerical view, utopian ideals that are far from rationality, pragmatism and scientific outlook and collide with Nature and its law every moment, in all spheres—women being no exception.
Sources: http://www.greaterkashmir.com
