New Delhi is outraged. The rape and mutilation of a 5 years old girl by one of her neighbours, a young man of 22, has led to several demonstrations of anger in the capital. Despite the arrest of the guilty man on April 20th, and the balanced state of the girl who is still recovering, protesters were quick to take to the streets of the capital to denounce Hindu police for their inactivity and its lack of law enforcement.
Tempers are high, as citizens are still traumatized by the death of a female student that was assaulted and raped last December. The chief doctor of the hospital, DK Sharma, said the girl "is in a stable condition and shows signs of improvement, she’s conscious and talking with her parents and with doctors and nurses.
She is no longer in danger, and fortunately, she’s probably too young to understand the seriousness of her condition". The press confirmed that the girl had been kidnapped for 40 hours by Manoj Kumar, a neighbour, where he proceeded to perform unspeakable atrocities to the innocent girl. The death of a 23 years old girl on December 29 after being assaulted, raped and beaten by six men on a bus in the capital is considered the element that triggered the alarm in the country.
Women: User Manual Discrimination of Hindu women is far from being a myth.
Several factors are such that the precarious condition of Hindu women just keeps getting worse, making India one of the four most dangerous countries for women: Female infanticide is widespread, child marriage is common practice and there are high concentrations of dowry-related murders... Added to this is the fact that India has more men than women: about 940 women for every 1,000 men, which turns out to be the result of a misconception of the woman in the macho-pruning society, advocating patriarchal traditions to sanctify man and reduce women to mere simplified positions as "mother" or "wife", without giving them the respect and consideration they deserve.
A woman is only awarded chores.
Throughout childhood and during adolescence, it is required from her to obey adults, and that she passes a constant "training program" with the goal to becoming a good future wife specimen (according to the rules imposed by tradition). Once married, there is no way to turn back, turn her back on the husbands’ family or to prefer spending time with her own family over his. His family becomes the "authority" whose orders must be met to the letter.
The authority within the family can only be acquired once the woman has reached an advanced age The birth of a daughter is a challenge that no family wants to take: it is expensive, must be nurtured, and creates a necessity to generated a dowry in case a husband arrives (keep in mind that this practice is prohibited by law in the country since 1961, but families turn a deaf ear and continue to perpetuate this almost religious practice with pride and determination).
It is needless to state the benefits of having a son in a Hindu family: perpetuation of the property, the (financial) support to parents, and a wife who’ll show a conjugal devotion, whose loyalty is nearly divine, and in extreme cases, sacrificing her-self when her husband becomes deceased.
Numbers of the Indian Macho achievements UNICEF estimates that India alone accounts for 40% of forced marriages in the world, with an average of 70% of child marriage.
The abortion of female foetuses reaches staggering rates of 500,000 every year, especially in rural areas. A girl between 1 and 5 years are 75% less likely to survive than a boy. A million girls disappear from the records every year because of their "low profitability"; half are aborted, while 500,000 do not survive the first year because they are abandoned to their fate, in other words, to a certain death.
The rich and educated Hindu families are the more susceptible ones to dump their daughters in order to make room for male offspring enabling them to continue the "legacy" and the reputation, educating the sons as "trustees" of their property in the future. Hindu Ministry of Health and Family indicated in 2005 that the mortality rate for girls is 61% higher than that of boys.
The literacy rate of women in rural areas is 46%, the girls being forced to work to support their families from an early age, and 25% of women are married before the age of 15 against their will. The divorce rate, despite its weakness, reflects negatively on the separations, which are numerous. Women fear the courts because their families are on the lookout for any "rebellion".
The legal age for marriage is 18 years, although it is not respected, and an average of 2 million women a year, go missing due to conjugal conflicts. In 2011, 19.4% of the missing women in India were victims of kidnappings An average of 100,000 women die each year as a result of burns in domestic disputes, and self- immolation is one of the leading causes of death in women aged 15-24 years. In 2012, a single case of violation of the 635 committed in New Delhi was punished criminally.
A hectic social life India is a country of paradoxes and contradictions.
Despite the deplorable condition of women in this controversial society, the Hindu women occupy increasingly important positions in politics, and even if they get partly emancipated professionally, this does not prevent them to suffer the negative effects of an archaic tradition forcing them to face violence with total submission on a daily basis. Still, we must admit that the situation of women has considerably improved in recent decades, as the country was led by a woman from 2007 to 2012: President Pratibha Patil, considered the first woman to hold this position since the creation of the Indian Republic in 1950.
Indeed Indian society recognizes many rights to women, such as political commitment, the right to family allowances and the right to start a business, even if this is not the case in rural areas due to poverty and lack of information that still represent the brakes to independence, and to the rise of the "weaker" sex to power. Since 1993, more than one million women gained the post of village heads through an amendment in the Constitution, and thousands more cultured and educated women lead a furious battle in academic, political, intellectual and business areas in order to promote their congeners to become aware of their rightfully belonging social position.
