EDITORIAL
LOK PAL AT LAST!
After a thirty-year ramble
around the parliament, the Lok Pal Bill finally may be
able to traverse the short distance between the houses
and president to occupy its much wonted place on the
statute book. Since the nineteen sixties, almost every
party has not only accepted the need for an ombudsman to
keep a vigilant eye on the political decision-making
process in the country but has actually introduced the
necessary legislation in the house. The Congress did it
not once but thrice' Janata Party, Janata Dal, the United
Front, the NDA all have introduced the legislation in the
house. And, allowed it to lapse. It must be a history of
sorts for a bill to have been introduced and suffered to
lapse so many times. More so when the bill does not need
any special passage. It is an ordinary legislation that
can be passed by a simple majority. Every Government that
introduced the bill at various times could have got it
passed by the house, but chose to let it pause in the
select committees to get ultimately lapsed. Clearly the
consensus was not there to see it through. Now it has
crossed the latest select committee and landed in the Lok
Sabha, with an apparent consensus.
The present bill seems to
have overcome the main obstacle of whether the Prime
Minister should be within its ambit or not. The bills
introduced so far invariably sought either to exempt the
Prime Minister from its purview or to drastically modify
the application of the bill to this office. There is
something to be said for this viewpoint. The Prime
Minister's is an office of high discretion. It has to be
pragmatic and may need to take decisions that may not be
strictly in accordance with the dots, dashes and commas
of the legal jargon. And then, if the highest office in
the land cannot be trusted to be right and proper, in its
actions and conduct, who indeed can be so trusted? Yet,
the spate of allegation in the past as well as the recent
times has shown that all is not above board there.
Increasingly accusing fingers have been raised on the
coteries that come to surround the head of the
Government, if not the person himself. Infact, the
contentions that have enveloped the PMO recently are said
to have spurred the Government in tabling the long
delayed legislation before the house. The present bill
has, in recognition of this wide perception, veered round
to the general opinion that everybody should be under the
watchful eye of the Lok Pal though it makes an exception
that the Prime Ministerial decision made in the interest
of national security and maintaining the public order
shall not be questioned.
With the deputy leader of
the Congress insisting that the Bill be passed in the
present session of Lok Sabha itself, two main parties in
the Parliament appear to have made up their minds about
the passage of the bill. Thus there should not be many
impediments in its course through the Parliament. The
selection process of the all-important office of Lok Pal
as Provided in the bill also is reasonably faultless; the
procedural empowerment too, does appear adequate for the
implementation of the objectives of the bill. Everything
appears to be right. On the paper, one should add,
because countless well-intentioned legislations and rules
in this country have floundered in the implementation, at
the hands of the people selected to execute them. One can
only hope that the Lok Pal Bill does not break on this
hard rock and that the aims that have behind shall be
realized.
EXPANSIVE REPRESENTATION
With the 4th cabinet
expansion in the five-years of the present State
Government, it has granted 'representation' to 'all the
areas' of the State, meaning the areas that were wise
enough to vote for the ruling party. For they alone
appear to deserve representation in the governance as a
reciprocating gift from the party they have supported.
Apparently two - dozen ministers from the three-score
strong ruling party did not 'fully represent' all the
peoples nor all the concerns. And so, now with the
induction of three more ministers the people of those
areas would heave a sigh of relief, find representations
and be roundly fulfilled with the democratic promise.
That is the logic, which justifies the expansions in the
already expensive cabinets at Centre as well as the State
levels. That thinking, however, raises an important
theoretical question" if a minister for every three
legislature members of the ruling party is not adequate
to grant full representation to all its supporters, what
of the 49 or 40 percent people who did not vote for the
this party? What of the communities and groups who,
because of their particular straits or numbers, failed to
send any members to the house? Don't they deserve any
'representations'?
Indeed, the concept of
representations should have been used to grant a say to
these sections of the populace. Then alone can it have
any meaning in the democratic dispensation. It is enough
for the ruling party to have its leader as the head of
the Government. The whole party has full access to the
Government, its policies and decisions in that single
person. The demands and concerns of the party can be
easily and effectively put before the Government and
suitable remedies obtained. But the people who have not
got this access need to be catered to. It is their
Government, too. They too have an equal, inalienable
right to the funds and facilities granted by the State.
After all, the only difference between winning and losing
at the polls is which planks, which policies, which
programs the majority, and hence the State, has approved
as fit to be carried out. That done, there are no special
provisions, special services and facilities to be granted
to the people who have voted for the ruling party. The
Government, from whichever party it comes, is sworn to be
equally considerate to all the people. Democracy is not
about particular persons getting the 'benefits' but about
which policies are to be followed, which particular
stands are to be implemented . Winning here does not mean
that the winning party has an unrestricted right to use,
misuse or abuse the State powers, goodies and
opportunities, but only that they have the privilege to
administer it. Without partiality, without
discrimination, without favouring any persons, peoples or
areas. The 'representation' as it is construed, is not
what democratic polity implies.
The other objective of
expansive cabinet is said to be efficiency of
administration. That the administration would be better,
more responsive, more alive to the peoples' needs, with
an adequate strength. Nobody has defined what the
adequate strength' of the cabinet means; it has come to
mean anything from a third to half or even more of the
legislative members supporting the party or group in
power. That is clear accommodation of supporters to
ensure a sooth stay at the seats of power, not a concern
with efficiency of administration or Government. The best
governance this State has ever known was the two-year
sent of Sheikh Abdullah soon after the 1975 - accord. He,
then, had just three ministers 'representing' the three
regions of the State. The Government then worked as never
before, certainly none has worked as well, thereafter.
The administration was alive, the sycophants were off its
back, and illegalities in departments, people and
legislatures were roundly rooted out. That was efficiency
in action without any problems of representation, either.
The State longs to see that governance, not the expansive
apportionment of the State cake among favorites,
interests and the party ends.
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Politics
of Islam in Pakistan
By Fazal
Mehmood
Prime
Minister Vajpayee has allayed
apprehensions by his forthright remark
that India will not allow Pakistan to
militarily wrest Kashmir from it, whether
by overt or covert action across the
border. He has struck the right chord by
stating that he told General Musharraf in
no uncertain terms that while Kashmir may
be a "piece of land" for
Pakistan, for us "it is a part of
our lives". Kashmir has been with
India for over 50 years now, having
shared its trials and tribulations, and
having been part of a shared vision of
nationhood, however fractured that may
now appear to Kashmir separatists. The
insurgency currently on view has not been
a 53-year old problem, as Pakistan would
have the world believe. It is the result
of certain unwise policies followed in
the State towards the latter part of the
1980s. The incendiary remarks of the
General, or those of his wards in the
Valley, namely the Hurriyat, cannot wipe
out the edifice of commonality built over
the trying years of the nation after it
took birth in 1947. There is, therefore,
undoubtedly, immense force in the views
expressed by Mr Vajpayee. They are rooted
in historical reality and are not
rhetorical, as most of the remarks by the
Pakistani President are.
Mr
Vajpayee’s revelations on the issue
of cross-border terrorism was another
reminder, if any were needed, of General
Musharraf’s misguided belief, that
he could ride roughshod on a militarily
fatigued India, by launching one
offensive after another. The General not
only repeatedly parried the charge of
fostering terrorism, but also went to the
extent of calling the "freedom
fighters". Surely even the most
credulous of observers would become wary
when told that Afghan and Sudanese
terrorists operating in the valley are
freedom fighters for Kashmir. Given the
idea of the nation state as it obtains in
the civilised world today, such an
imputation is nothing but pure nonsense.
If the General has another, possibly a
pan-Islamic view on nationality, he ought
to come clean before the world.
The
sectarian conflict in Pakistan is all too
glaring and doesn’t need
elaboration. The execution of a Sunni
fanatic, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a
Sipah-e-Sahaba activist who murdered an
Iranian (Shia) diplomat, Sadiq Ganji, in
March 1990, sparked sectarian violence in
Hangu in the North West Frontier
Province. Gun battles ensued between Shia
and Sunni groups soon after that, and at
least eight persons were killed.
This was
only the most recent skirmish in an
unending fratricidal confrontation that,
in just the last few months, has seen the
assassination of several sectarian
leaders. On April 12, 2000 three hand
grenades were lobbed at a gathering in a
Shia mosque, killing 13 persons, among
whom were five members of the family of
Syed Sajid Naqvi, chief of the militant
Shia organisaiton, the Tehrik-I-Jafria
Pakistan (TJP). The grenade is said to
have been thrown from an adjacent Sunni
mosque. Shortly thereafter, a TJP leader,
Syed Farrukh Barjees was killed at
Khanewal near Multan on April 26. On May
15, a prominent Shia lawyer and member of
the voice of Shia Federation was killed;
on May 18, a renowned Sunni religious
scholar Maulana Mohammad Yousuf Ludhianvi
was murdered at Karachi. Then, on
November 23, 2000. Anwar Ali Akhunzada,
the central general secretary of TJP in
Peshawar was assassinated by the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).
I have
often noted that Pakistan is condemned by
the circumstances of its own creation to
bloodshed and an ideology of hate –
but that was essentially an Indian
perspective. As the "lunatics of
Allah" and their unending supply of
guns become ubiquitous throughout the
country, however, those who follow events
and writings in Pakistan will now notice
a growing sense of panic among
commentators from that country that
reflects precisely this realisation.
Ahmed Rashid notes that, "over
80,000 Pakistani Islamic militants have
trained and fought with the Taliban since
1994 (sic). They form a hardcore of
Islamic activists, ever ready to carry
out a similar Taliban-style Islamic
revolution in Pakistan."
At the
heart of the present crisis is the
network of increasingly powerful marakiz
(centres) and madrassas that has now
established itself as the source, not
only of international
"pan-Islamic" terrorism, but of
an overwhelming proportion of internal
strife as well. Its roots can be traced
back to General Zia-ul-Haq’s
vigorous use of Islam as a tool of regime
legitimisation, a trend that was first
introduced by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in
1971, and that has been vigorously
reinforced by every successive regime.
The growth of these madrassas is, indeed,
an accurate index of Pakistan’s
mounting difficulties. In 1947, there
were 137 madrassas in the entire country.
By 1971, this number had grown to 900.
With Zia’s policy of generously
funding "madrassas of all sectarian
persuasions" there were 8,000
registered madrassas and 25,000
unregistered ones, educating over half a
million students, by the end of the Zia
regime in 1988. These madrassas became
the principal source of
"education", especially among
the poor, as Pakistan’s state-run
educational system steadily collapsed. By
the middle of the year 2000, the number
of madrassas had grown to nearly 9,500,
and some commentators in Pakistan
estimate the current number of
unregistered madrassas at between 40,000
and 50,000. The mind-blunting curriculum
in most of these entirely neglect all
branches of practical and secular
instruction, and comprises 16 long years
of purely theological education,
recitation of the Quran, Fiqah
(interpretation of the Sjaroa, and
indoctrination for jihad. The inevitable
consequence of such an education has been
the chronic "inability to produce
reality-based theories of change",
extraordinarily narrow and exclusionary
perspectives, and deepening sectarian
divisions that spill over into increasing
violence.
With an
estimated 60 per cent of funding
emanating from abroad, these schisms are
magnified further by the ideological and
strategic contests of foreign funding
agencies and states. Afzaal Mahmood,
notes that, "By allowing Iran and
Saudi Arabia to fund, influence and use
some sectarian organisations of their
liking, we have virtually encouraged
Teheran and Riyadh to fight a proxy war
on the soil of Pakistan, with serious
consequences for sectarian harmony and
law and order in the country."
Funds have
also come from Libya, Iraq and several
other Gulf countries, creating an
intricately nuanced web of conflict. Shia
and Sunni madrasssas have spawned rival
terrorist forces that visit gratuitous
slaughter on sectarian rivals. There is
also a deep schism between Sunni Deobandi
and Barelvi madrassas, and a large number
of Ahle Hadis madrassas have also emerged
recently in Baluchistan, Sindh and the
North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Patterns of international rivalry are
also visible in some retaliatory
killings. Thus, Sadiq Ganji’s
assassination had followed the
assassination of SSP founder Haq Nawaz
Jhangvi in March 1990. Similarly, the
1997 assassination of Jhangvi’s
successor, Zia-ur-Rehman Farooqi and 26
others in a bomb blast at the Lahore
Sessions Court, saw the alleged revenge
killing of Iranian diplomat Muhammad Ali
Rahimi and six others in an attack on the
Iranian Cultural Centre at Multan.
Sectarian
violence is, however, a relatively minor
consequence of the proliferation of
madrassas. Their primary output has been
the export of international extremist
Islamic terrorism, and this has created
enormous internal concentrations of
armed, trained and indoctrinated
terrorist forces. These groupings no
longer acknowledge the power of the
government to define their long-term
goals and objectives. Their allegiance is
commanded by the various "spiritual
leaders" who run madrassas that have
acquired extraordinary notoriety over the
past years, both as hotbeds of terrorism
and as the spawning ground of the Afghani
Taliban. It is here that a "theology
of rage" is taught, and the Talib
(student) exhorted to practice a
"sacred violence" that is his
greatest duty in Islam.
There is
now mounting evidence of a loss of
control as these autonomous religious
groups challenge, not only their Army and
ISI handlers, but the Government itself.
There has, moreover, been increasing
penetration by extremist Islamic elements
into Pakistan’s Army, and elements
of "Islamisation" have been
introduced into the Army’s training
programmes at various levels. In 1992,
the Prime Minister appointed a well-known
Tablighi (congregationist). Lieutenant
General Javed Nasir, as the Director
General of the all-powerful ISI. General
Musharraf’s military regime clearly
lacks the capabilities and support to
contain the extremist elements and has,
on more than one occasion, been forced to
back off on policies and reforms in the
face of Islamist opposition. The
cumulative impact of nearly two and a
half decades of "Islamisation"
has now put in doubt the Army’s
ability or will to suppress extremist
Islamist forces in case of a
confrontation with the Government. Such a
confrontation now appears increasingly
probable, if not inevitable. The
madrassas and the mujaheedin are entirely
committed to the establishment of a
"Taliban style" Government for
Pakistan, and some of the groups recently
put General Pervez Musharraf’s
military regime on notice to establish
"Islamic rule" in the country,
or to face the consequences. Maulana
Samiul Haq, the chief of his own faction
of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI),
speaking at the Jamia Ashrafia at
Peshawar in January, declared that both
democratic and martial law regimes had
failed to deliver, and that,
consequently, only the Sharia could
"solve the problems faced by the
masses". Maulana Jalil Jan,
provincial leader of the JUI (F) added
that, if the Government failed to
implement it, "religious students
will resort to the use of force".
Lieutenant
General Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI
through critical periods of its campaign
in Afghanistan, shares the vision of the
Islamist fundamentalists and argues that
"Pakistan will go through its own
version of an Islamic revolution."
The army is the last hope. If it fails
then people will realise they will have
to do it themselves. Because all else has
failed in Pakistan, Islam will lead the
way. Unless current trends are radically
reversed, Pakistan will be sucked into
the turmoil of Afghanistan-like anarchy.
INAV
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Beyond
looking east
By N. B.
Menor
In recent
years, New Delhi has open- ly expressed
its interest in closer in
teraction with the ASEAN countries. In
the late 1980s, New Delhi’s response
to the South East Asian grouping may have
been indifferent. But in the last decade
– particularly since the economic
liberalisation process began in the
country – New Delhi has taken a more
realistic view of its economic and trade
ties with a region that lies just beyond
its shores. Several ASEAN countries share
this view, of an increased interaction
with India, which is one of the largest
economies in the region. However,
attitudes take an even longer time to
change in other countries.
India’s
entry into the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum)
took its time, for the group of Asian
Tigers with their booming markets had
looked askance at the lumbering Indian
economy. India is now a full dialogue
partner with ASEAN and a member of the
ARF. Several of the ASEAN countries had
reacted adversely to the Indian nuclear
tests in 1998 and it took some time for
the heightened emotions to settle down.
New Delhi has sought an ASEAN-India
summit. ASEAN has a regular summit with
other Asian countries like China, Japan
and South Korea. The proposal for a
summit found some support within ASEAN
with countries like Singapore, Cambodia,
and Laos, while Vietnam, its current
chairman, sponsored the proposal during
an informal meeting of ASEAN heads late
last year. However, the India-ASEAN
summit is still to fructify.
According
to the newly appointed Minsiter of State
for External Affairs, Mr Omar Abdullah,
an India-ASEAN summit is inevitable :
"It will happen sooner or
later," he said. Deputy Chairperson
of the Planning Commission, Mr KC Pant,
who was India’s representative at
the ASEAN regional forum meeting in Hanoi
last month, was more circumspect, saying
: " There was some movement on the
proposal but it has not yet been
concretised."
Malaysia,
which is the current country coordinator
handling ASEAN’s interaction with
India, is not particularly enthusiastic
about a summit with India. During Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s
visit to Malaysia earlier this year,
Malaysian officials had linked the
subject to India’s relationship with
other SAARC countries, in this case
hinting at India’s relations with
Pakistan. Malaysian Foreign Minister,
Syed Hamid Albar, had said that Malaysia
would like India’s engagement with
ASEAN to act as a catalyst for improved
relations between the countries of South
Asia.
When the
first summit between the European Union
and the Asian countries was announced, it
was billed as an EU-Asia summit, but
there was considerable opposition among
several of the ASEAN members to
India’s exclusion in the summit.
Though the European Commission was quite
keen to include India at the meeting, the
ASEAN view prevailed and, finally, the
summit was reduced to an EU-ASEAN summit.
Later, the EU decided to have a separate
summit with India and an EU-India summit
took place in Portugal last year. The
second India-EU summit is due to take
place later this year.
A
discussion on a possible India-ASEAN
summit is likely to come up at the next
ASEAN heads of government meeting in
Brunei this November. Cambodia has
indicated that it would raise the issue
at the next meeting during Vice President
Krishan Kant’s recent visit to Phnom
Penh, in early this June. Cambodian Prim
Minister Hum Sen told Vice President Kant
that in the context of the ASEAN Regional
Forum (ARF), Cambodia continues to
consider India as a major player in
contributing to peace, stability and
security in the Asian and Pacific region.
Hanoi is
currently holding the pivotal position of
the chairman of the Standing Committee of
ASEAN this year. During Prime Minister
Vajpayee’s visit to Hanoi earlier
this year, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan
Van Kahi expressed his support to
India’s inclusion in all important
economic and political forums of the
South Asian region. The Vietnamese
leaders also reiterated their support to
an Indo-ASEAN summit as well as backed
India for a permanent seat in the UN
Security Council. A similar indication
was given during the next leg of the
Prime Minister’s visit to Indonesia.
Singapore has been the main interlocutor
for India’s greater involvement with
ASEAN.
ASEAN’s
expansion with the induction of Vietnam,
Cambodia and Myanmar has changed to some
extent the profile of the organisation.
The induction of Myanmar into ASEAN has
provided India a land boundary to go with
its long maritime boundary with the ASEAN
region. In his speech at the ASEAN
meeting, Mr KC Pant said that India was
interested in taking up projects in the
Initiative for ASEAN Integration
programme. This initiative aims to reduce
the developmental gap between the four
new entrants to ASEAN, that is, Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam – CLMV as
they are called – and the older
ASEAN members. The initiative is of major
interest to the new members, which are
countries that are engaged in expanding
their cooperation with India in the
spheres. At the meeting, ASEAN countries
acknowledged that their dialogue
partnership with India was one of their
most active associations.
India’s
interaction in the Mekog Ganga
Cooperation (MGO) also helps to provide a
greater connectivity with several of the
have-not countries in the ASEAN fold. The
ASEAN meeting was followed by a meeting
of the MGC where the member countries
agreed upon a six-year long, Hanoi
Programme of Action. The programme listed
specific proposals in the field of
culture, tourism, human resource
development, and transport and
infrastructure, the four sectors
identified for action in the Vientiane
Declaration in November 2000. A large
part of the agenda in the MGC is devoted
to more intensive people-to-people
contact through tourism and cultural
exchanges. But it also hopes to provide
greater interaction in the Information
Technology sector, where India is in a
position to help upgrade local skills for
faster integration in the IT revolution.
While New
Delhi has been grappling with the
reluctance of some ASEAN countries to
allow it a higher profile in the region,
Beijing has been quietly sounding out
member countries for a greater
involvement in two different forums. The
Chinese influence on some influential
ASEAN countries is a factor resulting in
their dragging their feet on the India
summit. The Chinese have informally
indicated an interest in joining the
Mekong Ganga Cooperation initiative that
includes Cambodia, India, Laos, Myanmar,
Thailand and Vietnam – the six
countries that encompass the delta region
of the two mighty rivers. China has a
natural interest in the Mekong Ganga
region that lies on its southern
periphery. However, at the group’s
meeting in Hanol, one of the member
countries said that there was a need to
consolidate the organisation that was
launched last year before thinking of any
expansion.
China has
also sounded out countries in the South
Asian region for its inclusion in SAARC.
With the SAARC process getting stuck in
bilateral tensions in the region, it is
possible that some member countries may
feel that any kind of engagement with
China would help the region. However,
most regional groupings work on the
principle of consensus, and new members
can be admitted only when there is
unanimity among the existing members of
the group. INAV
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Decline
of Marital sanctity
By Uma Ramachandran
No society can
exist without the interrelated institutions of
kinship, marriage and family. No society is
"kinshipless" and without one or other
form of marriage and family life. Kinship creates
two categories of members, namely, affines and
consanguines, that is, those related by marriage
and those by blood. Hence, marriage is an
institutionalised social relationship of cultural
significance and is closely associated with
socialisation, population composition, property
relation, inheritance, etc. Marriage is,
therefore, more than a legalised sexual union
between a man and a women.
Marriage is
strategic alliance and this is particularly true
of arranged marriages, which is still the most
prevalent form of union in India. Conventionally,
caste endogamy and clan exogamy guide
mate-selection, but the Hindu Marriage Act of
1955 completely ignores the degrees of prohibited
relationships in marital alliances. Arranged
marriages today are becoming more and more
"commercialised". They are
disrespectful of trust that brings together two
families and are more concerned with economic
status and the capacity to mobilise resources for
dowry and gifts. This amounts to the
"marketing" of marriage. However, all
marriage alliances, including arranged marriages,
are based on mutual trust and respect, and on an
unwritten understanding between spouses and their
families. A breach of trust is the root cause of
unhappy marriages and of their dissolution. In
such a situation marriage can’t remain a
sacrament and a woman cannot remain pativrata. In
fact, these notions sound farcical in the contest
of many modern marriages.
The three aims of
Hindu marriage, namely, dharma, praja (progeny),
and rati (plesure ) fulfilled the basic duties
through the main rites like home, panigrahana,
and saptapadi. These aims and rites made marriage
a sacrament and an irrevocable phenomenon.
Life-long rituals reinforced the sankalp
(determination) to retain the marriage as the
lasting dharma. The situation today is completely
at variance because the spirit behind the aims
and the safeguards envisaged in the traditional
cultural discourse have been mutilated beyond
redemption. This calls for a radical
transformation of society and for the acceptance
of a women as a person, a human being, and an
equal partner. Legislations relating to rights of
woman as a person a human being, and an equal
partner. Legislations relating to rights of women
have to be strong enough to empower them socially
and culturally. This would also act as a
deterrent against in-laws who abuse women after
they get married.
It must be
recognised that no piecemeal solutions can
provide relief to the women and her relatives who
are victims of physical and mental torture,
blackmail for dowry and eviction from
husband’s house and, even murder. The
problem is so grave, particularly among the urban
middle classes, that it needs deep reflection by
all right thinking people including
intellectuals, journalists, feminists, social
reformers, members of the judiciary and
politicians. Only a comprehensive well thought
out policy and its execution, in letter and
spirit, can ensure gender equality and an
egalitarian and humane relationship between
spouses.
An onslaught on
patriarchy as a value and as a practice must be
the first target of all such corrective action.
So long as hypergamy (anuloma) remains a cardinal
principles in marriage alliances, the boy is
always considered superior to the girl. Torture,
dowry, desertion, divorce all emanate from this
retrograde mindset of the false superiority of
the male over the female.
The existing
legislations relating to marriage and divorce do
not define the practice of gender inequality in
the domain of marriage and family life as an
offence. Certain things have to be made legal and
explicit rather than left implicit and as a
matter of interpretation. Can a husband and his
family make spurious and filthy allegations
against the character of a woman ? Can the
husband stop his wife from pursuing a career ?
Can the family ask for more dowry even after
agreeing on the terms and conditions of marriage
? Can the personal effects of women be kept under
lock and key by husband/mother-in-law? Can a
working woman be compelled to surrender her pay
packet to husband/in-laws? Can she be coerced to
do domestic work like a servant ? These and a
host of other questions are pertinent today for
the urban middle classes. These are the principal
issues that lead to marital discords in India. If
a woman surrenders completely to the capricious
whims and fancies of her husband, his parents and
relatives, even then there is no way to ensure
that she would not be tortured for dowry or on
some other false pretexts. A woman can’t do
to her husband and in-laws what is done to her
and her parents. The judiciary may have to
consider all such issues to arrive at a holistic
understanding of the problem. The feminists, the
concerned NGOs, and the journalists need to think
afresh on this social menace. Justice Brijesh
Kumar has very rightly observed that matrimonial
cases are a matter of delicate human and
emotional relationship which demand trust,
respect, love and affection with sufficient play
for reasonable adjustments between spouses. Such
a preamble speaks about an ideal husband and his
family members. But in real life it is a dreadful
situation. Deceitful marriages are very common.
Even bigamy is not revealed. The notion of
domestic violence needs to cover more ground than
simply the agony or trauma related to dowry
demands, marital violence, wrongful restraint or
confinement and the use of force and assault.
Breach of trust
and the tendency to make a woman into a voiceless
pulp and condemn her to a lifelong servitude must
be also treated as criminal offences. To crush a
young women physically and emotionally in any
manner amounts to a heinous crime. A legal
dissolution of marriage and return of dowry and
stree-dhan, as well as the grant of money for
maintenance, are no substitutes for a ruined,
precious life.
The existing
legislations and judgements do not encompass the
entire gamut of gendered iniquities, intra-family
cruelties, violence (physical and mental),
exploitation, and indignities that women often
face after marriage. A comprehensive and holistic
look at the vulnerable position of women within
the four walls of a household alone can bring out
the loopholes and lacunae in the existing
structure and practice of legislations relating
to marriage and family life. A message of
dignified, egalitarian and humane relationship is
expected from leading public figures especially
legislators and members of the judiciary. A broad
bases understanding of the structured iniquities
that premises most marriages in India is
essential if we are to move forward as a society.
Marriage, after all, is still the most critical
institution in all known societies in the world.
INAV
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