MAA MAIN JEENA CHAHTI HU...

Alas after a long time I sit down to write something on my blog. But not feeling at all good or happy about it. The fact is that I am feeling ashamed of calling myself an Indian and a Hindu. No I am nowhere going into the religion paradigm but it’s the fact.

 We the proud citizens of Hindustan have failed collectively. Here I would not put light on the role of those rapists or the lapses of our police personnel, but we all personally are to be blamed.

Yes, that’s right each one of us is responsible for that girls death and the horrendous incident that transpired on the fateful night.

I would narrow down to specifically Hindus, we worship Devi in her many avatars like Laxmi, Saraswati , Durga, Kali etc. Then the heart which worships Devi, why can’t it see some part of that same Devi in each female. Why are we such big hypocrites?

The problem also is that we treat females / girls as objects. You may not agree right away, but dwell on it for some time and think about it. When we ask a small boy what he wants he says, "accha ghar, paisa aur acchi biwi". A girls father tells "beti to paraya dhan hai". Even in our arrange marriages, mostly girls are displayed like showpieces or trophies. On this  note I recollect a conversation I overheard when I was once having lunch in Ratnagiri.  One father was sitting with another person and showing him photo of his girl for marriage. When the other person said that he didn’t like the girl, the father showed him another photo and said "ye nahi, to ye meri dusri beti hai ise dekhiye". I thought, for God’s sake she is your daughter not an item in the market to tell "ye pasand nahi to dusraa dekhiye".

 Why don’t we understand that girls are Gods best creation because they are ultimately givers of life and not  robots to have no feelings, to be tampered with the way you want.

We say women empowerment, but it won’t yield any result unless we change this basic premise of treating women like objects.

In our country it’s sad that female foetus is still being killed.  One of the main reasons here is dowry. This is another evil that needs to be urgently uprooted from our culture. Dowry again has shades of treating women like objects that are traded during marriage. People say that it has become a part of our tradition we can’t avoid it. But I say somewhere it should stop, someone should the step forward.

 Its upon us the young generation, those of us who are going to get married in coming years to put a stop on this. If you are a boy and have confidence on your talent and abilities and profession, why do you need dowry. You must take a stand against it. I say it should start somewhere. Uprooting this from our system would take time but atleast start at your micro level.

We collectively must introspect and for once stop treating women like an object, that’s a heart wrenching appeal to all. Because we can’t have a another life abruptly cut short and the girl saying invain, “MAA MAIN JEENA CHAHTI HU”