Yes! Those are the words in which we can about sum the journey of India from pre-Independence through this era. It has been light years since that time period, since our great great great ancestor’s great great great grandfathers took part in the fight against the colonization of India by the British, and set our countrymen free from their shackles.
And through the years, we have seen the nation developing – be it in the field of agriculture, economics, space, nuclear science, transportation, education, technology, so on and so forth. Moving forward there was a slight improvement in the status of the females in the society. Why I said ‘slight’ has a reason. On one hand, we have come ahead of the time when the majority of Indian population was afflicted by the attitude of looking at a baby girl born as a burden on the family. Now women can walk freely in the society unlike the former days of purdah system and a rampant sati system. That’s something good. On the other hand, though we are living in a modern era, there are some parts of the nation, where female foeticide and infanticide is still prevalent and a widow is seen as a crestfallen human. So despite the education system growing, the rural parts are not reaping any of the benefits. They are still engulfed in the murkiness of past mind frames – the one which causes many mothers to abort their own child when they come to learn it is a girl, many families losing their daughters to the fiendish act of dowry, and surly statistics of the sex ratio in the nation, owing to the number of rapes, acid attacks, male rage acts and domestic violence crimes committed against the fairer sex. Today, the ladies in our nation have come ahead in every field and set an example for the other ladies to follow. Along with males, the females have conquered all arenas – be it service sector, entrepreneurship, entertainment, space, media and journalism, law – you name it – and some among us are already there. And the success gained by these ladies – Kiran Bedi, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Kalpana Chawla, Barkha Dutt, Lata Mangeshkar, Uma Mazumdar Shaw, Arundhati Roy to name a few – is huge and veritable. But that is the brighter side, and definitely something to take pride in.
But every day through the media, is exposed news of atrocities committed on the ladies in our society despite the advancement and milestones achieved in the past decades. We say we are growing, but daily there will be news of a female killed for dowry – her child gone motherless for the rest of its life. Every day we hear news about a slain couple – for the sake of their families’ honor. Does anybody think about the importance of the human life lost? Daily we hear how India is becoming unsafe for ladies by the day – how women irrespective if their ages are raped and their bodies shoved down a drain. Every day the media also misses a number of stories as to how a woman was beaten up by her husband or how a jilted lover threw acid on a girl to destroy her life. We bask in the glory of the pride earned by the famous ladies of our nation, but aren’t we missing out on the lives of the less fortunate ones. Every person born on Earth has the right to live a privileged life – then where do the males who commit atrocities on females, get that right from? Why can’t a woman moving on the street move around freely, without a lecherous glance from so called stronger males?! The strength of a male doesn’t depend on how brawny he is. It depends on how much of a protector he can be, how safe a female can be when around a man. His power doesn’t come when he can overpower a lady and take pride in her misery or haplessness – it comes when he is able to take her misery away, and make her feel protected. A father is the giver of life, he is supposed to protect his daughter – and not kill her in order to protect his “honor”. If the overall sex ratio of India in 2012 is 940 females to 1000 males, then it is mainly because of the ghastly crimes against women today, if we keep aside the lack of proper medical facilities and insufficient number of infirmaries in the rural areas and also if we rule out the suicide and post-birth deaths. The government owes its people a major fraction of the awareness spreading schemes, but a part of it can start from us. If only we move past the segregation between the sexes – we realize that we are all humans, with an infinite potential to achieve and prosper in life. There is nothing that a man can do, and a female can’t – that is the pettiness of out mindset that refuses to think past the male female separation. We need to rise above the pettiness, think of each of us as human – and put the inhumanness at a caesura. The males owe it to the ladies to be able to walk with pride and not ridden by shame. Women are at par with men today, but some souls find it hard on their hubris to take it. If women are at par with men (if not, they are only better – for they can give birth to a child, something a man would never ever be able to do – and it is something which makes a female a step ahead of a man), that is something a man in this nation, and around the globe should take pride in. And it is her who completes his family – as a daughter, as a sister, a friend, a wife and a mother. If the males take themselves to be the stronger sex, so be it – your strength should make it possible for you to protect the opposite sex, not torment them with it. There lies the real strength of a man. Together we can improve the quality of life in our otherwise developed India, and make it a happier and a better place!
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