The Devil's Advocate !

‘One should not be afraid of humans. Well, I am not afraid of humans, but of what is inhuman in them.’

Satish Kumar Mathur, the DIG of Saharanpur in UP was caught on camera endorsing honor killing. Wow!  If law and order officials hold such blasphemous opinions then who does the common man look up to for refuge! He said and I quote ‘I don't have magical power to recover your daughter. But if she has eloped, you should be ashamed of it and end your life. I would have committed suicide or killed my sister if she had eloped.’ This to the request of a father to rescue his missing daughter who he feared was abducted by some local goons. Which era does he think he is in?

Is this what they are taught in the Police? Is this what is expected of an officer? When an educated man can talk such nonsense on camera and that too after holding a responsible position where does that leave our society? I guess it is right to say that education is definitely not sufficient to eliminate nuisances from our social order. Well I really feel men such as these should be castrated in public to actually stop people from endorsing or even practicing such evils. Ofcourse the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, one of the worst states in terms of condition of women, has assured the public and Women’s organizations that an inquiry would be launched and the DIG punished if he is found guilty. Ya right, as if we cannot read beyond his well rehearsed lines!  

I wonder how our society will overcome honor killing when people in power, people in the administration and the police themselves go about sanctioning such acts. I understand as human beings we need social acceptance but then how can you go as far as killing people to achieve that. The educated and the illiterate alike hold such antediluvian views, if not education then what can obstruct such practices! The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Such men will continue viewing women as commodities; will continue asking their daughters to wear sarees and not jeans as the latter will cause them to tempt innocent men; will continue marrying off their daughters to shameless men like themselves after buying the latter with truck loads of money; will ask their daughters to spend their lives in the kitchen and have no other interests; will ask their wives to give their lives for them, work like slaves and never ask anything in return; will not allow their daughters to have a life of their own choice; will teach their daughters to suffer in their in-law’s house but never come back for shelter; will ask for dowry for their sons; will torture their daughter-in-laws; will demand grandsons form their daughter-in-laws; will burn their daughter-in-laws to death; and if by chance the women of their house dare to try and live life on their own terms these men will kill them and be proud at that. And that’s not all; after such insanely heinous acts they will make a trip to the Vaishno Devi pretending to be among the most holy men in the world. The infamous DIG, I am sure is one such man.

The people who actually commit the killings and the ones who only verbally support it; both kinds are equally guilty of spreading this evil in our midst. But irony is nothing happens to them. We Indians are very good at making a mockery of every damn institution that is vital to a healthy and safe society. We advocate so many ideals; boast so much about our culture. But what culture seriously? This- of honor killing and of people supporting it; then I think we are among the worst nations in the world with a shallow and pretentious culture and nothing more!

Seriously I do not have any answers to how these will ever stop. When I have children in the future I wouldn't want to raise them in a world where such people live. What can I do except for writing about all these again and again? This is perhaps my third or fourth post about this blatant and unwarranted outlook towards women but I know as well as you do that this will avail to nothing. Today I am forced to say that I am not at all proud to be part of an India where such people still live. Disappointed is the word for what I feel today. It upsets me that such people are sitting at the helm of affairs. I can curse and swear at them but still nothing will happen. The father of our nation once said ‘You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty’ but looking around I feel that the drops that are filthy far outnumber the rest.  Reading about this incident makes me believe that ‘There are too many people, and too few human beings.’