Women’s Rights in
India
At the Jaipur Literature there was the consensus that
something must be done about the rights or lack thereof that are given to
women. Throughout the festival there were debates and discussion on many ranges
of topics but the topic of women’s rights was on the fore front of the discussions
due to the recent rape of a girl from Delhi. While there has been some progress
made for woman, there are now women who have been ordained as Tibetan Buddhist
nun, but there still needs to be more. There was also much discussion on what
actually was considered violence against women, (rape, abuse, neglect, etc.)
and also would the outrage be the same if a girl of a lower caste was raped. Mahasweta
Devi answered the question with, “I don’t know why you have asked this question
at all” implying that the issue surpassed the issue of caste or religion.” Ms.
Devi also went onto say that “We should protest against all inhuman action.”
There was also discussion in the article of women needing to “take responsibility”
and not stay out too late, this as one woman pointed out seemed to in a roundabout
way blame the victim. A veteran Bollywood actress, Shabana Azmi, asked for
young actresses to look at the roles they were playing and to choose roles that
did not encourage this kind of violence against women. Her ideas were much like
those held in the film “Killing Us Softly 4”in which Jean Kilbourne looks at
media ads and how they have continued to objectify women and encourage violence
against women.
Lynne E. Davis
1 February 2013
16:55
No comments:
Post a Comment