From: udcrusd@meaddata.com (Sylvia D'Cruz)
Subject: Re: More About India
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 15:35:10 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.indian

In article <Meor6Ee00WBKA72aUt@andrew.cmu.edu>, Kannan Srinivasan <ks2g+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
|> I am no apologist for the oppression of women in India but as I observe
|> the significant change in attitude and progress of women in India, I am
|> optimistic. I find that an increasingly broader spectrum of (Urbanized)
|> Indians firmly believe that women are as capable as men and treat them
|> as equals. A few figures (pun intended!).

Lots of statistics and stuff deleted. Please see the above article, if you
are interested.

|> BOTTOM LINE: When I was in India, I used to think that women have lot
|> more freedom in US than in India. After being here for ten years now, I
|> am a lot less certain. I might add that several women who have
|> immmigrated to US share that view.    

The statistics and stuff that you have provided here is very misleading.
In your futile attempt to compare, you have highlighted all the plus points 
in the Indian situation and the minus in the US.

I don't see the corresponding stats for medical and engineering professionals
in the US. Or the stats for domestic violence in India.

******
     - India,  Oct. 20, 1991: In tears, a young girl tells a flight attendant
who asks her why she is crying that she is 10 years old and her father has
forced her to marry the 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man sitting next to her, YahyaM.H. al-Sagih. He had rejected her older sister as dark and ugly and purchased
her for the equivalent of $ 240.
******

Take the above case, it will never show up in the negatives for domestic
violence, rape or injustices to women, in India. You and me can only guess, 
as to the number of children like her, there.

******
      AMRITSAR,  India October 1, 1992: Harbhajan Singh, a farmer of Chachewali
hamlet near Amritsar, recounted how his neighbors helped him overpower three 
insurgents who broke into his home around midnight and brazenly demanded sex 
with his wife and daughter.
    Not far from Chachewali is the village of Dugowal, where a group of
extremists kidnapped the two teenage daughters of a widow and kept them as
concubines in their hideout, local residents said.
    When one of the girls became pregnant, she was sent home after three months.
The other was used as a sex slave for another three months by the militants
before they shot and killed her, the residents said.
    In the village of Bhandari, also near Amritsar, religious zealots sought to
mask their activity by forcibly marrying an 18-year-old girl to one of their
comrades, then using the bride as a communal sex slave. Two months later the
girl's body was found dumped on a farm.
    Similar tales of abduction,  rape  and slavery have been reported from many
other hamlets.
******

Will some of these incidents show up in your statistics ? These are smart dudes,
they do what they want with the women of India, in a legal fashion.

I do not have the time, but I could provide you with lots of different 
attrocities committed on the children and women of India. The law and order
situtation in India is pathetic. The support structure for rape victims,
battered women, widowed women and bride-brunt victims just does not exist.

I spent 18 years of my life in India, all in Bombay. Most of the streets in
Bandra, has more than just one brothel. Do you think the young girls and women
kept over there, are there of their own free will ? The pimps make sure
that they never broke out. Some, of the girls were abducted from near by
schools. Never to be found.....

Do you have any statistics for missing children and women in India ? Where
do you think they have disappeared ?  The number of open files languishing
in the police departments throught out the country speaks volumes. There
are millions of cases opened, compared to the ones closed.

On a different note:-
There is no value for life itself. 40 killed in a train accident, 50 killed
in torrential rain, 43 die of liquor poisoning, 55 get drowned in marriage
celebration, 12 die in a cold wave, 10 die of heat stroke and on and on....
How many times day after day, you keep reading, seeing hearing the above ?
I think we have become, so heartless and selfish that it does not bother or
touch us anymore ?

I received personal mail from some women, who taught life was better in India.
The main reason given was their kids are safe there. I agree with that. They
are relatively safer there today, but it won't be for long. 

I think distance makes us have selective memory. We tend to remember the good
only. 

-- 
Sylvia D. D'Cruz