From: bhattach@quip.eecs.umich.EDU (sayan bhattacharyya)
Subject: Re: "Our Daughters Must Die" - Infanticide in India
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: 15 Sep 92 20:02:43 GMT

In article <1915qqINN2na@agate.berkeley.edu> cutchin@cs.purdue.edu (Steve Cutchin) writes:
>    What is considered to be one of the major stumbling blocks to
>    equal rights for women within India is the lack of a common civil
>    code.  While there is a common criminal code there is no common
>    civil code.  Plus within the constitution there is the Freedom of
>    Religion clause.  The way this clause is used in India makes the
>    US look like a church state.
>
>    Almost any law that would attempt to give more equality is fought
>    on Religious grounds.  The practice of Sati(sp) was defended on
>    the grounds of freedom of religion.  Sati is when a widow is
>    placed upon the burning bier with her dead husband.  This
>    practice was outlawed finally.

Just a minor observation here. Speaking about the Indian constitution
and the outlawing of Sati in successive paragraphs, as Steve does,
might conceivably create the erroneous impression that Sati continued
to be legal till fairly recently, since the Constitution of India was
framed in the 1940s after India won independence from the British.
However, the law against Sati was actually enacted long before, in
1829. The movement to outlaw Sati was led by Raja Rammohun Roy, a
social reformer and scholar . He was however opposed vehemently by
conservative sections of the Hindu society of that time.  But it is
not true to say that the defence of Sati by conservative Hindus of
that time was motivated only by religious considerations. It must be
remembered that all the so-called scions of Hindu society at that time
were male, and a primary reason why there was so much opposition to
the outlawing of Sati was that , burning off the widow of a dead man
was a simple way to grab the dead man's property , especially if the
couple were childless, because the death of the widow meant that the
dead man won't have any legal successors . Thus the hostility that the
abolition of Sati faced was caused more by economic than for religious
reasons.

Cloaking mercenary motives in religious garb is of course an old game.
There have been other examples of this in Indian history. In the 1860s
legalisation of remarriage of widows was again opposed by conservative
Hindus , again ostensibly on religious grounds. This time too the
motivation was really economic, for it was feared that if the widow
were to marry again then the dead man's property would be inherited by
the children of her new husband and thus the male relatives of the
dead man would be 'deprived'.

The recent controversy about Muslim personal law relating to divorce
in which the Central Government of India overturned a Supreme Court
order in favour of Shah Bano , a woman , in a divorce case a few years
ago is only the most recent example of how religion is cynically
exploited to justify things which have a completely different cause.
But then it would be unfair, I think, to single out India as the only
country where this happens. One can see the same thing happening in a
certain country called the United States of America where the
'religious' Right cynically uses religious arguments to disempower
women of the right to control their bodies.

The moral of the story, as I have consistently maintained in my
postings on this thread, is that it is wise to look for ulterior
economic motives whenever something is opposed or supported on
ostensibly 'religious' grounds.

-Sayan Bhattacharyya.



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