Nah Sthree Swathanthryam Arhati — The woman doesn’t deserve to be free
EK NAARI EXCLUSIVE WRITEUP BY SWAPNA SASIDHARAN
All of us would have been familiar with this shloka from the Manu Smriti -“ yatra naryastu pujyante , ramante tatra devata”. Meaning “where woman is worshipped, there the gods rejoice”. Are we living in such a place by any chance? I would say no! Because we are living in a country where there is no guarantee when it comes to the safety of its women. Moreover India has become the most hazardous place to live in for women. It is believed that one out of three women are being forced to live an abusive life where a known person is the culprit. In the year 2021, more than 37000 rape cases were registered in India.
Interestingly when it comes to rape cases, the victim is getting harassed than the culprit. Somehow the social settings in our country made us believe that women must have made some mistake and that is why they are being attacked. Oh really! What about the girl childs of less than five years age getting raped and killed by some perverts? Did they also do some mistakes for being raped? Come on, you can’t blame them for not wearing appropriate clothing. As the women in the country are always blamed for wearing inappropriate clothing. In that case I have a question, ‘who gave someone the right to decide between an inappropriate outfit and an appropriate outfit for women?’ Aren’t there any such considerations for men? Sadly we are living in a society where patriarchy is at its peak. That is why women are always being treated so badly even when they are not wrong.
Our society and our family have been always busy giving instructions to the girls on how to behave,wear appropriate clothing and what not. We never bothered to educate our boys about how to treat any woman in their life. Yeah, always the woman must be making the mistakes and we blame them. Hmm! That is why we became smart enough to cut short another shloka from Manusmriti to ‘Nah sthree swathanthryam arhati ( the woman doesn’t deserve to be free). The actual shloka is ‘pitah rakshati kaumare,barthru rakshati youvane, putro rakshati vardhakye, nah sthree swathanthryam arhati( As the woman is supposed to be protected by her dad in the childhood,then by her husband post marriage, and by her son when she is old, a woman doesn’t need to be left alone). However the most powerful interpretation of this shloka must be ‘when the woman learned to take care of herself, then she became free’.
I strongly believe that the rape victim should be given enough time to come out of the trauma and should be treated as any other person. The culprit should get the capital punishment and the punishment for such crimes must be a lesson to all others in the society so that they will think before committing such crimes. Moreover we, the people of India should be treating our children equally and stand up for them when they are in danger. Let’s give them a promise that we will be with them in their lives irrespective of happy or sad times. When our children have the freedom to share their thoughts and experiences with us, they will definitely learn to move forward in life.
