मातृ देवो भव ...Once again

With all the recent well deserved hype around the issue of rapes in our country, I went back to read a post(मातृ देवो भव) of mine from 3 years ago. I realized that my anger is unabated, and my ideas are unchanged. It is true that we need tougher laws and more responsible law-enforcers. But, what about us? What about the disease in the minds of these men of my country? What sort of hell breeds such base monstrous evil in human minds? For the women's sake we need tough laws, but for the men, is there any hope? Can the evil in their minds be cured?

Education is undoubtedly a pillar of progressive thought, but there is evidently a missing component of moral upbringing. I am curious to know what section of  society these offenders come from, what sort of family setting they grew up in, and their childhood experiences. This statistic will be useful ,not as a political agenda of discrimination, but to analyze and possibly chart a method for improved morality.

As a developing country, we concern ourselves with improved quality of life, higher literacy, and a higher number of college graduates (irrespective of whether the purpose of education is achieved), but in-spite of the very obvious decline in morality in all sections of the society, we neither hear nor ask for improving that. We can safely agree that growing up in a "good" family plays a big role in an individual's sense of right and wrong, but it is not just the fact  that the parents are righteous people, it is the importance they gave to moral and spiritual education. I have said before in other posts, and I only grow more convinced of it, there is no hope for us as a nation when we insist on turning our backs on the importance of moral and spiritual development that is inherent to our nature.

As more and more NGOs are reaching out to the economically backward sections of our society, and taking modern education to their doorstep, I pray that there is some emphasis on moral education as well. It can be done without obeisance to any particular religion, Jataka tales can be as instructive as stories from the Ramayan.

Our laws and policies must be geared towards an ideal society, where evil is not contained, but eradicated; where men and women live with mutual respect; where all cravings of the mind and heart lose to our love for mankind. 

मातृ देवो भव

An unadmirable growth rate of 700 percent over the last 30 years... grown from 7 reported a day to 53 reported a day and growing...children and grown ups treated alike...villages,cities,everywhere...India's fastest growing crime.

Welcome to Incredible India, a glorious civilization degenerated; a land of integrity and culture, in posters and presentations,the land where values from time immemorial are still remembered, in books।It is the country whose earliest scriptures describe women as a divine race. Even by the rules of the detestable caste system, women were not allowed to lower their status.Today, even as women are expanding their presence into every field imaginable, they are being lowered to mere objects of play by the physically stronger human species.

My outrage has been fed by the lately regular reports of foreign women being raped and murdered in my country.The anger is not directed at the fact that the victims are foreigners, but that every woman, no matter the color of her skin has a right to walk anywhere on god given land without fearing for what is not her fault, and yet has to. The foreign victims have only brought the shocking statistics to light.The fuss made by the foreign media have sparked retorts that rape rates in India are by no means the highest in the world(sexual assaults are reported in the US about every 6 minutes). I shudder to think that there are people who justify the worst crime in the world in such a crass manner!and I donot wonder that justice has not been meted out even in publicised cases like that of Jessica Lal.
Everybody knows why such crimes occur, but why do they continue to occur? Even after the victim, if alive and has answered humiliating questions, the culprits walk free sooner or later. I am not being an extreme feminist but I do believe that only extreme punishments can rein these uncontrolled acts. Anything less than capital punishment will not suffice. I am sure Christ did not think of this when he asked us to show the other cheek when slapped on one...this is what we are precisely doing. The culprits are certainly among the lowest breed of mankind, but are the adjudicators any better? I wonder how they can bear to hear about lives being ruined in this fashion and not exercise their power when they can.Atleast the knowledge that a kid who has no clue why she is suffering should melt a human heart.
These stories are told by statistics, and they do not tell half the story. The victims are put to shame more than the culprits.The family is ashamed and try to hide her than bring her justice. If they do try for justice, the media without discretion capitalize on another's misery under the pretext of reaching out to the public.I wonder,would the women have been better off if they had been murdered?
I am sorry if this article makes an extremely unpleasant reading, but these are my thoughts on these gory crimes. I wonder if people who wrote the taittiriya upanishad wrote what was or what should be when they wrote "मातृ देवो भव "