An illustration in travesty A draconian Act and its frill elements

Business acumen versus formal education

The duplicity A diabolic intervener

What the Act could and what it doesn’t

Now we need to seek out who really benefits from such a one-sided law. The wife is not a standalone unit as seen in an English social system. She is a person deeply entwined with either her own parents or other members of the parents’ extended household or she is a person deeply attached to her husband. That is the way the Indian vernacular words position her. The hierarchical words are quite powerful, and she is in a string of hierarchy. It is like a constable in the police department. The moment a request comes from the higher officers, it is a binding command.

If the husband or his other family members do not fall in line to the string of hierarchy that extends from the wife’s family side, they can resort to the use of the provisions of this draconian law. However, there is one very interesting fact to be understood here. The other members of the husband’s family can also use the provisions of this Act to intimidate the husband, by showing him in a bad light to his own wife. She may stand on their side, as they may successfully convince her that he is a wastrel.

The drafters of the Act always point to the tragic state of a financially lower section of the population. It is true that they are in a tragic situation. Yet, Act is never to come to their aid, for they cannot approach the police without losing any bit of human dignity remaining in them. For the policemen or policewomen would definitely use the lower, pejorative, abusive, insulting and snubbing indicant words for You, She, Her, Hers etc. for her, including such other words meaning lower class female. The treatment they would get from the authorities may be as of a street dog. The Act is made use of by the upper class females and their family members. Actually these females and their family members are not the targeted group, when the Act is being projected to be the saviours of the lower class females.

An illustration in travesty: I can relate an interesting incident with regard to another similar Act brought out by nitwits. It is the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act. This Act was propounded to get the totally uneducated children in India educated. In most of the websites of the Indian Government connected to this Act, pictures of street children and other similar children from extremely low educational background is given. So that it is clear that they are the target group.

When I was living in a village at a particular time in life, where the teaching class were more or less of the abysmally low intellectual class, with very low knowledge in English, it was quite difficult for me to put my children in the local schools, both government as well as private. I brought up my children (female) giving them Home Education, that included not only academic studies, but also such other capacities like swimming in the sea, jogging, football, computer software knowledge, Enid Blyton, reading British classics, stories from Indian epics, higher mathematics and much other things. Most of these things were quite beyond the capacities and calibre of the local teachers. The only input that they could give to the children would be the forced subordination of the children by their use of lower level pejorative words. To protect the children from this forced subordination, I had taught my children only English.

It was then that one of the local political parties of which most of the local teachers were members, conspired and had a police complaint registered against me, saying that I was denying education and social interaction to my first daughter. The Rural DySP came to my house and did admonishing of my wife, when I was not there. He did not talk to my daughter, possibly because he may not be good in English. Later when the local Sub Inspector came, I showed him the academic activities of the children. He did not understand one word in English, and simply refused to go through what I showed him. He talked about the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act and that he was going to enforce it. I mentioned that the Act was to come to the aid of children who were not getting good education. In the case of my children, the opposite was the case. It was then he made a wonderful remark that can stand as the touchstone of all similar Acts in India. He said to the effect that: This Act is for giving such children education. That is true. But we will come only after people like you. We can’t go after such people. It has no meaning.’

A draconian Act and its frill elements: The issue here is that the government was enforcing a law that would pull away children from their parents forcefully and places them under the custody of other persons for around six days in a week. These people who call themselves ‘Masters’ and ‘Teachers’ are not fit to be teachers in any sense of the word. All they would do is the social subordination of children to the level of the lower castes, and they themselves would become the higher castes. This much is done through the use of ennobling verses pejorative words, reminiscent of the zamindar verses serf communication code.

There was another incident connected to this. When I mentioned these ideas in a one-line statement in the Twitter, one female simply called me an idiot. Then she came back and told me to use my children for housecleaning and such purposes. The fact that I was improving the children didn’t seem to register into her mind. When she repeatedly started attacking me, I had to give the link to my write-up on compulsory education that I had placed in my online: Ved’s Writings Page. That more or less shut her up. The issue here was that her mind was working like clockwork. Either the children are in school or they are being used for menial work.

Business acumen verses formal education: Incidentally, I have found that most of the rich businessmen in our area are persons with scant formal schooling and college education. At the same time, the persons who work under them in various levels of subordination are formally well-educated. Beyond that the uneducated owner-class is actually much ahead in common sense, general knowledge, worldly knowledge as well as in business acumen. They are well-travelled and have many social and business connections. The so-called educated guys under them are in a pitiable plight. They literally wasted around 17 years in schools and college, while the other persons literally went in for business right from age seven or even less. I mention this here to emphasis realities which the idiots who draft laws and Acts do not know.

Now, the same is the case with regard to the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. It purportedly aims to protect a section of the females who do suffer, but will end up only as a handy tool to the upper-class females and their family members to wreck havoc on their husbands, and to some extent on his other family members.

The duplicity: The issue here is that the Indian social system is not healthy with the feudal vernacular keeping both the husband as well as wife on tenterhooks. The government supports the feudal vernaculars, but starts viewing the social relationships from the freedom and social interactions available in an English nation. In the vernacular social system, even the very addressing of a wife by name, by another man can be a tormenting issue to her husband. Making laws that do not understand or take into cognizance the various factors in communication that can bring in torment, and taking a very biased and one-sided, view, that works like an automated clockwork, is a heinous deed. Persons who do not have the calibre to understand Indian social conditions should not first of all take up the burden of writing laws that powerfully swing the natural checks and balance of the social system, sideways.

A diabolic intervener: Now before moving away from this topic, I need to mention my own parent (female). She was a senior bureaucrat in the state bureaucracy. So, access to the police station was quite easy for her. She was a ‘Maadam’ and always the higher indicant words were reserved for her. She had some antipathy for the men folk, and whenever she had a chance to create discordance between a husband and a wife, she would. Unless the husband exhibited mental subordination to her. She could quite easily call up the police and report a case of wife abuse. The wife may also initially feel the exquisite cosiness of being the focus such attention, with which traditionally she had no experience. Yet, the total effect of my parent’s intervention would be the starting of a marital discord.

What the Act could and what it doesn’t: It may always be borne in mind that in every human relationship, there is an immensity of chance for areas of friction. Instead of focusing on aspects that can alleviate the problems, the Act in context works to bring about a permanent wound in the heart of the husband.

The Act purports to deal with the aspect of physical violence in the family. Yet, it does not stop with that but goes on to put so many restrictions on the husband, like he is doing a crime, when he says that his wife cannot work for another person, when he explicitly expresses his dislike for another person whom his wife likes, and such other things, which are at best within his own rights to speak within the walls of his household. His wife has no business to support another person, male or female, to the extent that her husband has to compete with the outside entity for her loyalty. The very meaning of marriage is that the husband does not have to compete with another person for the companionship of his wife. Even this very little bit of information, the drafters of the Act had no access to.