TSI
GROOM’S DOOM
Women’s liberation, they chant all the way. Is that to say the men have it all like it is on the other side of rose tinted spectacles? Not exactly, laments Comrade R.P. Chugh, Hony. President – Patni Peedit Manch and Advocate Supreme Court of India, as he expounds on the Yin (the female force) that apparently often weakens the fabric of an Indian family...

I am a Marxist and strongly condemn injustice against women! But having worked alongside NGOs and women’s rights groups like Janwadi Mahila Samiti, Mahila Dakshita Samiti, Nari Raksha Samiti etc., I can tell you that a woman’s problems are more often than not self-inflicted, her misery watered by home-grown vices like jealousy and greed.

Man is caught in an eternal tug-of-war between providing for the family and his wife’s unreasonable demands, so much so that he at times dreads going back home. The woman orchestrates the destruction of her own house with avaricious greed and manipulative tyranny. In India, dowry laws are being used as a premise for exploitation of husbands and their families. Out of a thousand dowry cases, perhaps only one is genuine. In fact, women are the greatest victims of this (women’s liberation) movement. By dragging her husband’s family – his aged parents, brothers and sisters – to court, a woman shuts all doors for any possible reconciliation. Every marriage contends with minor ups and downs but that doesn’t call for legal intervention for every petty issue. And the so-called drivers of such ‘liberation’, these women activists are essentially women who couldn’t ever stay at home themselves. The media is equally to be blamed for such mindless propaganda.

The most prominent memories I have of my childhood are of my parents’ never-ending feuds. Violence was a routine that usually had my father at the receiving end. I grew up tormented by those images until it all sank in when I was older. My mother hailed from a financially and socially affluent family. The only girl child from a close-knit joint family, her upbringing clashed with that of my dad’s who was just another regular man. Constantly ridiculed by her family, my father’s life fared worse than a dog’s!

There are enough and more laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals; the Supreme Court is in the fray too. I was thus compelled to write to Maneka Gandhi and also to the Supreme Court urging them to pay heed to the state of the two-legged animal, that is man! The laws are already skewed in favour of the woman. It says that if a woman dies within seven years of marriage, it will be assumed to be a case of dowry death! Moreover the law says that an accused is innocent until proven guilty but in dowry cases the onus is on the husband to prove his innocence, else he’s guilty.

There are a 1,000 possible reasons for discord between husband and wife, and most of these infest a woman’s mind. She wants to live the way she likes, does not want to be questioned by anybody, nobody should know where she is going or what time she is coming back. These are the real issues. Love marriages are worse off, spawning a majority of divorce cases. Love without marriage in India lasts for years but as soon as marriage happens they can’t stand each other.

The current law is sufficient. You do not need any more (dowry) laws. Every little matter need not be solved by the intervention of the police or the courts. Thankfully there is greater acceptance of the fact that men too can be victims. Judges know I’ll never support the wrong man. Things are changing – gradually!

Husband and wife compliment each other. Both are equally important and responsible for making a marriage work. Our slogan essentially is, Parivaar Bachaao. It saddens me to get a divorce certificate especially when there are kids involved but by now I have a fairly good idea about which marriage can be saved and which cannot be.”

As told to Rahul Chaudhary