Published in PGurus on 3rd October 2018.
The two recently passed judgements by the Supreme Court of India, one on adultery and the other on the entry of women of menstruating age into the Sabarimala temple are supposed to have set right the wrongs done to women. The first one has decriminalised adultery for the sake of ‘gender neutrality’, for, now the woman committing adultery is released from the clutches of her husband as her paramour no longer requires the permission of her husband to commit adultery! So the judgement has relieved the woman from being treated as the property of the man. The second judgement is said to have ensured ‘gender equality’ by eliminating a discrimination against women imposed by patriarchal religious practice.
The media is agog with stories for and against these
two judgements but what is missed out is that both the judgements have trampled
upon the value system of majority of people of this country. Experts would come
out with jargons and judicial terms to support the judgements, but as a lay
person I would say that any judgement should be representative of the value
system of the country. It is to protect these value systems we have the
judiciary and not to derail them.
The value system at the receiving end in the
adultery verdict is the age old and still continuing concept of the marriage
oath in the Hindu society which is centred on “Saptapadi”, the seven
steps. The man and the woman enter into lifelong commitment to each other by
taking seven vows in seven steps in which the 3rd vow is on fidelity
to each other. The completion of the seven steps with seven vows makes the
marriage legal in the Hindu society. One of the vows being fidelity, adultery
committed by any one of the two must be considered as a crime. Only when the
element of criminality is included, any temptation to commit the crime can be
nipped in the bud. Law is not just meant for giving justice but also to play
deterrence. However the judges turned into social scientists when they
announced their discovery unsupported by data that adultery is not the cause of
unhappy marriage but the result of unhappy marriage!
Section 497 by itself is a violation of the Saptapadi
vow and by scrapping it the violation has been remedied but the crime is not checked.
None of the judges except the lone female judge Justice Indu Malhotra
seemed to have realised the aberration caused by scrapping the section when she
questioned whether adultery can be brought under criminal offence, but restricted
it to situations “where there is a public element in the wrong, such as
offences against the State security and the like.”
One is at a loss to understand why this is not
applicable to the entire society. The Hindu majority is still steeped into the
value system of mutual fidelity and the law givers are expected to reflect that
system and not create ways to encourage violation of the marriage oath. The first
victim of this verdict is reported from Chennai. The
husband had no qualms in telling his wife that she could not stop him from
having an affair, by quoting the SC verdict on adultery. The CJI claimed in his
ruling that adultery could be a ground for divorce. But the poor woman could
not understand how sympathetically the court had devised ways for her benefit!
She committed suicide instead. Ethically who is the first abettor for this
suicide?
Source:
Times of India, Chennai edition, dated 1st Oct 2018.
The second judgement pertaining to Sabarimala
pilgrimage was justified by CJI Misra on the basis of ‘gender equality’ and
aimed at demolishing patriarchy in religion. Referring to the restriction on
menstruating women he said, “Any rule based on biological characteristics
cannot pass muster of constitutional test.” If the issue is about the
biological characteristics of the woman, did he or anyone in the Bench care to
assess the impact of those biological characteristics on women due to the
pilgrimage? Without doing that they have
just passed a verdict that is once again a travesty of the value system of the
Hindu society.
This value system takes utmost care of the woman’s
health and had done the needful to reduce menstruation related health issues which
modern science has not even thought of. Women were kept away from all chores on
those days not because they are unclean but they needed rest. The impact of
physical work was only recently acknowledged by sports committees on seeing
that nearly 25% of the elite athletes suffer from menstrual dysfunction. A Consensus Statement
on treatment and return to play was made in the US only in the recent years. In
contrast the age old Ayurvedic system of India has remedies in the name of Rajaswala
paricharya which is common household knowledge in India even
today though it is on the wane in modern households.
The effect of going away from the traditional system
of rest is felt in the reproductive disorder commonly understood as ovarian
cyst. Recently a
study by AIIMS claimed that one out of four women in
the reproductive age is suffering from ovarian cyst (PCOS). Though no study
exists to relate it to the changing lifestyle in disregarding the Rajaswala
Paricharya, a comparison can be shown with the women of the past generations,
our own grandmothers. They had produced not less than five children each, many
a times more than that number. But today a quarter of the women population of
India are not able to reproduce due to PCOS. What could be the reason for this
sudden deterioration within a span of two generations? The only difference
exists in the way the present generation treats their menstruation period.
Today in the name of equality women are brainwashed
to do everything that men do which is in addition to what they do as women
only. There is a gender inequality by Nature in women that nearly 80% of women
are undergoing heath related premenstrual symptoms according to a publication
which no man undergoes. Can the judiciary find a remedy to this inequality?
Recently in an
article to Live Science, the researcher , Dr. Hilary
Critchley with more than 40 years of standing in the study of menstruation
lamented that the implications of menstruation on women’s health is not at all being
studied. Such being the status of the academic understanding of this biological
issue of the woman, out honourable judges are able to pass judgement on the
biological issues of woman in an issue which would primarily impact her health
– if she takes up the arduous austerities and a long journey by foot to
Sabarimala. Opponents would easily come up with a solution to cut short the
austerities and the journey. But that is a blatant interference in the right to
religious practices.
The value system under discussion is not just the
care for menstrual health of the woman in the Hindu society but also the
respect for temple culture that is in vogue for a known period of more than
1500 years in South India. The temple culture is the Heritage of our country
and age old rules are still being in vogue, one of them being non-entry of
women during menstruation period. If this is termed as pollution, yes it is.
Biologically dead material including the dead ova is
being expelled from the body during menstruation. Anything dead-related is not
allowed near the temple. For example, if a person dies in the close proximity
of a temple, the temple would be closed till the dead is taken away. Even if
someone dies at home, the occupants of the house would not go to the temple for
stipulated number of days. From this we can even reason out why temples are
closed at the time of eclipses which are supposed to be the best time for
offering oblations to the departed ones. From the rationale of abstinence of
women from entering the temple during menstruation we can assume that similar
effect on the temple-chemistry is anticipated during the supposed-arrival of
departed ones.
This kind of abstinence is more about retaining the
temple’s sanctity than about a stigma on the women or others. Even rivers are
said to have menstruation period according to traditional Hindu wisdom, which
is nothing but the early period of fresh arrival of waters in the rivers (in
the month of June). The first waters would be bringing in lot of dirt spread on
the until-then dry river bed. So it is better not to use that water. Only after
the water starts flowing well in the next few days, the river is said to have
finished her menstruation. The practices are no doubt well-thought out but lack
of knowledge of the inner purport makes us think that they are absurd dogmas.
All Hindu theistic women respect this culture and
voluntarily refrain from going to temples during their menstruation period. The
austerities of Sabarimala pilgrimage is such that woman in reproductive age
cannot follow them and make a trip without harming her health. Such deep
thoughts had gone into devising the rules of this pilgrimage by our ancestors. It
is regretful that the judiciary is not standing up as a custodian of these
values. With Justice Indu Malhotra being the only voice reflecting the values
dear to the Hindu women in the both the judgements, one is tempted to ask if it
is time we must demand all-women bench to hear the cases that affect all women.
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