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Hell-Ova-Life - Suman Chopra Suman Chopra, is well known to Sawf readers for her no nonsense moderate view. She has been writing on routine yet socially relevant issues by stealing time from her family and social responsibilities as a senior official's wife to enrich the Sawf columns with her views

Even today very small percentages of South Asian women are literate. The CBSE result declared this morning indicates that the Girls have out performed the boys once again like many previous years. Notwithstanding the above, since the beginning of evolution of live on earth, barring a few species, the male has unfairly dominated and ill-treated the female. Most so, the human species. Violence against women covers the entire female life cycle from conception to death. Millions of females literally live one Hello-ova-life, and much more so in South Asia.

It all starts with attack on the female fetus. "One of the clearest indicators of the development of a society is the position and status women enjoy in the society, unfortunately no place is safe for women, not even their mothers womb. They are put to death before they are born", said President Naryanan in his address to the nation. Declining female-male ratios are indicative of this mass genocide - north Indians clearly lead the pack to the killing fields. Even Hitler will toss in his grave if he were to hear this.

Then comes the discrimination during childhood. Girl child gets a lesser share of food compared to the male siblings, has lower priority on education and is often withdrawn from school after initial few classes if at all she is sent to the school. She is on the lower end for everything on social the scale.

Despite being banned the practice of child marriage is quite prevalent in the BIMARU (Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, UP) belt. Mass child marriage ceremonies are still openly advertised. After puberty when marriage is consummated, pressure mounts to have the first child. This leads to teenage pregnancies and nutritionally depleted mothers get involved in child bearing and rearing.

Marriage of a girl child starts bothering the parents very early, and it is a mountain that the family has to climb with the entire burden on the shoulder. The degrading dowry negotiations are worse than a plunge into a black hole. The shameless demands of gadgets of ease, which are flooding the markets, put the Girls' family into mounting debts. The lists are endless and always well beyond the means of the man on the giving end. This is despite the fact that law prohibits Dowry. What the 'would-be' bride goes through listening to all this no one can well imagine.

The next milestone that awaits the bride is the need to sire a male child. If she fails to produce a son, although it is the male chromosome that determines the child's sex, then everyone's curse awaits her. The most vocal in this charge-sheet brigade unfortunately are the elder women themselves. In many households one sees a train of girls while in wait for the male child. This is the single major contributing factor for the still rising populations in South Asia. Pre-natal sex determination means are unscrupulously applied and then the funeral post is sounded for the female fetus.

Frequent need for aborting a female child and lack of basic contraceptives or knowledge thereon, necessitates repeated visits to Family Health Centers. Family planning procedures in most South Asian countries are primitive and are invariably performed with total lack of sensitivity causing acute humiliation, and mostly without necessary medical hygiene and precautions, thus risking the life of the woman itself. These are often performed without sedation and with unspecialized tools causing pain and further risk to life.

Woman in most households then live their entire lives in heavy-duty highly non-technical domestic chores such as collecting firewood and carting heavy water cans from far off places. They spend most of the time in the Kitchen or washing clothes. Many of them work in the fields and then come and attend to the house while the man relaxes as a birthright.

The woman is not even spared in widowhood. To begin with she is condemned for bringing misfortune to her husband. In many regions and castes she is expected to jump into the pyre, even in the twenty first century, along with the corpse of her dead husband as part of the now infamous 'Sati' ritual. South Asian societies then deny her the right to property. There are others who are given a ticket to Haridwar or Varanasi where they often have no choice but to earn a living through begging or prostitution.

In south India child prostitution is sometimes given religious or cultural legitimacy. Young girls are gifted to the temple to work as a servant to the Gods. They are invariable 'innocently' initiated at puberty by the priest or the village officials. South Asia has many other very own forms of physical, mental and social violence against women leading to depression, anxiety and even suicide. Beyond the various forms of Gender cleansing, there is this now well-documented and narrated 'Honour' killings in Pakistan. When a boy and the girl, in love, run away, it is only the girl's side, which is reportedly shamed, and the girl that is put under the guillotine.

What must we the educated women do? Are we to continue to sit, hands folded, and waiting for the male dominated non-performing Govts to do something. Will we too continue to be party to this crime against our own kind? Or will we all rise up and take local initiatives. Is the 'women liberation' going to be limited to the permission to wear hot pants? "We have to repent in this generation not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people but for the appalling silence of the good people" said Martin Luther King. If women, who still constitute nearly half of the worlds population, were to resolve to right Their 'own wrongs', the world would be so much the better for the woman kind. Else, it will continue to be one Hello-ova-life.

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