Many
of you would have watched the Hindi classic 'Awaara' made in 1951. A reputed
magistrate abandons his pregnant wife because she was earlier abducted
by a dacoit and if he doesn't do so, his reputation is at stake. He
although loves his wife, despite being as powerful as a magistrate
doesn't have moral courage to defend her in front of the orthodox
society.
The movie conveys two important messages:
1) Our society believes that it's the woman who has to be punished for sexual offence, even if it involves her 'rape'.
2) The men in our society don't have guts to oppose this notion of
society, even if it costs their beloved. The reputation in this sick
society is more important to men than love.
The character of magistrate is ultimately depicted in negative shade, responsible for creating many evils in society.
Now, I hope that most of you are familiar with a similar story, far
much older than this one, in fact so much popular that it's believed to
be true by a lot of people. The same kind of events happened there too;
there was also the jurisprudence of a 'magistrate' tested. And he too
showed the same 'lack of moral courage'. For the magistrate, rather than
proving the truth and changing the mind of his people, proving his
'solidarity' with people of that 'social mindset' was of higher
priority. Lust for reputation in society again won over justice and
love. The man made a 'sacrifice' by leaving the lady in forest, all as a
reward for her life-long dedication.
And what more, later he went further down and got the lady tested for 'being not raped' by making her pass through fire.
These are the stories of two 'patriarchal', 'honour-hungry' and
'morally weak' powerful men in our society. The one character has been
decried; but the other, ironically, has been worshiped for thousands of
years and is still been and is considered an icon of morality.
(This writing was originally posted on Facebook by me on 22-04-13)
I completely agree with you. People think that by sticking to the social norms is what gets you the power because of the support you get but at the cost of what? Everything that sounded meaningful in life doesn't seem to add up later.
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