Speech On Women's Rights

1120 Words5 Pages

At India’s founding, the ideals Nehru identified in his “Trysts with Destiny” have defined much of India’s goals from 1947 forward. A nation under colonial rule sought to establish a sovereign land that offered equality, freedom, and opportunity to themselves and the next generation. India was founded upon such goals uttered in Nehru’s speech. Did they succeed? In the efforts described in the speech, “to bring freedom and opportunity to the common man,” India succeeded to an extent where they improved these issues, but they are still pungent concerns today. Particularly, these promises can be looked at through freedoms in India, women’s rights, and opportunity to lower classes. India is by all means a free country, but the citizens face some …show more content…

Similar to freedom, women’s rights are referenced in the nation’s founding document. The Indian constitution bans discrimination on the basis of sex, but Indian culture conflicts with this. A 2012 report from the economist ranks India 84th out of 113 countries for economic opportunities for women (Smuskiewicz). The reasons for this are not a result of the government, but of the society. The National Crimes Records Bureau indicates that 24,923 rapes occured in India in 2012 (Crime in India 2012 Statistics). Even worse, as stated by the National Family Health Service and National Crime records Bureau, only 5.8% of rapes not committed by a husband are reported to the police, and just 0.6% of rapes perpetrated by a husband are (S., Rukmini). This absurd number is a result of Indian women being pressured to hold tragic events they endured. When one cannot even tell the truth, their opportunities are highly scarce. On another note, even if women work at home in India, they have no control over their earnings. Despite being sufficiently educated, a women must provide a dowry to their husbands. This causes girls to be viewed as a financial burden and therefore a “curse.” The product of this is Infanticide, the murder of a baby, being prevalent in certain regions in India to female babies (Gupta). The lack of opportunity to women can be evidenced in no greater way than their own parents having to kill …show more content…

According to ABC-CLIO, an astounding 21.9% of India’s population is below the poverty line (India) The number of people facing poverty is in large part an outcome of unequal opportunity due to their class. In India, a system known as Castes has dictated social life for centuries. These groups deem to order people by social class where they cannot leave or enter a class, as they are born into it. The constitution outlawed discrimination of untouchables, the lowest castes, and when India declared independence, some people advocated for a casteless society, but this was by no means achieved. On June 14, 2010, Indian police found a teenage girl beaten to death in an honor-killing because of her caste. Later in October 2014, five women of the lowest caste, Dalit, were raped by men from an upper caste. That same month, a fifteen-year-old boy of the Dalit caste was burned alive by higher-caste property owners after the kid’s goats stepped onto the land of one of the men (India: Caste Conflict). Individuals are treated despicably do to a social construct they cannot defend against. Opportunity is obstructed when actions against a person of a given social class are a regular occurence. The Indian society as a whole place lower castes such as Dalites as inferiors. Furthermore, among the 642 staff members at state-run top management schools in India, only four are Dalits (India: Caste Conflict). Dalits are

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