Re: India's school for brides

[Guest guest]

Dear FORUM,

52-year-old Bhau Ayildas Hemani, director of the " Manju Sanskar

Kendra " (Manju Traditional School)in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh needs to

be sensitised about not just hIV/AIDS, sexulaity and sex but also

about what legal provision are there for those needing help within

the family context and in the work-place context.

Sexual harassment at the work place, self-defence are other subjects

that must be included. What about patriarchal and totally gender

blindness of the person running the place. The observations of Ritu

Tuli of the All India Womens Conference were incisive and am glad

someone tried bringing some repsectability to a " noble " concept.

Indira

Indira Varadrajan

E-mail:[indira@...]

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum,

I am afraid with these kinds of institutions which on the name of Indian culture

and tradition are trying to further weaken the woman and keep woman devoid of

accessing the information and services available for them.

People are still not aware of the grave consequences of such kind of trainings.

In the wake of increase of HIV / AIDS epidemic in India where the woman are more

vulnerable to contract the infection not because of the biological reasons but

mainly because of the socio-economic reasons.

There is an urgent need to inculcate the life skills like negotiation skills,

assertiveness, effective communication, coping with stress and emotion, critical

and creative skills and problem solving and decision making skills apart from

sexuality education.

The approach should be to empower woman to use these skills and make her life

better and help grow the society.

Best wishes

Farhad Ali

Modicare Foundation

New Delhi, India

E-mail: <farhadali4u@...>

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum,

Absolutely agree with Farhad cos institutions like this are only detrimental to

Indian society. Women only get further marginalised with all the 'slave' values

that they are made to imbibe. And this will continue to strengthen cos finally,

the women's role by and large in any household has a powerful impact.

How do we go about protesting this?

Warm regards,

Shoba Ramachandran

[Guest guest]

[Moderator note: Discerning readers must have noticed that the

discussion on India's school for brides is gradually being

transformed into a discussion on the social context of HIV prevention

in India]

Dear Forum Members,

Before we all express our disstisfaction of the existing marriage

culture where women have no choice of their own, do we all

revoulutionist people adopt empowerment of our own children? Ever

have we thought that sometimes, sons have also to compromise their

wills and have to accept something which they donot like at all! Also

we need to consider cases where parents give full liberty to their

children to take up their own decisions.

We should explore those incidences as well, together with our fault

finding attiutdes. We should have to some extent be hopeful for

positive practices of our own, discarding the bad events. The whole

country has huge variations in culture, belief and practices and

social norms.

I am not canvasing any of our cultural norms blindly. Rather we

should be possessive of our cultural values to look into WHY SO?

Sometimes, liberty takes children to fatal crisis. It was the essence

of interference of seniors into our decision making process. Every

time seniors' intervention may not be justified.

But truth was behind our feelings of cultural togetherness and

sharing for our dependents who need support and suggestions from

their seniors, who have seen reality much more that the junuiors. It

is the rationality of their intervention into our decision making

process.

Out of millions of decisions by parents, number of failures are

counted might not be be higher than total incidence of failures in

any developed country you mention. Is there any social research to

cancel my opinion? When my session doesnot support our value

perceptions towards cultural norms, I am still wil be happy if

evidence based data be given to prove inefficiency of our cultural

norms.

Arup

E-mail: [arup_dr@...]