Status of Women in Indian Society
The worth of a civilization can be judged by the place given to women in the society. One of several factors that justify the greatness of India's ancient culture is the honorable place granted to women. The Muslim influence on India caused considerable deterioration in the status of women. They were deprived of their rights of equality with men. Raja Ram Mohan Roy started a movement against this inequality and subjugation. The contact of Indian culture with that of the British also brought improvement in the status of women. The third factor in the revival of women's position was the influence of Mahatma Gandhi who induced women to participate in the Freedom Movement. As a result of this retrieval of freedom, women in Indian have distinguished themselves as teachers, nurses, air-hostesses, booking clerks, receptionists, and doctors. They are also participating in politics and administration. But in spite of this amelioration in the status of women, the evils of illiteracy, dowry, ignorance, and economic slavery would have to be fully removed in order to give them their rightful place in Indian society.
The worth of a civilization can be judged from the position that it gives to women. Of the several factors that justify the greatness of India's ancient culture, one of the greatest is the honoured place ascribed to women. Manu, the great law-giver, said long ago, 'where women are honoured there reside the gods'. According to ancient Hindu scriptures no religious rite can be performed with perfection by a man without the participation of his wife. Wife's participation is essential to any religious rite. Married men along with their wives are allowed to perform sacred rites on the occasion o...
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...nd greedy members of the bridegrooms' family take recourse to afflicting tortures on the married women. Some women are murdered in such cases. The dowry deaths are really heinous and barbarous crimes committed by the cruel and inhumane persons. The young girls should be bold enough in not marrying the boys who demand dowry through their parents. The boys should also refuse to marry if their parents demand dowry. But unfortunately the number of such bold and conscientious boys is very few. Even the doctors, engineers, teachers and the administrative officers do not hesitate in allowing themselves to be sold to the wealthy fathers of shy and timid girls. Such persons have really brought disgrace to their cadres in particular and society in general. The government should enact stringent laws to afflict rigorous punishment on dowry seekers, women's murderers and rapers.
On April 3, 1964, Malcom X published his famous speech named “The Ballot or the Bullet” and on 1963, the author Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from jail to respond to eight white clergymen, who criticism him for unwise, untimely and extreme. The purposes of both writers are fight for civil rights and black liberation. They both use ethos, pathos and logos in their writings, which extremely useful in getting to their point to persuade the audiences to fight for their belief. Despite there are different between how they use these strategies but both use it very effective and produce very persuasive writings.
Goldman, Peter. The Death and Life of Malcolm X. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
As one of the most proficient civil rights activist of the 1960's, Malcolm X and his speeches were very influential but particularly one speech was highly esteemed, that being the Ballot or the Bullet speech. A speech that was given after the "I have A Dream speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. Despite, Dr. Martin Luther King being a pacifist and also a civil rights activist as well; Malcolm X was more tyrannical and advocated the use of violence. During this era, the democrats were in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, therefore both the Senate and the House of Representatives were leaning towards providing more civil rights to African-Americans. The purpose of Malcolm X’s speech was to convince African Americans to become more politically aware and to vote members of their own race into office. The year 1964 is known for civil rights activists, racist groups, and political strife. In order to achieve this goal and increase the speeches effectiveness, X utilizes a variety of rhetorical strategies within his speech.
In Nehru’s India, women were victims of a “passive revolution” that subtly advanced bourgeoisie men of higher castes under a guise of parliamentary democracy. Though women have presided over the Indian National Congress, served as a prime minister, and represent a large part of India’s la...
Within the earliest of civilizations of India, pre-pubescent girls were offered to men as wives, which ultimately lead to the destruction of women’s domestic independence. As said in Document 1, “because girls married before they could finish their education, they were not qualified to perform ritual sacrifices. Furthermore, wives’ legal rights eroded.” Likewise, Indian women became politically subordinate to men. However, by modern standards, women’s social
Malcolm X: His very name is a stab to the beliefs of the white supremacists of his time"X" symbolizing "the rejection of slave-names' and the absence of an inherited African name to take its place." Similarly, in his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm X denounces the actions of the white population, without any attempts to appeal to them; his approach to the civil rights issue is in complete opposition to the tactics of other civil rights leaders of his time, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Rather than trying to integrate the black community into the white, he focuses on the complete separation of them: he doesn't want the blacks to integrate into the white hotels, he wants blacks to own the hotels. He believed that the black population had to break the psychological, cultural, economic, and political dependency on their oppressors. By using tactical phrasing of his sentences that connects to his audience emotionally, Malcolm X attacks the tendency of African-Americans to identify with White America, and insists they identify instead with Africans, their ancestors; thus, he promotes his purpose: to instill a feeling of self-respect and self-help in his fellow African-Americans, which in turn is the stepping stone to the liberation of the Black people.
In early Indian society, only males were allowed to inherit land/property, officiate family rituals, educations was almost only male. The society placed women under the rule of men. The Lawbook of Manu told men to treat women with dignity and respect but that women should still use men as there guides in life and that there purpose was to basically have children and keep the house nice for the family.
In the letter, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr, and the speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet” by Malcolm X, the authors discuss their very different viewpoints on what form of freedom would it take to accomplished their goal. While King believes that peaceful approaches would allow the black community to achieve equality with the white Americans, Malcolm X thinks achieving equality with white Americans is nearly impossible; therefore, he preaches a separatist doctrine. Although King and X are both fighting for the black community’s rights and their integration into the nation’s system, their approaches differ significantly. King and X differ in three main areas: their ultimate goals, the strategies to accomplish those goals, and their use of rhetoric.
From what we have learned about Classical India, it has indeed become civilized. Many traits of a civilization include social inequalities, development of some sort of government, and many developed a mainly accepted religion as well as the arts and sciences. Documents from the Classical period of India show evidence of these traits in civilization.
In the early Vedic period women enjoyed equivalent status & rights as enjoyed by their male counterparts .They were educated and had the freedom to choose their husbands. A system known as ‘Swayamvar’ actually during vedic period, women had superior position than the
Indian gender roles were well defined, and men’s and women’s responsibilities were equally crucial to
Vedic culture seems to have conflicting views regarding its attitude towards women, specifically its attitude towards a woman’s sexuality. This conflict can be seen by contrasting the ways in which women are treated in sacrificing rituals with how they are treated in a more intimate atmosphere, such as lovemaking, which is still often treated as a ritual in and of itself; ritual regarding fertility, love, and childbirth. To represent the roles of women in ritual, Stephanie W. Jamison has written “Sacrificed Wife, Sacrificer’s wife, which is a description and evaluation of women’s roles in ritual and hospitality in ancient India.
Gender roles have been a predominant factor in our world since the early emergence of human societies. They are based on expectations that societies have over the people in them. Gender roles have always been a part of society, whether they are positive or negative. The Epic of Sunjata, shows us how men and women are treated almost equally in different forms. Women are praised for their ability to birth leaders, which is similar to the early Greek Society. In most societies, women are treated less equal than men. This was prevalent in the early Indian society. No matter the gender role, it has been shown that any society cannot survive without both men and women.
Women are an integral part of human civilization. No society or country can ever progress without an active participation of women in its general development. The status of women in society is directly linked with social and cultural traditions, stages of economic development achieved, educational levels, attitude of the society towards women, social and religious taboos, women's own awareness and political attainments.
Women have often been called upon to make sacrifices and suppress their personal desires.They have often been left on the margins of the social set-up as far as their personal desires and fufilment of those desires is concerned. Women are not a minority in our society but their “lives, experiences and values have been treated as marginal” and men’s experiences have been assumed to be central to society. One also needs to contest the often stated view that in India women have always enjoyed a place of respect and dignity, that they have been respected as ‘devis.’ It needs to be seen that “the respect and privileges which accompany the position of a ‘devi’ are not only anti-individualistic,” they are also anti-humanistic and “deny women a personhood”.