Don’t Dump the Daughters

A PAN Card applicant in India whether a boy or a married girl has to provide his/hers fathers name as a permanent identity. The reason is simple, it is biological and cannot be SUBSTITUTED, any discrimination is human made and not natural it’s the same rule for both a male and a female.

I have been wanting to write about this since long but never got the time. Then I missed an opportunity to write about the topic when one learned Judge of Supreme court declared her daughters as LIABILITIES. I missed to blog about it as I was busy playing a daughter to my mother who is hospitalized and is still recovering, but since I had a free morning, while she is on the hospital bed I could not wait to borrow the lappi from my bro to jot this down and share my thoughts about how incorrect it is to not fix the problem and just fix the blame. It is quite imperative to treat a daughter as a human in the family. It is painful to know that a daughter is treated as a liability right from day1 and a son treated as a guard and ATM.

I have written about Husbands are human too, but I have always felt the same for daughters. Again there are combinations out here but I am conveying my message to those parents and brothers who go to any extent to dump the daughters in a marriage against her wishes. I have witnessed not one, but many distress calls where daughters have been dumped by their maiden family members into a marriage with a deadline as they want to get their daughter married who could make way for the wife of a brother. How cruel!!! thus, causing a fractured marriage. Or the other cause is the peer pressure of samaj, which is good for nothing.

Such parents who treat the daughters as liability often believe in dumping their daughters in such a way that they are free from them and get accolades from the society “samaj” for getting them married. In such forced marriages divorce from the daughter’s side becomes inevitable, such females seldom fight a case as they want to get out rather than being obsessed for the money of her Mr.Wrong. Her Parents and Brothers even dump the divorced female who post divorce is then vulnerable and desperate to any chalta purja (Tom, Dick and Harry) and then the loop of errors is endless in her life. In some cases the middle class victim daughter (divorcee) is on roads, well almost! unwilling to fight for money but seeking a parental compassion from the environment.

Ideally if we follow the trend of damage control like in 498a, then there should be severe laws to punish the parents of the daughters who force their daughters in to marriage. But the billion Rupee question is “will such decent daughters who don’t punish their inlaws would punish their parents and siblings?” No they won’t. As they are not programmed that way. Her parents are also victims of the samaj peer pressure which is non significant.

Now, rather than fixing the blames its better to fix the problems. There has to be fundamental changes in the system. A fail safe plan for daughter from her parents’ side with exclusive rights of only her should be made compulsory by the government. Such should be the share of sons also, this will stop the attitude of parasitism and would rehabilitate the social structure which is fast changing to a state of confusion.  Daughters are human too, it is her parents who discriminate, due to the social middle class structure even today. This needs to be corrected.

NCRB data suggests that the number of daughters (below age group of 14) who commit suicide are slightly more than sons of the same age group. But the parents are not punished for their attitude that causes such deaths of daughters (like in case of daughter in law deaths). Further a married daughter would definitely seek redress from her parents; siblings during loneliness, once feeling unwanted from there, only then she would commit suicide. So in such cases even daughter’s parents’ legal role has to be defined.

The potential of Indian women is not identified correctly and hence treatment and relief’s given to her are breeding only dependency and her potential remains unleashed. Today the private nursing home for cancer, where my mom underwent surgery has a 100% lady staff including the doctor and are doing such a fantastic job. I simply get frustrated and think that why do most parents disown the daughter the day that she is born? On the other hand there are parents who would not stop interfering in marriage matters causing the damage. It should be an unconditional, constructive, fail safe support.

For siblings of the same family why put the sons in a better school and daughters in vernacular schools with lesser facilities? Do not pamper them but treat them as humans. Do not call them a liability and do not have an attitude of passing it on to another family by just dumping them in to a marriage with somebody who may be her forced choice.

Do not Divorce your daughters from her maiden family. Do not disown them. Do not dump them in to a forced marriage. Do not delete her from your house to make a way for a daughter in law, give her, her due share of love, attention and humanness rather then depriving her from equal treatment.

Once this is corrected such daughters would not be forced in to marriage and would be getting equal status in the society the relief would not breed parasitism and dependency (which is the case as of now) and create more and more Kiran Bedis, Kiran Shaws and Indra Nooyis, who would work in the same arena and win gracefully with no concessions.

Live for your daughter as well, not for society. Samaj will only crib and add on to your woes but never solve the problem so dump and disown the undeserving sources that is the senseless samaj.

Do not push her out of your life, do not make her a forced daughter in law.

Accept your child at any age as your child, be it a son or daughter, don’t call her a liability and hence don’t treat her with your rejection.

Jai Mata Di,

Jinesh Zaveri.