Who wants to go live in India?

[Mr.Blue_Sky]

@aankh

So, Mr. Blue Sky, it is fucked up. However, the cure will come. Give it time. A belief structure cultivated over thousands of years and accepted by a behemoth social entity is not going to disappear in an instant, much as we would all like it to.

I sincerely hope so. I pre-emptively pity all those will have to have to suffer until that time comes.

[Kimstu]

Non-Indian cultures in the past have enacted similar rules:

Deuteronomy 22:28 If a man find a damsel [that is] a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;

22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

The modern ultraconservative Christians known variously as Dominionists, Theonomists, and Christian Reconstructionists, who consider it the duty of Christians to maintain Old Testament law as the legal code of civil society, apparently support this practice.

I don’t know whether today’s ultraconservative Orthodox Jews still uphold it, though.

[Guinastasia]

Hell, how many years has it been since marital rape became a crime in this country?

I can’t see this changing over night…but damn.

[gouda]

@aankh

I disagree. It IS a sick situation, and slowly but surely, it IS getting cured. In places where education has made significant inroads (urban areas), the frequency of such occurrences has diminished and is in the process of diminishing further.

I’m not disagreeing with your opinion, but I think you nailed it with the word ‘urban’. Things are changing in urban India for sure, drastically and fairly rapidly. Education and empowerment (the latter being a fairly recent phenomenon) have been a potent offense against these traditions. But then again, how long has urban India even existed (excluding cities like Bombay and Delhi)? People moving to urban India inrecent decades have had to adapt extremely quickly, and they’ve literally been forced to leave behind their centuries-old baggage, just to be able to survive.

But that’s not happening in rural India. While social change is taking place, it’s not happening fast enough to break the inertia. We only hear about those cases that are brough to the authorities. But for every such case, there are several that aren’t even acknowledged, because of the social stigma attached to rape victims. Until enough rural women are educated and empowered, I don’t think rural India will change. And I’m extremely pessimistic about rural male society allowing that to happen.

[HubZilla]

It’s not without precedent. After all, the bible says a girl must marry her rapist:

“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. (From the NIV Bible, Deuteronomy 22:28)”