Some of the greatest men in
history like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and a long line of men and
women who were inspired by these men have preached and practiced NON-VIOLENCE
as a practice of life.
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi in a
live Q&A session on Facebook India is reported to have said “…all the violence is male generated” and goes on to say how school going boys are
going to be rewarded for being ‘gender champions’.
Besides being
highly misleading, inaccurate and diabolical to say the least, this
speech can now be seen by many as a green signal to unleash violence against men
and boys.Till now, there used be some fig-leaves of excuses to bash-up men, and now with this statement, no more vague causes will be needed to unleash violence against men and boys.
But somewhere between Adolf
Hitler and Maneka Gandhi, the values of non-violence of a man like Mahatma Gandhi,
whose name the Minister incidentally carries, have been hopelessly lost. The line between free
speech and hate speech has been blurred with the mainstream media being so
poetically mute. Is the main stream media maintaining this deafening silence because
the speaker is a ruling party MP or is it because the speaker is a woman
in-charge of the mighty Women and Child Development Ministry(WCD). Where is the
vociferous media call for ‘THE NATION WANTS TO KNOW’?
It does not bode well for society
for when a Minister leading the WCD gives out irresponsible hate speeches containing
unscientific assumptions. What we have heard or read are just words, but these words
betray the hate
against men of this nation. Is this the official view of the WCD Ministry?
And is this a precursor by the WCD Minister to roll out an official/unofficial
anti-men hate campaign against the men and male children of this nation?
Being an elected Member of
Parliament, is the Minister allowed to say this about the same men who elected her
and her colleagues to power and also whose tax money goes into the maintenance
of this Ministry? Were these feelings of male-hate illustrated in the election
manifesto of this Minister during the time of election? Or is it just a jobrequirement for anyone heading the WCD Ministry? It is now left to the male
voters and also the female voters of her constituency and the nation to conduct
retrospection about their decision. It is also left to the political leadership
to find out if the opinions and speech are personal in nature or emanate from
the WCD Ministry’s official or ‘unofficial’ agenda. I put this question to the citizens
who have given ministerial power to this particular minister if these thoughts
and words ensure safety of the male children of the nation. Would it be safe
not to question the motives of this Ministry, to say the least?
Secondly, why is that there is no
mention of how the Ministry would reward girls for being ‘particularly
respectful and helpful to boys and deserve to be emulated and rewarded’?
Don’t boys also being children, also being the mandate of WCD, deserve respect?
Today, we are sitting on a powder keg of hate against men, whether it is men among Members of Parliament, Police officers,
Defense personnel, Judiciary, Bureaucrats, Media or common citizens. There is
already a conspiracy of surreptitious allowance of hate crime against
men. This kind of crime is in contrast with the way crime happens by
individuals/groups commit against each other. This kind of hate crime is now being
initiated and continues to happen only because it is allowed by the State to
happen by way of its cognizance and non-involvement in correction. Therefore,
by being mute, it would be a crime in itself for citizens to keep quiet against
these kinds of statements, specially coming from a sitting Union Minister.
It is understandable for the
common man to fear backlash from a powerful ministry which has the power of the State and resources at its beck and call. But what reasons do the men in the
government, the politicians, the main stream media have? Is this a silence
maintained by fear? If this statement of the Minister is not challenged, then I
suggest we all wait for the Kristallnacht against
men that is about to follow.