Ramayana,Seetha,Chastity and more...

Page 600- Chakravarthy Thirumagan( Rajaji's ramanyanam). In his epilogue, Rajaji dwells on chastity and the society's interpretation of it. He says " If a woman is molested or behaved at brutally, by a man, for no fault of hers, she cannot be regarded as having lost herself or her chastity. She carries no burden of this incident with her. It is unfortunate that our society feels otherwise"

He says this in the context of the infamous "Agni Pariksha" done by Ram on Seetha. He feels that Rama had done this to Seetha in order to clear people's minds, and not because he was suspicious of her. I don't want to go in depth on why Rama did this.

But what struck me while reading this was the amazing line of thought of Rajaji. I shouldn't have been surprised as he was one of the frontrunners in advocating inter caste marriages, and led by example in case of his daughter.

It is a pity that we had such forward thinking leaders then, and now you can actually count the number of people in public sphere who have such thoughts , let alone boldly airing out these thoughts.

Now we have people burning the effigy of Khushboo provocated by so called leaders, for some non issue.

We have politicians and people standing by a judgement of a father in law marrying a daughter in law after raping her.

How can we call our society a progressive one, when a girl is always held at fault even if a guy makes any sort of gestures at her. " What did you do to provoke him" is the first question the girl faces.

A girl or woman if raped dies a thousand deaths all through her life, by the society contantly reminding her of that incident. And I almost feel nauseated when I see movies and the damning mega serials advocating that the woman should marry the guy who did this to her, no matter how horrible he is.

I can't make myself say anything more on this.

Jai Shri Ram !!!