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This is a book review - i would love to get my hands on this book now. Looks rather interesting.
Review: Struggle till the end, Reviewed by N. Romasa, DAWN, 4 May 2003
“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God and King of the Universe, that thou did not create me a woman”, say the orthodox male Jews in their morning prayers. Plato thanked his gods that he was born a man, not a woman. What is sad is not that intellectual giants like Plato or Aristotle could make assertions which seem to demean women, but that, centuries later, in some parts of the world, it is still a curse to be born a woman.
Be it rape, honour-killing, genital mutilation or acid-throwing, mistreatment of women prevails in different guises. In her book The Gift of a Daughter, Subhadra Butalia, a veteran activist of the women’s movement in India, confronts the reader with the harsh reality of dowry-related persecution. Part memoir and part documentation, this book is a record of Subhadra’s 25-year fight against dowry. Crisply written, there is immediacy in the writing that forces the reader to empathise with the writer’s struggle and visualize the ordeals of each victim.
The earliest case championed by Butalia was of Hardeep Kaur, a girl who lived across the street. When Hardeep was burned by her in-laws, the entire neighbourhood witnessed her screams and cries for help. However, none agreed to testify in the court, except for Subhadra.
Worse still was Shashibala’s case, killed when she was six months pregnant. The reason was that Shashibala’s mother Satyarani had bought a scooter for her son, and consequently the son-in-law asked for a scooter. Satyarani said she had booked one for him to be presented when Shashibala gives birth to a son. The son-in-law left in a huff and the next day Shashibala was burnt to death. Her death highlights how deadly is the lust for money and how the life of a wife can be even less precious than that of a scooter! There is also the irony that Satyarani would have given her son-in-law the scooter if a son was born, but not on the birth of a daughter.
However, the biggest tragedy is that the legal system remains strangely incapacitated. Over the years, many wife-butchers have been acquitted by the court. In Shashibala’s case the mother unsuccessfully vied for justice for the last eighteen years. “In the early days, many lawyers were ready to jump into the fray…But after the publicity they hoped to get wore off they couldn’t be bothered and often would not even see her [Satya]. She spent hours waiting in the homes of some of our well-known lawyers sometimes waiting for ‘madam’ or ‘sir’ to wake up, without even being offered a chair or a glass of water.”
Throughout one cannot help but admire the tenacity of women who continue to fight despite all odds. The struggle to set up Karmika, a legal aid and counselling centre for women victims of domestic violence and dowry abuse, took twelve years, and as yet the centre has been unable to legally own the land that they paid for.
Prevailing social and religious customs are also shown by Butalia to further weaken women’s struggles. As Simon de Beauvior said in The Second Sex, “Even when her [a woman’s] rights are legally recognized in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their full expression in the mores.” In the context of the Indian society, parents, eager to marry their daughters off, forgo checking the background of the prospective groom.
Rama Mohanty, an MA from Delhi University, was married into a family where one daughter-in-law had already died in mysterious circumstances. The girl’s family ignored all warnings, and Rama paid the price of their indifference. She was murdered, stuffed in a gunny bag and left in a train compartment. Then there was Karuna Jhangi who was married to a man who had divorced his first wife for dowry, had several criminal charges filed against him, and was known to have a violent temper.
From the parents’ point of view, the pressure to marry the daughter is often difficult to resist, especially as of the ten sacraments for salvation, Hindu women are allowed one, namely marriage. Only through marriage and taking care of her husband, a woman can attain salvation. If the father does not get her married off by the time she reaches puberty, he is guilty of not performing his duty and if she dies unmarried, she will become a ghost.
Gift of a Daughter forces the reader into deep introspection and to question whether legislators, priests, philosophers, writers and state administration have failed women. One wonders if Kierkegaard was right when he said, “What a misfortune to be a woman!” - be it reflected in the ordeals of Rama in Delhi or Ayesha in Karachi. The reader will justifiably be saddened by Subhadra’s words, “Over the years I have realized that acquitted or convicted, it is the man who lives and the woman who dies.” One realizes that the Gift of a Daughter is not only the story of countless women who have been persecuted, or lost their lives. It is also the tale of individuals who continue to fight despite all odds. Therein lies hope for humanity.
I love people with world smarts. I can’t believe you are only 22. 
Why would i mind you calling me Nadz? That’s what my family calls me sometimes; i do not mind at all.