By : The
family courts in India operate with extreme levels of anti-male bias.
Most men have little hope from these courts. The Indian feminists openly
call for discrimination against men by family courts. For example, they
do not want men to be protected from domestic violence by women. More
recently, feminists and communists together passed a bill in parliament
for dividing matrimonial property during divorce. According to this
bill, women’s self-acquired property and inherited property will be
considered her personal property, while all property of s man acquired
before marriage or to be inherited in the future will be considered as
“marital property”, which will be divided during divorce.
Most often these
Feminists argue that, under “patriarchy,” men always support other men,
while discriminating against women. In the media, Feminists accuse the
family court judges of practicing pro-male bias, even though Indian
family courts are extremely anti-male. For example, a recent survey has
shown that family courts take an average of 24 months to pass an order
for child visitation for fathers, even though this is a simple and
straightforward judgment. Often, the family courts send unemployed men
to prison, because they are unable to pay maintenance to an able-bodied
wife.
In last decade, we
Men’s Human Rights Activists in India have used weekend meetings in
parks and men’s community centers to organize ourselves, mainly to fight
against discrimination in family courts and false domestic violence
cases.
Most of these meetings
focus on educating men about the laws and the behavior of courts and
lawyers. Though no direct solutions are available for men’s problems,
this basic education helps men protect themselves from the system and
minimize their losses. This education then also reduces the possibility
of being led astray by a lawyer. Many men facing domestic violence
approach our men’s rights groups. Often, they are advised to move to a
separate house so that they can recover first. In India, police refuse
to take any complaint of domestic violence by wife seriously, though a
lot of men record the abuse using audio or video recording devices.
One big benefit of the men’s community centers is that men feel that
they are not alone and millions of other men are facing similar
situations. So, they stop hiding as a solution and they stop worrying.
The fear of going to a prison is much more painful that the real
experience of being in a prison for couple of days. We often say to
ourselves, our battle is 80% psychological and 20% legal.
Our motto is,
irrespective external circumstances, a man must enjoy every moment of
life. Only a man who can cherish every moment of life can be a real
fighter against a discriminatory family court system.
In a way, we have no victims in our meetings. Victim-hood is just
not allowed to pull us down. This victory over our minds in our
community meetings has created a die-hard attitude towards life and the
system.
The weekend community meetings are also used for planning and coordinating events for awareness of men’s rights issues.
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