IrBM – Husbands Taxed, Wives Relaxed!

We all know and understand what taxation is? Taxes are levied by the Government in lieu of which it provides infrastructure and other facilities to its citizens so that they can make a living for themselves.

It is also the cost of providing law and order system in the country and also for administering the country. Taxation is an understood agreement between the citizens and the Govt. that the citizens would pay the Govt. as per an agreed upon tax code and in return the Govt. would provide with better facilities.

Even the Constitution of India recognizes the right of the Govt. to tax it and the duty of the benevolent citizen of India to be taxed. As per, article 265 of the Constitution which states that, “No tax shall be levied or collected except by the authority of law.”

Also, as per Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth”. We shall see the applicability of the above 2 articles soon. Now, let’s take a digression and have a look at what is the Indian Government going to offer us soon.

Now what we are seeing is that a new form of indirect taxation is being levied upon a select citizenry of India. That select citizenry of India is called “The Hindu Husbands”.

Bedazzled? Shocked? Baffled?

The Beta Uprising

Deccan Herald carried an article titled, “In coping with stress, men could be the weaker sex”; a couple of weeks back, highlighting the abysmally and consistently high suicide rates amongst married men and the need and reasons to look into the same. The article was based on recently released suicide statistics for the year 2010 by the Union Home Ministry of India.

Along with opinions from activists working for men’s welfare, some psychologists and police opinion was also sought and in that DCP Sonia Narang from Bangalore echoed her thoughts saying that “Male population is more than female population, hence more suicides must be expected.”

It was a profound statement made by her elucidating far-reaching implications. It raised pertinent questions like,

Inauguration of India’s First Men’s Rights Center in Bangalore

Indian marital laws are extremely anti-male in nature. Almost all laws stereotypically assume that all men are aggressors and all women are victims and thus these laws have become havoc for Indian men. Indian men are increasingly becoming innocent victims of the “Legal Terrorism” cast by these laws.

Laws like Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, the Domestic Violence, Child Custody provisions, etc. are being used heavily against men to convert failed marriages into a crime and penalize innocent men. This not only endangers the male gender but also the social fabric and the family system of India.

Confidare Community Center is the first ever men’s rights center in India aimed towards creating a community based approach towards creating awareness of abuse of men’s rights by the society and lawmakers.

Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for amendment of Section 498A

To
Dr. Brahm A. Agrawal, Member Secretary
LAW COMMISSION OF INDIA, 2nd Floor, The Indian Law Institute Building
(Opp. to Supreme Court), Bhagwandas Road, New Delhi – 110 001.

Sub: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India about amendment of Section 498A

Respected Sir,

I would like to highlight certain perspectives about Section 498A which are very essential and crucial to be brought forth before we talk about any change in it.

Legal Perspective

Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code is a non-bailable, cognizable and non-compoundable offense introduced in the year 1983. As your paper already contains the definition and explanation of the same from the Government’s point of view, I am not going to elaborate on the same. Rather I am going to highlight the legal aspects of this section which have probably and unfortunately been overlooked by the Government, either during its formulation and/or its implementation.

Section 498A is an inter-gender and intra-gender biased piece of legislation having its own set in-built assumptions and presumptions. It starts with the onset that this law has been enacted to prevent “Cruelties against married women by their husbands and his relatives”. This assumption that only a “young wife” could be subjected to cruelty in marriage and only at the hands of husbands and relatives is a very dangerous one because it puts all husbands and all wives into a meme called “Criminal Men Victim Women Syndrome.”

Why is Success so important in life?

This question – “Why is success so important in life?” had been haunting me for quite some time. The more I used to think about it, the more I used to get confused. So then I thought I will ask my friends and other people about it. I did do that and got interesting replies in return – a gist of which will be shared shortly – but before that I will share the story of the Pepsodent toothpaste ad which goes as follows.

A small kid is walking dejected and enters the school bus going back to home. His friend asks him, “What happened?” he replies, “Main fail ho gaya (I failed)”. His friend asks for details, he says, Pepsodent had come to their school for a germ test in mouth and germs were found in his mouth, as such he failed the “Germ Test”. And so the kid is completely dejected and feels lost in the world.

Suddenly, his friend says, “Par fail to tera toothpaste hua (But it’s your toothpaste that’s failed)”. Immediately the dejected kid’s face lights up and he elates with joy, “Arre haan mera toothpaste fail hua (Oh ya it’s my toothpaste that’s failed)”. And the kid’s joy knows no bounds.

A careful analysis of the above ad shows that the feeling of success/failure can have profound influence on our psyches, behavior and emotions. Till the time the kid was associating the failure with himself he was sad, but the moment the feeling of failure shifted to the toothpaste, he was fine with it. For him, success here was the dissociation of the feeling of failure.

Am I a misogynist?

That, I am a men’s rights activist is a known fact and can be very well be deduced from the blogs and websites that I maintain. Below is the list,

1. www.wemen.us
2. http://legalfighter.wordpress.com
3. http://legalfighter.instablogs.com

I also involve in a lot of social research on men and attitudes of society, in general, towards men. And my interactions with the world around me form a crucial part of it. It so happened that a couple of days back, one of my female friends (ex-colleague) pinged me and told me, “You seem to have become a misogynist (woman-hater)”, to which I asked, “Why so?”. She replied that she has been following my blogs for quite some time and that she agrees to some part of it but everything cannot be completely right and completely wrong. So I told, “I am fighting for men’s rights and if that appears as misogyny, then so be it.” The chat ended.

I found the chat really interesting, because it was rampant misandry (male-hatred) around me that turned me into a men’s rights activist and that’s when I realized how men have been actually fooled by the society in the name of chivalry, protector and provider. How the emotional health of men has been jeopardized in order to convert them into numb PROTECTORS and UNPAID BODYGUARDS? And because of this, the society invests very low emotional resources in men and considers them as disposable entities and the most visible manifestation of this Male Disposability is in the fact that misandry is a social norm and considered to be a way of life.

Violence Against Women – A perception or a reality?

“Violence Against Women (VAW)” referred to as VAW herein is a very commonly heard and most unchallenged social meme. Such high is its acceptance in society that we have 15 laws to protect women. The Government also spends Rs. 1200 crores annually to stop the violence.  Most of the laws framed to prevent VAW are based on oral evidence of women. Which means only allegations are enough to punish the man – and ends of justice would be met?

There are some primary reasons for this:

1. Over sensitization of VAW in the media.
2. A belief that no woman will lie unless severely abused.
3. The fact that men are, in general, physically stronger than women.

But the foremost fact that VAW is accepted by the society is because society wants to accept VAW. And when the society accepts VAW, it also accepts “Violence from Men” referred to as VFM henceforth.

Press Release Announcing V Day Dharna in Bangalore

PRESS RELEASE

Sub: Peaceful protest against rampant misuse of dowry laws and domestic violence laws.

            Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), an NGO dedicated to promote the cause of Gender Equality and Family Harmony, is organizing a peaceful protest against the deteriorating Indian family culture due to rampant misuse of Section 498A IPC, Domestic Violence Act and the dowry laws. The protest will be held on the 14^th February 2009 on M.G.Road in front of Mahatma Gandhi Statue from 10: 00 AM to 1 PM. Nearly 150 people from all walks of life like, Engineers, Doctors, Businessmen, Service class, Government Employees, Software Professionals, NRIs, Chartered Accountants, Finance Consultants to name a few will be joining us in our endeavor to raise voice against this spreading “Legal Terrorism”.

In the last few years, marriage has become a crime for Indian men. Multiple cases, containing false and baseless allegations, under Section 498A and the Domestic Violence Act are being filed against Husbands and their parents and relatives. These false cases are filed with a pervert motive of, either treating the Husband as FREE ATM MACHINE, separate him from his immediate family, to grab his property, to hide the wife’s illicit relationships and extra marital affairs, to deny access of his children to the father, or for any reasons other than actual Dowry Harassment and Domestic Violence.

There is no investigation done on the complaints received, nor any evidences are verified before registering a case and arbitrarily arresting people. Because of such malpractices, more and more number of married men are losing their jobs and committing suicides as well. Some shocking statistics, regarding the misuse as per data available from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB),

1. 1,23,000 women (mothers, sisters and other female relatives of husbands), have been arrested in the last four years (2004-2007) merely on the basis of complaints by wives under Section 498A, without trial or investigation, whereas even the barbaric British Government arrested only 20,000 women in 40 years.
2. 57,000 married men have committed suicide in 2007, of which 16,000 are directly due to domestic abuse. In the last 11 years (1996-2007) 1,56,000 married men have committed suicide directly due to domestic violence. Equivalent figures for women are 83,787 which means in the last 11 years the number of married men’s suicides has been 1.86 times that of married women’s suicides.
3. Family disputes and Domestic Violence is the number one killer for married men as 26% of suicides are directly attributed to the above cases.

In addition to the above, a study done by the Center for Social Research, a Govt. body has found that there is only 2% conviction in dowry cases. Keeping in mind the fact that in dowry cases, it is the accused that have to prove their innocence rather than prosecution proving them guilty, as the accused is innocent until proven guilty. If the complaints had been true there should have been 100% conviction. But an abysmally low rate of conviction only shows that the complaints are entirely false, uninvestigated and totally unprosecutable.

But the criminal justice system has broken to such an extent that it has become a handy tool in the hands of unscrupulous people to utilize it as a tool to settle personal scores. Some of the problems that people face who are falsely accused in such cases, are:-

1. Their productive years are wasted in the precincts of a litigating corridor fighting an unnecessary battle that ultimately declares them innocent after a long and arduous legal battle.
2. Their social prestige and reputation are brutally murdered and perhaps never restored.
3. Many people lose their jobs and commit suicide being unable to bear the pressure.
4. Multiple cases in various cities, as per the wish of the wife, are filed for the same false stories and husbands are forced to pay maintenance even before the matter is decided, in the name of interim maintenance and in many cases it has been found that the wife is either earning or well capable to earn but does not do so merely to extort maintenance money from husband. Sometimes they even earn but lie in the courts and get away with it.
5. The process itself is more barbaric than the punishment.

It is not merely a false case that is lodged. But on one complaint the entire state machinery of law and order is set in motion against the husband and his family who are humiliated, terrorized and traumatized by the process and even blackmailed and extorted in the name of ‘settlement and compromise’. The criminal justice system has lent itself to be used as a state sponsored tool in the process funded by tax payer’s money, 82% of which is paid by men. Even the Honorable Supreme Court in its various landmark judgments has coined the term “Legal Terrorism” to such rampant misuse of dowry laws and urged the Government to take immediate steps to put checks and balances in the system.

Very recently Honorable Chief Justice of India Shri. K.G.Balakrishnan has expressed serious concern over the growing misuse at a Seminar organized by the National Commission for Women. Added to that, Honorable Chief Justice of Karnataka Shri P.D.Dinakaran had also voiced the problems that men face when false cases under Domestic Violence Act are lodged against them at a workshop organized for Awareness of Domestic Violence Act. Even Honorable President of India Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil has agreed in a recent speech, that there is widespread misuse of the dowry laws by women in the country. Time and again various judges of the High Court and Supreme Court have repeatedly expressed displeasure on the misuse of dowry laws and Domestic Violence Act and have recommended several corrective measures which have fallen on deaf ears so far, sadly enough.

SIFF receives weekly 250 – 300 calls over its various helplines from husbands all over India and abroad about not only the misuse, but also how they are facing rampant domestic violence from their wives and in-laws which can be physical, emotional, mental, and economic in nature. And SIFF has been creating awareness about this issue through its various awareness campaigns wherein it has repeatedly urged the Government to take note of this issue. However, the current form of the Domestic Violence Act does not allow husbands to make a complaint of domestic violence and get relief. And there is no proposal from the Government to review it either despite SIFF and its partner NGOs making repeated requests to the Government.

SIFF is deeply concerned that the family system in India is in grave danger. When foreigners are looking up to Indian customs and marrying as per Indian traditions, our own people have gone blind in aping the western culture in the name of Westernization. Our cultural values and respect for tradition is getting lost as the youth, today is more concerned about its own liberalism and individuality rather than family values. Vested interests call the Indian family as oppressive and brainwash the young minds against the family system. The Government is urged to call upon a national debate to address the issue of the dying family system of India.

In this protest on 14^th February 2009, SIFF places its demands before the Government and the society as follows:-

1. Form a National Commission for Men and a Men’s Welfare Ministry to look into the issues that men are facing.
2. Clear the huge backlog of pending matrimonial cases and appoint evening courts and more judges for the same.
3. Allow the citizens, especially the youth to participate in policy decisions affecting their life.
4. Eliminate all gender biased laws and replace them with Gender neutral laws by replacing the words “Husband” and “Wife” with “Spouse” and “Man” and “Woman” with “Person”.
5. Eliminate all redundant legal provisions of applying for maintenance by the wife.
6. Amend the Domestic Violence Act which currently does not cater to female to female violence, female to male violence and male to male violence.
7. Police should be kept away from the family matters and there should be no ‘counseling’ whatsoever in police station.
8. Child interviews should be totally banned in child custody cases as in most of the cases the custodian parent poisons the child against the non-custodian parent. Interviewing such a child is a torture on the child.
9. Misusers of laws should be punished with severe punishment. In a criminal case either the complainant or the accused have to be punished depending on whether the complaint is false or true. No settlement should be allowed in criminal cases.
10. Owing to skyrocketing suicides due to family distress and domestic disputes, a national debate needs to be called for. The debate needs to address the issues the current family system faces.
11. There should be no discrimination of taxes at the same salary levels on the basis of gender.
12. The police, the mediators and the courts need to be sensitized about the issues of men and should be trained adequately to understand the problems of a husband before terrorizing him into a forced settlement. Monetary compensation for a broken marriage should be the last resort and should be resorted to only in the rarest of rare cases and cannot be more than six months of the income of the earning spouse.

 

Invitation for Press Conference on 12th Feb 2009

Invitation for Press Conference

To,

 

Sub: Invitation for Press Conference on Thursday, 12^th February 2009 at 12: 00 Noon at Press Club, Bangalore

Respected Sir / Madam,

            Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), single largest NGO promoting the cause of Gender Equality and Family Harmony, is organizing a Press Conference on 12^th February 2009. This press conference is being conducted to announce our peaceful protest to create awareness of men’s issues in marriages and rampant misuse of Section 498A and Domestic Violence and other maintenance laws.

We cordially invite your media correspondents / cameramen to this Press Conference and grace the occasion.

We look forward to your active participation in making the event a grand success.

                                                                                                        

                                                                                                            Thanks and Regards,

Virag
Public Relations Officer
                                                                                    Save Indian Family Foundation, Bangalore
 

Contact Persons

Virag: 9986378801 (English)

Pandurang Katti: 9342853272 (English)

Prakash: 9880436929 (Kannada)

Shiv Shankar: 9743183369 (Kannada)

Its Fachak – Go Visit it!!!

I was browsing on the internet and landed upon some truly intriguing website which inspired me so much that I am now actually writing this article to describe it. The Website is something of its kind. Looking at the site initially the first thought that crossed my mind is, as to what is Fachak? As it is the word is new and one not knowing its meaning further increases the curiosity of the visitor.
But the fantabulous design of the site makes it very easy to know that it’s more than a platform to share data in various formats. The design of the site is very attractive and a treat to eye. Some of the interesting features of the site are,
1) It’s name. Very catchy and audibly positive.
2) Its appearance. Very attractive with trendy colors.
3) Its concept. This will be explained briefly here.
The concept of users “Fachaking” their favorite content is truly amazing and a clear reflection of democracy at the background of the design. It will be nice to see this site getting professionally mature and offer more and more to its users.
I will be looking forward to its official launch. Will you?