The recent, heart-wrenching incident that shook our nation to its core tells the tragic tale of a 24-year-old pregnant woman, whose husband burnt her because she objected to his extra-marital affair. This gruesome act of bride burning has reignited a long-standing issue that has plagued our society for far too long. But hardly do people realise that the roots of this problem lie in defective social and moral values which give faulty outlook and wrong attitudes to the people in regard to the place of women in society.
Presently, we find that a strong conflict is rife between two different value systems. On the one hand, there are people who justify the existing set of values, giving to it the name, tradition. These are the people whose main consideration is not whether a value has higher moral content and has realistically a better potential for leading a society to higher social good. No! They actually consider a value mainly in terms of its having been observed by a religious or cultural community over a long period of time. This conflict in value systems can be better illustrated by citing how different stands were taken when the proposal to allow women to drive rickshaws was recently raised in a northern state. It sparked fierce opposition from those entrenched in outdated beliefs. This conflict, rooted in differing perceptions of morality, serves as a formidable barrier to addressing pressing issues like bride burning and gender inequality.
The real solution, therefore, lies in moral and social reform which cannot be accomplished in isolation. It can form only a part of a comprehensive scheme for the outlook and the belief that fundamentally, men and women are souls and that each has a role complementary to the others. The society must also be given the realisation that there is a moral law in the world, which none, however high and influential can violate with impunity that a person who can go to the extent of extracting dowry from his wife and can indulge in wife-beating or wife-burning, is a mere degenerate who, in his day-to-day dealings, can throw all moral norms to winds and the first thing, therefore, needed is to reform this potential criminal rather than give him a girl in marriage. So, let us stand together and make a solemn vow to build a society where every soul can live with dignity and self-respect by educating our girls and sensitising our boys to burn such evil systems from its roots.
The writer is a spiritual educator and popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal and the UK. He can be contacted at nikunjji@gmail.com / www.brahmakumaris.com
