Monday, November 20, 2006

Our society still backward, Constitution modern

HindustanTimes.com » Print Editions » Lucknow » Other Cities » Gorakhpur » Story
Our society still backward, Constitution modern: Katju
HT Correspondent Varanasi, November 19
JUDGE Markandey Katju of the Supreme Court stressed the need for women’s emancipation to make India a modern industrial nation.
“No doubt Article 15 (1) prohibits the state from discriminating against women, but it does not prohibit society from doing so, and in fact such discrimination is widespread beginning from the very birth of a child”, said Justice Katju while mentioning about sexual discrimination in Indian society. Justice Katju, who was delivering a lecture on ‘India and the Constitution’ in BHU here on Saturday, said: “Crime against women has increased lately, the courts are flooded with cases relating to dowry deaths, rape, domestic violence etc and all this shows that our society is still backward even though the Constitution is modern.”
“It may be mentioned that I.Q. tests in modern psychology have shown that the I.Q. of an average woman is the same as that of an average man”, he said adding, “If equal opportunity is given, a woman can perform as well as a man can e.g. Madame Curie who was the first person in the world who won two Nobel Prizes-one for physics and another for chemistry, Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great who were great statesmen etc.”
“The stories and novels of great Bengali writer Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay clearly bring out the great oppression which the Indian women were subjected to in our country.
Hence, it is not due to any inherent inferiority but only due to the fact that women were not given education and other opportunities that they could not come up to the level of men”, he said.
“No doubt, by a mere declaration of equality as a Constitutional right discrimination and inequality can not immediately be abolished, but it can certainly set forth an ideal which all patriotic and modern minded nations should strive for”, he observed.
“The great right in Part-III of our Constitution (i.e. the fundamental rights) would be meaningless unless it has a socio-economic content. The right in Part-III becomes only formal empty right unless people are guaranteed certain socio-economic rights e.g. right to employment, right to education, right to housing and medical care etc”, he said.
“A hungry man has no use of the right to freedom, of speech and expression. Similarly, an unemployed man has no use for the right to liberty. Hence, our Founding Father borrowed from the Irish Constitution, the Directive Principles and incorporated them in Part 4th of the Constitution”, said Justice Katju.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

I chose love

Ned Says: November 15th, 2006 at 10:28 pm I should quickly introduce myself on this forum, since I have been a lurker here for quite a while, but I haven’t contributed anything yet. I’m a friend of Alan’s and have known him for quite some time now. I had a kundalini awakening after being sexually abused. In healing from sexual abuse and dealing with a lot of other issues as well, I discovered spirituality (I was previously a secular agnostic) and Integral philosophy. Perhaps some day I can share my experiences in detail. Two things I have noted about this forum:
(1) Where are the women? Everyone here seems to be male! (I’m a woman, in spite of my nickname. )
(2) Alan is totally right about this forum being over-intellectual. Integral theory is missing the point. Spirituality, at its core, is not about theory. Theory is a very useful tool, but it is just that — a tool. In healing from sexual abuse, I ended up having to make a choice: will I enslave my ability to love unconditionally to my faculty of reason, or will I enslave my faculty of reason to my ability to love unconditionally? I chose love, and that is why intellectual disagreements or challenges don’t threaten my faith anymore.