Shared Parenting a Child's right

Original marathi news reported in Saamna(20-01-2009), by Ms.Kavita: http://www.saamna.com/2009/Jan/20/Link/Mumbai03.htm

(Please inform your feedback and appreciation to Ms.Kavita, the correspondant at kavita0501 (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) in and response (at) saamana (dot) com )

After a Divorce, Shared Parenting is Wanted

A Powerful demand from Men's Organisations

The men's organisations have tightened the belts in order to bring in and implement the "Shared Parenting" system in India which has already been successful in Western countries.

They have appealed to Women and Child Department (WCD) to obtain its help is remedying the situations where Even though the father may be of sound Financial and Mental health, in many divorce proceedings, the Indian rule of awarding custody of children to their father is being ignored and is showing lethargic attitude.

In Divorce Proceedings, while father and mother fight with each other, children are routinely ignored. Child knows that father and mother both love him or her equally, but court proceedings are so antagonistic against each other that both parents tend to overlook the needs of the child.

"In Indian Family Laws, During Separation, Mother is considered more important" says P.R.Gokul, a member from a voluntary organisation Called "Children Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting". Because of this only, even after a father is proved innocent, he only gets rights of visitation.

If for some reason, a father is not able to meet his children, the opposite party pollutes the mind of the child and changes outlook of the children towards their father. Because of this, the children are constantly trying to evaluate whether their father loves for them.

Besides this, problems faced by such father is not heard or considered properly.

Hence for those kids, whose parents are living in same city, let one of them take him from Monday to Friday and let another parent take him on Saturday and Sunday. In this manner, the child will not feel deprived from the father as well as the mother.

Options for such a Shared Parenting Arrangements must be considered.

A plea is made to Women and Child Department (WCD) to make Justice system of India to consider that during durations of holidays, guardians must spend equal portions of time with children And Instead of the current law where children less than five years of age live with mother, the child must be allowed to spend some with the father.

For further information on this, Kumar Jahagirdar from CRISP told Saamna that Women and Child Department has assured him that Shared Parenting Options is being considered.

It has been proven time and again that the children who only live with one of their natural parent as a result of divorce grow up to face many mental and social problems which affect their personality.

For this reason, "Shared Parenting" system currently being practised in western countries must be implemented for benefit of children from divorced parents must be able to obtain love from both parents.

(Please inform your feedback and appreciation to Ms.Kavita, the correspondant at kavita0501 (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) in and response (at) saamana (dot) com

Justice SOLD - a Poem

To The Lord Chancellor by Percy Bysshe Shelley ..
Written some 330 years ago


Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom--Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!
Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,
Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.


And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands
Watching the beck of Mutability
Delays to execute her high commands,
And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,


Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,
And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;
Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.


I curse thee by a parent's outraged love,
By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,
By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;


By those infantine smiles of happy light,
Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth,
Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night
Hiding the promise of a lovely birth:


By those unpracticed accents of young speech,
Which he who is a father thought to frame
To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach--
THOU strike the lyre of mind!--oh, grief and shame!


By all the happy see in children's growth--
That undeveloped flower of budding years--
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears-


By all the days, under an hireling's care,
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,--
O wretched ye if ever any were,--
Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!


By the false cant which on their innocent lips
Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,
By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse
Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb--


By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror;
By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt
Of thine impostures, which must be their error--
That sand on which thy crumbling power is built--


By thy complicity with lust and hate--
Thy thirst for tears--thy hunger after gold--
The ready frauds which ever on thee wait--
The servile arts in which thou hast grown old--


By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile--
By all the arts and snares of thy black den,
And--for thou canst outweep the crocodile--
By thy false tears--those millstones braining men--


By all the hate which checks a father's love--
By all the scorn which kills a father's care--
By those most impious hands which dared remove
Nature's high bounds--by thee--and by despair--


Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,
And cry, 'My children are no longer mine--
The blood within those veins may be mine own,
But--Tyrant--their polluted souls are thine;--


I curse thee--though I hate thee not.--O slave!
If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming Hell
Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave
This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well!

Film- A father's Rights

A film about a father fighting a system that tells him he has no rights -> http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27395259

A Fathers Rights Trailer

Ignorance is NO Excuse: *NATIONAL* Fatherless Day Rally ***FRIDAY THE 13TH***

Ignorance is NO Excuse: *NATIONAL* Fatherless Day Rally ***FRIDAY THE 13TH***
Courtesy: http://tstory.blogspot.com/2008/06/national-fatherless-day-rally-friday.html and http://www.f4j.us/

This is from USA(Fathers for Justice: http://www.f4j.us/), and this is what I call an all-out Campaign, and this stuff is what we need to do in India too. The Music, the passion, the reach, soul stirring..... just soul stirring. Don't forget to see the video clip seen below, it will blow your mind if you are even remotely a DAD!:



********** Details*********

For more information on ***FRIDAY THE 13TH*** of June, two days before Fathers day, please visit www.f4j.us. Where Fathers, Mothers, GRANDparents and Children from all 50 states will be uniting at their State Capitols to demand a change in Family law. This is an EQUAL RIGHTS issue and OUR Children need, want and deserve to have BOTH fit parents as active participants in their lives. Those states participating are as follows: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming and The United Kingdom. The Organizations promoting this event are: FAMILIES-4-JUSTICE, FATHERS-4-JUSTICE, UNITED CIVIL RIGHTS COUNCILS of AMERICA, AMERICAN COALITION FOR FATHERS and CHILDREN, A CHILD'S RIGHT and CHILDREN NEED BOTH PARENTS.
**************************

Go India Go, go get your Children......... show them who's the DAD.

See a related post: Indian Father's fight for Child rights- the CRISP(Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting) Dharna, Bangalore, India

Human rights are not for men-Daily Mail Article

By Melanie Phillips. First published in the Daily Mail, June 19 2003.

The government’s war against men is now plumbing ever more astonishing depths. On Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday, the Home Secretary David Blunkett could scarcely wait to boast of new proposals to deal with domestic violence.

Such crimes are indeed a serious matter. But the Home Office not only continues to distort them as overwhelmingly caused by male aggression against innocent women and children, against all the evidence that this is not the case. It is now taking a giant step towards fundamental injustice.

Anyone truly concerned with civil liberties could not fail to have been appalled by Mr Blunkett’s comments. The problem was, he enthusiastically explained, that at present ‘you have to get someone through court’ before a domestic violence suspect can be restrained.

So his solution is to restrain them before they even get to court. In other words, he wants action taken against a man on the basis of an unproven allegation by a woman– made under the protection of anonymity, to boot. So much for this Home Secretary’s understanding of the presumption of innocence, the meaning of justice and the necessity for a trial of the facts.

Even worse, despite the fact that he has just given the women’s refuge movement extra millions in public funds, he thinks women should not have to move out when they claim they are being attacked. The men they are accusing should move out instead, pronto. So men will now be evicted from their homes simply on the basis of an accusation.

The way will thus be clear for a woman who has tired of her man to get the police to evict him, without the tedious irrelevance of having to ‘get someone through a court’.

These are proposals which are simply inimical to the rule of law. They also spectacularly miss the point.

True, some 150 people – the majority of whom are women -- are killed at home every year. But if we want to stop the appalling toll of domestic violence, we have to address the unstable relationships which are fuelling the phenomenon.

For unmarried partners present vastly more risks of physical abuse to both adults and children at home than do married couples. Transient relationships lead to more jealousy, insecurity and, in extreme cases, violence. Furthermore, unmarried individuals are far more likely to abuse a child in their care with whom they have no biological connection.

The Home Office itself has previously acknowledged that the dislocation arising from marital breakdown is a ‘key risk factor’ in domestic violence. Yet the government has encouraged the false belief that all relationships are equal in value.

While thus giving its blessing to domestic arrangements which give rise to violence between intimates, the government is choosing to pile the blame on men. For although it claims in passing that one in six men suffers from domestic violence, it says women are mainly their victims.

This is a wicked distortion of the facts. There is overwhelming evidence from dozens of international studies that women are as violent towards men as men are towards women. Women are indeed more likely to initiate violence. Even the Home Office – which persistently ignores this research -- reported some years back that equal numbers of men and women were initiating violence towards each other.

True, women get hurt more badly in such fights because men tend to be stronger. That is presumably why more women than men are killed in these disputes. But there is also much anecdotal evidence that many men are too ashamed to report their injuries.

The Home Office report reheats yet again a number of misleading old chestnuts. It says, for example, that one in four women suffers domestic violence. This is rot. It is a figure extrapolated from studies that don’t stand up to serious scrutiny – illustrating the dismal standards which characterise virtually all domestic violence research in this country, but which the Home Office not only slavishly relies upon but also funds.

Not only does the government distort the facts about violence between adults, but it ignores the role played by women in violence towards children. For all the evidence suggests that while men commit most child sexual abuse, women subject children to more neglect, physical injury and even murder.

An NSPCC study a few years ago revealed that mothers were the most frequent perpetrators of children’s physical injury, emotional abuse and neglect. This is hardly surprising since mothers generally have more contact with their children than anyone else.

In America, where trends are likely to be similar to Britain, the Department of Justice said that in 1999, three out of five maltreated children had been abused by their mothers. And in 2001, the US Department of Health and Human Services reported that 32.4% of child fatalities were committed by mothers, compared to 14.2% committed by fathers, 14% by non-parents and 25.1% by mothers and fathers acting together.

So the idea that men are responsible for the vast majority of domestic violence is simply untrue. Yet Mr Blunkett is urging women to make more such claims -- on the basis of which men are to be deprived of their homes, their children and their reputations.

These preposterous proposals are based on the extreme feminist belief -- which has captured the Home Office -- that all men are guilty. That’s why rape trials are now to be rigged, too, by weighting the burden of proof against the defendant. Many men are already victims of this egregious prejudice in the divorce courts, where unproven allegations against them are automatically believed and used to deprive them of contact with their children.

Clearly, some men are indeed guilty of violence against the women they live with or their children. But some men are guilty of other crimes, too. Yet this has not caused the government to tear up the elementary rules of justice in those cases. So why is domestic violence so different?

The answer is that men are being demonised as intrinsic rapists, wife beaters and child abusers as part of a broader agenda. It is nothing less than an aim to destroy the married family, cripple ‘male power’ by emasculating men’s role and undermine masculinity itself.

So men are given the impression they can no longer be breadwinners (unless they are separated from their children’s mother, in which case they will be pursued for money the length and breadth of the land).

Meanwhile, women are lured back into the workplace by a government fanatical in its feminist agenda. Only recently there was a report from the Women and Equality Unit which implied that it was wrong for women to stay at home with their children when they could be economically active.

At the same time, men are patronised as emotionally illiterate, and regarded as no more than walking wallets, sperm donors and mothers’ au pairs.

In fact, the biggest protection against domestic violence is marriage, the very institution the government is busy destroying. Domestic violence is far rarer within the stable and loving context that marriage affords than among cohabiting couples who are more prone to insecurity and jealousy.

Since the government’s approach is exposing hundreds of thousands of children to hugely increased risks of violence and abuse, Mr Blunkett’s pious assertion that he was ‘putting children first’ was enough to make one choke on the cornflakes.

By encouraging mass fatherlessness, this government is putting children last. These domestic violence proposals go even further: removing men not just from family life but from the protection of the law itself.

They are being turned into un-persons, excluded from the ambit of human rights (so much for the wretched Human Rights Act). And once again it is a male politician, in the emasculated Home Office, which is putting the boot into men.

Human rights are not for men
By Melanie Phillips. First published in the Daily Mail, June 19 2003.

The government’s war against men is now plumbing ever more astonishing depths. On Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday, the Home Secretary David Blunkett could scarcely wait to boast of new proposals to deal with domestic violence.

Such crimes are indeed a serious matter. But the Home Office not only continues to distort them as overwhelmingly caused by male aggression against innocent women and children, against all the evidence that this is not the case. It is now taking a giant step towards fundamental injustice.

Anyone truly concerned with civil liberties could not fail to have been appalled by Mr Blunkett’s comments. The problem was, he enthusiastically explained, that at present ‘you have to get someone through court’ before a domestic violence suspect can be restrained.

So his solution is to restrain them before they even get to court. In other words, he wants action taken against a man on the basis of an unproven allegation by a woman– made under the protection of anonymity, to boot. So much for this Home Secretary’s understanding of the presumption of innocence, the meaning of justice and the necessity for a trial of the facts.

Even worse, despite the fact that he has just given the women’s refuge movement extra millions in public funds, he thinks women should not have to move out when they claim they are being attacked. The men they are accusing should move out instead, pronto. So men will now be evicted from their homes simply on the basis of an accusation.

The way will thus be clear for a woman who has tired of her man to get the police to evict him, without the tedious irrelevance of having to ‘get someone through a court’.

These are proposals which are simply inimical to the rule of law. They also spectacularly miss the point.

True, some 150 people – the majority of whom are women -- are killed at home every year. But if we want to stop the appalling toll of domestic violence, we have to address the unstable relationships which are fuelling the phenomenon.

For unmarried partners present vastly more risks of physical abuse to both adults and children at home than do married couples. Transient relationships lead to more jealousy, insecurity and, in extreme cases, violence. Furthermore, unmarried individuals are far more likely to abuse a child in their care with whom they have no biological connection.

The Home Office itself has previously acknowledged that the dislocation arising from marital breakdown is a ‘key risk factor’ in domestic violence. Yet the government has encouraged the false belief that all relationships are equal in value.

While thus giving its blessing to domestic arrangements which give rise to violence between intimates, the government is choosing to pile the blame on men. For although it claims in passing that one in six men suffers from domestic violence, it says women are mainly their victims.

This is a wicked distortion of the facts. There is overwhelming evidence from dozens of international studies that women are as violent towards men as men are towards women. Women are indeed more likely to initiate violence. Even the Home Office – which persistently ignores this research -- reported some years back that equal numbers of men and women were initiating violence towards each other.

True, women get hurt more badly in such fights because men tend to be stronger. That is presumably why more women than men are killed in these disputes. But there is also much anecdotal evidence that many men are too ashamed to report their injuries.

The Home Office report reheats yet again a number of misleading old chestnuts. It says, for example, that one in four women suffers domestic violence. This is rot. It is a figure extrapolated from studies that don’t stand up to serious scrutiny – illustrating the dismal standards which characterise virtually all domestic violence research in this country, but which the Home Office not only slavishly relies upon but also funds.

Not only does the government distort the facts about violence between adults, but it ignores the role played by women in violence towards children. For all the evidence suggests that while men commit most child sexual abuse, women subject children to more neglect, physical injury and even murder.

An NSPCC study a few years ago revealed that mothers were the most frequent perpetrators of children’s physical injury, emotional abuse and neglect. This is hardly surprising since mothers generally have more contact with their children than anyone else.

In America, where trends are likely to be similar to Britain, the Department of Justice said that in 1999, three out of five maltreated children had been abused by their mothers. And in 2001, the US Department of Health and Human Services reported that 32.4% of child fatalities were committed by mothers, compared to 14.2% committed by fathers, 14% by non-parents and 25.1% by mothers and fathers acting together.

So the idea that men are responsible for the vast majority of domestic violence is simply untrue. Yet Mr Blunkett is urging women to make more such claims -- on the basis of which men are to be deprived of their homes, their children and their reputations.

These preposterous proposals are based on the extreme feminist belief -- which has captured the Home Office -- that all men are guilty. That’s why rape trials are now to be rigged, too, by weighting the burden of proof against the defendant. Many men are already victims of this egregious prejudice in the divorce courts, where unproven allegations against them are automatically believed and used to deprive them of contact with their children.

Clearly, some men are indeed guilty of violence against the women they live with or their children. But some men are guilty of other crimes, too. Yet this has not caused the government to tear up the elementary rules of justice in those cases. So why is domestic violence so different?

The answer is that men are being demonised as intrinsic rapists, wife beaters and child abusers as part of a broader agenda. It is nothing less than an aim to destroy the married family, cripple ‘male power’ by emasculating men’s role and undermine masculinity itself.

So men are given the impression they can no longer be breadwinners (unless they are separated from their children’s mother, in which case they will be pursued for money the length and breadth of the land).

Meanwhile, women are lured back into the workplace by a government fanatical in its feminist agenda. Only recently there was a report from the Women and Equality Unit which implied that it was wrong for women to stay at home with their children when they could be economically active.

At the same time, men are patronised as emotionally illiterate, and regarded as no more than walking wallets, sperm donors and mothers’ au pairs.

In fact, the biggest protection against domestic violence is marriage, the very institution the government is busy destroying. Domestic violence is far rarer within the stable and loving context that marriage affords than among cohabiting couples who are more prone to insecurity and jealousy.

Since the government’s approach is exposing hundreds of thousands of children to hugely increased risks of violence and abuse, Mr Blunkett’s pious assertion that he was ‘putting children first’ was enough to make one choke on the cornflakes.

By encouraging mass fatherlessness, this government is putting children last. These domestic violence proposals go even further: removing men not just from family life but from the protection of the law itself.

They are being turned into un-persons, excluded from the ambit of human rights (so much for the wretched Human Rights Act). And once again it is a male politician, in the emasculated Home Office, which is putting the boot into men.

SIF AWARENESS ARTICLE FOR NEWSLETTER OF 'PRABHU-SANGH'

Towards a good life- Protecting families, building a better India

It is a pleasure to write to you all through this wonderful publication, at the same its sad that we had to take up this cause which was forced on to our modern society by legal terrorism, which is widespread and leaves no one out of its ambit.

Yes, the following piece of information is concerned with any Indian National, Living anywhere in the world, since they themselves or their loved ones will be much better placed acquiring this bit of information, and hence working towards the solutions of this problem, which is being explained in the remaining sections.

The more awareness this menace of legal terrorism gets, the better since we can fight this “Systemic Rot” only with the majority franchise of responsible citizens of India. You may wonder what is new in the term ‘Systemic Rot’ or in general, ‘Corruption’ (of values, responsibilities, dealings, etc.), but this specific subject deals with the entire family one has, so is more horrifying and more serious than ever, please read on… while I will not try to mince words or ideas. Hope you read it for all of our wellness, and Indian families’ harmony.

Save Indian Family(SIF) - Vision


• We are an international network of NGOs and individuals (currently over 20 NGOs and 50,000 families across the globe), which is a Non-Profit, Self-Help, Support Group for victims of misuse of laws concerning families, ie. Domestic Violence, Dowry, Dowry & Law [IPC 498A]; and misuse of other Gender biased Laws. We started our activities in 2003, but grew exponentially, as the menace of legal terrorism and family destruction went rampant. For details &Media references, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Indian_Family

• Our aim is to reduce legal interference in simple inter-personal relationships, and to avoid victimisation of families by way of misuse of gender-biased laws. Last but not the least to instill a sense of value, and to inspire bonds based on respect and love, in both the partners who forms the basic building block of a family and hence a Nation.

Who constitutes SIF

• These laws concerning families are generally misused to wreck vengeance, gain control or extort money from the victim-family.

• This is the same reason why victim-families usually are well off and are well employed and well educated (IITs, IIMs, IAS/IPS, etc.). 90% of our current members are from the IT field, the rest are Doctors, Businessmen, even Judges and Policemen are not immune, apart from Politicians and Film actors. We have around 10% NRI members

• We have active members/groups/NGOs in UK(most parts of Europe), USA, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, all over Middle East, apart from over 20 centers in India. Please refer the helpline numbers at http://www.pifngo.info/ , for the extent of our network(Table towards the bottom of the main page)

Recent visual Media References

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgjA3KcQmWc & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaMZP7plUAQ : Janmath Tv program on Legal Terrorism-Aug 25,2007
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awW3gsNqBCA : India Tv program covering SIF’s National Protest/Dharna against Legal Terrorism-Aug 25,2007
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBN-lzpzTME : India Tv sting operation exposing a well-entrenched cartel including Government hospital Doctors who ‘makes’ medical certificates showing injuries so that families can be implicated in false cases-June 2007
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pebTDzu2Nk : siftimes.com exclusive interview with Star Tamil actor Prashanth(film “Jeans” fame) who was implicated in false case of IPC 498a,by his ‘wife’ who married him while she was still married to another person(without a divorce!!!)- July 2007.

Brief History of SIF, Objectives and FAQ

Though SIFF(full official name Save Indian Family Foundation) came into formal existence in 2005 as a yahoogroup of individual members and NGOs, the movement can be traced back to 2003 when a group of individual members coordinated themselves and helped each other with information and other relevant issues, through internet discussion boards, emails and some other yahoo groups. At present SIFF is a registered entity, similarly to the member NGO- PIFF which is registered with the Ministry of Company Affairs.

Our primary aim is to facilitate a better family system for the progress of a family and hence positive progress of India.

Currently there is widespread insecurities and disputes including legal cases running through a vast majority of Indian families, owing to some Indian Laws concerning families which are Skewed, .not very well thought out and rationalised. Because of these skews or biases in our laws, more and more families are pushed into the ignominy of wastefully destructive litigations which runs into years and years of misery and lower productivity and peace of mind, hampering the peace and progress of our Indian families both in India as well as abroad. We aim to get these skewed laws, which result in broken and dysfunctional families, rationalised for better familial and national progress by and large, and hence facilitate a better family system wherever an Indian family may be across the globe.

Please find the following links for objectives of Save Indian Family(http://www.saveindianfamily.org/pages/SIFF_aims_objects.pdf ) and Protect Indian Family Foundation, which is a member-NGO of the SIF network. (http://protectindianfamily.org/index.php?module=articles&c=articles&b=2&a=1 and http://protectindianfamily.org/index.php?module=articles&c=articles&b=1&a=3)

Protect Indian Family Foundation(PIFF), Mumbai is an NGO Member of SIFF Network(the Umbrella movement in which many other national and International NGOs, Research organisations and Individuals/families across the globe are part of).

*********Some FAQs about our Movement- SIF ***********

1) Q -> First, our readers would wish to know more about this unique agenda called Save Indian family Network and all your campaign as part of it.

A-> There is an increasing trend of destructive influences vis-à-vis the Indian Family, one of the most obvious and avoidable being the bias in the legal system, which leads to destruction of many a Indian family. Instead of promotion Domestic Harmony these laws are unbalanced and seemingly plays to the politics of vote bank. For instance IPC 498a which is the law against cruelty against women (wives) is widely misused and is the cause of legal terrorism at the hands of unscrupulously opportunistic women, against her husband and relatives(including a mother and sister, on a average). Laws like this is so harsh in its powers that it could be manipulated to trap innocent victims even without any investigation by the police, just on the words of a law-misusing, extortionist wife. The original intent of these laws(including the new Domestic Violence Law) were to prevent offences against women, which is undisputed. We are only working towards amending these laws so that the scope of misuse is reduced, as well as to spread awareness and establish provisions to prevent offences against Men and his family members which is a growing trend as evidenced by worldwide activism by Men's Right Groups(http://at498a.blogspot.com/2007/04/radars-lobbying-against-international.html ).

2) Q-> Is there anything disconcerting trends in the society that spell concern/doom for the Indian family? If yes, what are the trends?.

A-> The trend of Materialism over and above familial progress, and the various offshoots of this trend. Especially the eagerness to get ahead of others even at the cost of one's own family and its progress.

3) Q-> Which are the most exaggerated and the most undermined roles in a traditional Indian family? (here you can make light of the more-often-than-not weak case of the man or supposed head of family)

A-> Roles are sometimes exaggerated but sometimes undermined, but there is an increasing trend of painting the role of men as oppressors, and women as victims- as if it is a universal constant!. If this was left at it, there would not have been much cause of worry, but laws are built on this premise, harshly against men, which are waiting to be misused at the hands of unscrupulous women- this is the case of worry.

4) Q-> How are the sets of family, society, community and nation connected and how can they be made mutually beneficial?

A-> Family is the basic block of a society and hence a nation. For a Nation to be progressing, the family first needs to be on that path. For a family to progress, there need be nurturing of members not oppression of any. When there the launch pad is firm, there is no limit to which one can reach.

5) Q-> Discuss the so-called domestic laws and their good points, flaws or even ambiguity or absence – dowry, inheritance, domestic violence, senior citizens etc.

A-> The good thing about Domestic laws is that they address the point when a woman is oppressed, the bad point is also that they address only the scenario in which a woman is oppressed, not the scenarios in which Men are oppressed. The recent Protection of Women against Domestic Violence law even necessitates that the complainant needs to be a women and the accused(respondent) needs to be a Man, thus excluding other scenarios of domestic violence from this laws ambit. What happens to the senior citizens who are oppressed by women, men harassed my women?. Though our dowry laws has a provision for punishment of Dowry Givers, how many instances of dowry giving has been punished?!. Surprised?. In how many instances have girls married (for whatever reasons it may be) lesser-established boys without paying dowry?(by not buying the boy)

6) Q-> Any other fact relevant to the context of the Indian family and that needs to be crusaded against… Crusade for…..

A-> Crusade for….. educating young men and women about what a marriage entails, what partners need to contribute, what values to imbibe, need for perseverance before thoughts of luxury.

Explicitly: Establishing framework and laws that promote family as the building block for progress.

Crusade against…. The trend of need for instant gratification, in the process, intolerance to efforts and results.

Explicitly: Opposing laws and lobbies, which lead to moral decay and oppression towards selective sections of our society.

*************** End of FAQ****************

Also check out this http://www.angelfire.com/pe/terzohrab/dowrylaw.html: Indian Dowry Law (498a) : Myth vs. Reality

- An investigative Report© 2005-2007 Asha-Kiran. All rights reserved.

(Disclaimer: None of the material can be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact: mailto:help.ashakiran@gmail.com.)

Also see another ink which will help you understand why even Supreme court finds the misuse of laws like 498a, horrendous: http://www.saveindianfamily.org/blogs/2005/07/22/sc-legal-terrorism/

See some observations on the new Domestic Violence law which also could be misused to gargantuan proportions: http://www.saveindianfamily.org/blogs/2006/11/13/sif-opposes-dvlaw .


Our Activities:

As mentioned we have local SIF chapters/active members/NGOs in UK(most parts of Europe), USA, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, all over Middle East, apart from over 20 centers in India. Please refer the helpline numbers at http://www.pifngo.info/ , for the extent of our network(Table towards the bottom of the main page).

We conduct weekly counseling meetings in most of our local groups, where we impart legal as well as emotional strength to the new members, while the old members move on to be Activists armed with new values and tools of knowledge(which kills fear), of trust(which increases synergy), of values(which makes on strong from inside), of socially responsible Action(which makes one selfless). So we invite all socially aware and responsible Indian Citizens to help out fellow humans, even if one may not be remotely involved in the menace depicted in the previous sections. We need each other for building a good tomorrow. Please come forward without prejudice, fear or hesitation. All are welcome to join this movement for fighting for ones right to have a honourable life, for truth, for justice and for dignity and love.

Jai Hind

Gokul.P.R

For Protect Indian Family, NGO, Mumbai
http://pifngo.info/ , Helplines: +91 9224335577, 9869323538 .
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