THE PLIGHT OF WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHT IN INDIA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS QUO

Abstract

Despite being considered the epitome of goddess in religious literature, the reality of a woman in the Indian society is paradoxical. They start facing discrimination as soon as they enter this patriarchal world. When they are in a mother’s womb, they face discrimination in the form of female foeticide. When young, she faces this disparity in the shape of female genital mutilation, child marriage and this disparity continues in her day to day life as she grows older but takes other forms such as honour killings, etc. This continues even when she gets married of which marital rape, domestic violence, dowry deaths are express manifestation of this gender-based discrimination. The main reason behind this inequality experienced by woman is the patriarchal norms prevalent in the Indian society which seeks to control women’s sexuality in order to oppress and subjugate them. The present paper ventures to discuss the scope of these problems and the way, these practices are justified in the name of culture and religion by the cultural relativists. It describes the legal framework designed to eradicate all forms of discrimination against this weaker section of society. It forecasts the responsive job performed by the judiciary in the public sphere, however, disregards its role in the empowerment of women on religious grounds. Thus, the paper advocates for observance of principles of transformative constitutionalism by the judiciary in order to realise the aim of “gender equality” and recommends for sensitisation of all public authorities along with social institutions like the family, institution of religion and educational institutions.