A strict implementation of the Bill may have some impact on the opposing mindsets
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: When members of the Punjab Assembly deliberated on the Protection of Women Against Violence Bill, tickers on television channels informed viewers of routine domestic violence and abuse against women all across the country. If these tickers were not good enough to prove the necessity of such a landmark Bill, angry statements from religious scholars ensured that the introduction of the Bill was really hitting the abettors of violence who generally hide behind so-called religious and tribal traditions. These falsified traditions have prevented them from recognising the other gender as a complete human being and instead, a weaker and more inferior species.
As we celebrate the incoming changes to our penal codes to protect women from domestic and other forms of violence, we shall recognise that our society is led 24 hours a day, seven days a week by clergy and a particular section of the media wherein one considers violence a lawful right of men, while some are even occasionally interested in glorifying such violence. Unless this mindset of these two organs of society is changed, a perpetual cycle of violence against the weak gender will continue. In the presence of obvious resistance from society, one would expect that a strict implementation of the Bill may have some impact on those mindsets.
While we congratulate the Punjab Assembly on such a remarkable move, we look forward towards the same sort of bills tabled by the national and other provinces assemblies. It’s not a problem limited to one province; this issue covers most of the Third World, which is still intertwined with religious and tribal traditions that empower only those with more physical strength and able to instigate violence. Unless we recognise intellectual qualities over physical powers, we will continue to live in medieval times.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 28th, 2016.
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