Women Rights and Religion.

For centuries human society has always followed patriarchal order be it in developed nations,developing or under developed nations.Men have always been given certain privileges as against women either as a matter of practice,discipline or tradition.Even today as we are moving towards the middle of 21^st century women folk tend to be segregated when it comes to safety issues.Women till today are provided with separate hostels,toilets,even separate transport,can’t work in night shift in factories and so on.This can or cannot be construed as female discrimination depending on how one looks at this issues.

Of late it has been observed that women are ‘fighting’ for women rights in religious places where they are being either barred or restricted from entry.Shani Shignapur temple,Sabarimala temple and Haji Ali Dargah are being sighted as religious places where women are prevented entry.The argument here is that constitution provides for equality of women in which case why inequality is practiced here by denying them entry.Now,this same argument can be held towards cases mentioned above as well but no one bothers about that.Therefore why only so called religious “discrimination” is a constitutional issue.Its because certain women activists who are pseudo religious and who want to make career in politics are in the forefront of such issues.Those women who are god fearing and deeply religious are not at all concerned about this so called male dominance.This ‘god fearing’ attitude is seen across all three major religions namely Hinduism,Islam and Christianity.

If at all there has to be parity and equality it cannot be achieved by a protest or morcha by handful of women activists.Century old traditions can only be changed by mutual discussion and agreement and that too in the presence of religious leaders and govt officials as has happened in some temples in India.Rules,regulations and traditions are created by religious gurus and pundits centuries ago when the society was living under different order.Today women are almost on par with men across all fields and therefore need to be given the same recognition and respect as men.But for that women should take a holistic view and ask for equality across entire spectrum of society and not confine themselves to religious one.Also if at all there are those who are perfectly ok with the existing practice should also put forward their case so that a middle line could be drawn and an amicable settlement can be achieved.

These issues are issues of belief and faith.Religion per se is in itself a matter of faith and belief.Therefore such issues shouldn’t be dragged in courts as these are not legal issues as no where its documented that such and such is the rule and regulation to be followed in so and so religious place.Let us hope that such issues are settled amicably and after all one can even pray from home.