No matter how advanced a third world country gets, there are certain societal issues that have a high tendency to tarnish their progress and highlight the worst to people of foreign countries. Such a case has recently been observed in India when two sisters were sentenced to be raped and paraded naked through the streets by the village elders after their brother ran off (to possibly elope) with a married woman.
The whole thing brewed after Ravi, the elder brother of Meenakshi fell in love with a woman belonging to the upper caste system. Ravi, who belonged to the untouchable caste, fell in love with Krishna while attending computer classes and even though both the families tried their utmost best to keep the two lovers apart, in the end it wasn’t enough. This brought the asinine decision of the village elders to exact revenge on Ravi’s sisters as they had no idea where the two lovers had ran off to.
The two sisters, aged 23 and 15 were in New Delhi attending a wedding when they were warned not to return to their village to avoid the fate that awaited them. One of the sisters, Meenakshi Kumari has decided to speak out against the injustice and appealed to the Indian High court as well as the Prime Minister to provide them a safe passage home.
The sisters fear for their very sanctity as according to them; the Jat men would never forget the humiliation brought upon them and would go to any means to enact their revenge once they know their location.
While in the modern world, the whole concept of caste and creed may not hold such a high place, in backwards areas of third world countries, these things still hold a very high meaning among families. People don’t marry outside of their caste for the fear of humiliation in the society and often are enraged when one of their own starts to love someone belonging to the untouchable class. Hopefully, the Indian Government would step in and stop this injustice before it happens, however sadly this won’t be the first or the last time we will be hearing such a ridiculous story coming from a third world country.
