Mar 15, 2013

PRESS RELEASE

Subject: Men’s Rights Activists are dismayed at lack of political will to protect men

Activists fighting for men’s rights have expressed extreme amount of displeasure and dismay at the Cabinet’s decision on the rape law.

Background:

The discussion around the rape law gained ground after all media channels unanimously hyped a single case of Delhi gang-rape (December 16, 2012) and made it a national issue inciting public emotions against the male gender and accusing the Government not doing enough to protect women. This was despite the already existing toughly anti-male rape laws and 15 other laws targeted specifically against men which were draconian, barbaric and unconstitutional in nature.

Bowing down to the pressure from the feminist dominated media, the Govt. formed a committee under retired judge Justice Verma whose recommendations sought to convert every intra-gender (male-female) transaction into a non-bailable offense, punishable at the whim and fancy of the woman. All this was done under cute names like stalking, voyeurism, eve-teasing etc. Every definition of crime was not only vague but one-sided. None of the definitions included abuse of men by women.

However, on 3rd February 2013, the Government passed an Ordinance called the Rape Ordinance which identified a wide variety of sexual assaults affecting both the genders and passed a gender neutral ordinance which covered male victims of sexual assault as well. This was a historic move wherein, for the first time in the history of India, a gender neutral law was passed which recognized the abuse of men as well and sought to protect them.

The Shocker:

However, the feminist and the feminist dominated media were extremely unhappy about men being protected and created a lot of hue and cry over the Ordinance being gender neutral and sought to nullify it calling it anti-women.

And the shocker came on the 11th of March 2013, whence the Government actually did a U-Turn, reverting back the bill being gender biased and anti-male, renaming it as the “Anti-Rape Law” instead of erstwhile “Sexual Assault Bill”, leaving male victims of such offenses high and dry.

The consequences:

While, as we all know, it won’t be the case that with the passage of this yet another anti-male law, which does not cater to the problems of the male world, the lives of men are suddenly going to become risky.

Lives of men have always been risky as primarily it is the men who undertake huge risks in order to ensure cultural, technological and societal progress and selflessly men have lost their lives for the same, be it war or adventure or scientific inventions.

Whether it is a case of 5 army-men losing their lives attempting to safeguard the borders of India or a couple of fishermen losing their lives accidentally as they undertake daily risk of fishing in troubled waters in order to eke out a livelihood.

It’s just that, with this law, the lives of men are going to become riskier as now the streets have become extremely dangerous for men as now,

1. Any man who gets entangled with a woman in any sort of argument, which can be due to the woman’s fault or provoked by her will be converted into a false case of stalking or voyeurism and the man would be immediately arrested. For no fault of his, the man would be fighting a frivolous criminal battle.
2. Male victims of feminine sexual aggression, female sex offenders and female rapists would be embroiled in false rape cases wherein the perpetrator of the crime and the victim of the crime would just swap roles.
3. Boys facing sexual assault, inappropriate touch, and sexual oppression from girls and adult female relatives including Ayaahs would continue to face the horror and grow up with an impaired psychology which will affect their quality of life at every stage. It may potentially increase criminal bent of mind in such boys as they grow up to become men and this could rather increase the crime in the society than decreasing it.
4. Small political parties like Maharastra Navnirman Sena, Samajawadi Party, Bahujan Samajwadi Party will face greater risks as their male political cadre could be trapped in false cases of stalking and eve-teasing by opposite parties, especially big and powerful political parties, and this could be a serious blow to the political roadmap of these small parties, who now have no option but to listen to UPA 2.
5. Increase of false cases of rape, molestation, stalking, voyeurism, etc. and the subsequent jailing and harassment of innocent men would contribute towards the growing element of Gynophobia (fear of women). This would result in men shying away from women and mingling with them. In fact, already the helplines of men’s rights activists have started ringing with queries like, “Is it OK to refuse to escort a woman at night?”, “Is it OK to refuse to a movie with a woman at night?”, etc.
6. This will also affect the voting pattern as men’s rights activists have vowed not to vote and to discourage others from voting for either anti-male MPs or for those political parties who did not support the gender neutrality of the bill. They’d rather people to vote for independents or for parties like SP, BSP and the Trinamool Congress.

The Problems:

It was extremely disheartening to see that the Government was bowing down before a few women organizations and backed out on its decision to provide the society with a gender neutral law. It is pertinent to mention here that the electorate of India has not voted for these women organizations, whosoever they may be.

The electorate of India has voted the UPA 2 Government to power and wrested the power of law-making in their hands and it becomes the duty of the UPA 2 Government to ensure a safe and free society for all citizens irrespective of caste, religions, sex and creed. Even the constitution of India, vide Article 14, guarantees the same. And hence, this regressive step of removing gender neutrality from the law is an unconstitutional step by UPA 2 in the event of its failure to contain the anti-male women organizations filled with male hatred.

Demands:

1. The Houses must not pass the gender-biased version of the bill and must send it back to the Standing Committee for further review.
2. As the Justice Verma Committee totally ignored the presentations sent by the various men’s rights groups, the said Standing Committee should invite these groups and take their views into consideration.
3. The bill must not be passed in the absence of a strong misuse clause to prevent false cases from becoming yet another industry of extortion and revenge.
4. Government must form National Commission for Men and Men Welfare Ministry in order to avoid such last minute hassles and rushes in law making.
5. Only Gender Neutral laws must be passed.
6. Women organizations with vested interests and partisan agenda must not be encouraged to such an extent that they can literally hijack the law-making process.

We end this press release with an end-note of caution that more and more anti-male laws will lead to rise in crime in the society, choice belies with the Government whether to heed to the warning or face the consequences.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/272645/seeking-equality-women-men-protest.html

Seeking ‘equality’ with women, men protest marriage law bill

 Several men and women from different groups demanded a rollback of Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which proposes to introduce automatic property annexation from men. 

This amendment will recognise a wife’s right to property acquired by her spouse during their marriage. Men who are going through the divorce process demand that the word ‘husband’ in this amendment clause should be replaced with ‘spouse’ so both parties may have a right to oppose. The Union Cabinet has approved the draft Marriage Laws (Amendment), Bill, 2010, likely to be tabled in Parliament soon.

Several men’s rights groups are opposing these “women-centric” amendments in the Marriage Law, as they are not happy with the idea of parting with their property after divorce.

“We had submitted some suggestions to the Law Minister and the parliamentary committee as well but they did not take them into consideration. That is why we decided to oppose the bill,” said Swarup Sarkar, founder member of Save Family Foundation. 
 
“The financial benefit should be linked with the number of years a couple is married for. According to it, a husband cannot oppose the wife’s allegations,” he added. 
Kumar V Jahgirdar, founder and president of the Bangalore-based Children’s Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting aid the bill does not deal with issues like custody of children and visitation rights.

“It is based on the flawed presumption that the child is best taken care of by the mother. But children are going to be major losers if this bill is passed in the absence of a father,” he said. 

Ref SFF/March/12/5-25                                                                 19^th May 2012

Memorandum on Marriage Law (Amendment) Bill 2010

To,                             

Hon’ble Law Minister,

Mr Salman Khurshid,

Respected Sir,

This is a memorandum regarding our strong objection to the present format of Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010, as being myopic, unconstitutional, undemocratic and discriminatory. This Bill will be major vote bank issue in the coming elections, if passed in the present format, without any national debate on the same.

Save Family Foundation is a forum with various groups working under it for the cause of helping men dealing with issues related to family and marital problems. We comprise of families fighting against all laws that aggravate marital disputes, promote abuse of the elderly, violate basic human rights of men-women-children, precipitate family break-ups, facilitate the knowledge sharing against misuse of the laws and work against those who promote a fatherless society. With the increasing misuse of Anti-Men laws (98% false cases), our reach is increasing every moment with current direct or indirect reach to over 4 Lakh people across India.

By this memorandum, we present our strong objection to the controversial clauses of MARRIAGE LAWS (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2010, which had been introduced on 04-Aug-10 in the Rajya Sabha and recently received the Cabinet nod, making “Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage (IrBM)” as another ground for divorce. The Bill contained clauses that facilitated financial extortion of men.

The Bill has a few very controversial clauses which are totally anti-family and anti-husband, namely:

1.    The wife can oppose the divorce under IrBM, based on ground of financial hardship, while the husband can not, which goes against the principles of natural justice and contrary to laws all over the world [constitution provides right to defend even to dreaded terrorist/accused, this being denied to Indian Husbands would make mockery of Indian Society] .

2.    The Bill talks of division of ONLY husband’s marital property, and is totally silent on division of wife’s marital property. The Bill says that courts would have power not to grant the divorce unless the wife was paid adequate amount of money under the cute name of “Financial Security of Woman”.

3.    In a marital discord where the dispute is not settled by mutual consent between both the parties, generally the victim applies to annul the marriage and the defaulter has to respond to it. But this law gives the power, of applying for annulment of the marriage through divorce, for the person who could have been himself/herself a defaulter in the marriage.

4.    With the current “Hindu Marriage Act” already covering the Divorce under the clause of “Desertion of minimum 2 years”, adding another law under the name of IrBM having the same period of separation as a condition, is a Duplicate law with no constitutional standing.

Brief Background:

Such clauses being outright anti-male and gender-biased in nature were vehemently opposed by various men’s rights activists and organizations, who even deposed in front of the Standing Committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice. The panel, presented with the objections raised by men’s rights organizations who sought to make the bill gender-neutral and ensure that no man faced any kind of financial hardship because of gender-biased clauses in the bill.

Oppositions ignored:

However, the objections raised by men’s rights organizations have been conveniently ignored by the standing committee panel.

Cabinet passed the bill:

The cabinet approved bill, when marriage breaks irretrievably,

§  Makes husband to part with his self earned property when wife opposes divorce

§  Discriminates husband from opposing Divorce even in the interest of his biological children just because he is a male.

§  Is deliberately destroying marriages and promoting Divorces by providing property rights only when wife divorces and not when she is married.

§  Would encourage high society, (rich, politicians, judges, bureaucratic and business class) wives to take divorce route on simple marital discords at the instance of rivals/adversaries just to get enriched.

§  Would ensure that no men/father shall have access to his child both biological and adopted child.

§  Would induce men to live in debt rather than save in properties

§  Would force men to PAY to BUY Divorce thereby making the institution of marriage into glorified prostitution as a Post-Paid Service.

§  This is against Article 14 on equality against right to property.

After the recent announcement in media that the cabinet has passed this bill, we are getting plenty of panic calls on our helplines from husbands. Young professionals, who have taken huge loans to buy property, are the hardest hit if their property goes to wife during divorce. Most of them are on a "Cancellation Spree" after the cabinet decision to give property of husbands to wives. Banks will also start denying the home loan to married men as their loan amount will be at risk if the couple is going through divorce, directly affecting the GDP and economy of our country. We already have multiple Panic SOS sent to banks by MALE Asset Owners asking about the penalties of defaulting.

We implore upon you to ponder

§  Why confer property rights to women at the time of divorce when woman already have five draconian alimony provisions in various laws both while married and after divorce?

§  Is it safe to handover to the court, discretion to decide on the volume of share when there is no judicial accountability and transparency with certain section of lawyers claiming fiefdom over family courts (total disobedience  for sec 13 of Family Courts Act)

§  Is this bill for wife or lawyers? While 10-20% share of the asset is claimed as fee by certain section of the lawyers? Who is victim defined under ‘grave financial hardship’ is it the lawyer or the wife? It could become an easy nexus of Property grabing tactics with easy divorce filing by women, getting Property as a “benefit” of Divorce and then parting a bit of that property with Lawyers. India is about witness the biggest ever series of MARITAL SCAMS under the cover of PAID DIVORCES.

§  According to NCRB data, there have been 61,453 suicides of married men. This category sees the highest number of suicides and the figure is accelerating at a rapid pace every year. http://ncrb.nic.in/ADSI2010/ADSI2010-full-report.pdf (Page 183). The general reasoning for the situation of married men committing suicide is attributed to economic hardship. In that case increasing the financial burden on men alone and holding them alone accountable for a marital breakdown will only increase the tendency in men to take the extreme, helpless steps.

Consider the scenario where:

1.    Husband has dependent parents and owns a single property and if 50% of that goes to wife post-divorce, how will the husband take care of his old parents? Is the concept of family restricted to only husband-wife in the Indian context?

2.    What, if the family is a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) owning a single joint property? Will the wife get 50% of that? What about other sibling’s share in it?

3.    Women are being encouraged to go for divorce as this will be an easy way to acquire free property.

4.    Husband’s family would want to secure themselves against such a prospective calamity hitting them and guess what, to secure themselves they will be forced to ask would be wife also to contribute in the property. Will this not encourage the practice of dowry?

We are duty bound to caution you Sir, that the implementation of this property rights linked divorce would result in destruction of the Indian Family System thereby culminating into a bastardised society, rise in juvenile crime, teenage pregnancy, chemical abuse and ultimately chaos in the society as in the west. A recession in the 2^nd highest populous Nation would destroy the Nation and nobody would be able save our Great Nation.

Social groups under Save Family Foundation therefore demand:

1)    The revised Comprehensive Bill should be gender neutral, with sufficient safeguards inbuilt in it to prevent its misuse against any gender. The word husband and wife should be replaced by spouse in the Bill.

2)    Both husband and wife should be able to oppose the divorce under the clause of financial hardships. During partition, both the husbands and wife’s property should be divided, NOT just husbands, depending upon the years of marriage. Liabilities such as loans, mortgages etc should also be divided equally amongst both the parties.

3)    The new Bill should NOT make Marriage as a “Property Transfer Bureau”.

4)    As in most other countries, the maintenance should be proportional to the years of marriage. A wife in a marriage of 2 year should NOT be treated equally as a marriage of 20 years.

5)    Property division must take into account contributions made by both the spouses and also the fact that the property was acquired from wealth earned post marriage and not from previous savings.

Regards,                                                           

Wasif Ali

Treasurer, Save Family Foundation (Regd.)

Mobile: 9818509406

Copy to : Hon’ble Prime Minister

Supported by

1. Gender Human Rights Society, Delhi : 9899329991 / 9811052770
2. Manushi, Delhi : 011-23978851 / 9350041502
3. Men Cell, Delhi : 9810170681 / 9868142608
4. Mothers and Sisters Initiative (MASI), Delhi : 9818454928
5. Save Innocent Mother and Sister (SIMS), Bangalore:09342041382
6. Protect Indian Family (PIF), Mumbai : 09869323538 / 09821414336
7. Men Rights Protection, Mumbai : 09892668560
8. Bharat Bachao Sangathan, Kolkata : 09830151555
9. Protect Men’s Right, Kerala : 09387052990 / 0484230478
10. Sahana, Hyderabad:09848280354 / 09908578457
11. Asha Kiran, Bangalore: 080-65334135
12. Kutumb Rakshna Vedike, Bangalore : 09886934853
13. Protect Men’s Rights, Orissa : 0943708337
14. Pati Pariwar Kalyan Samiti, Lucknow : 09839097522
15. Rakshak, USA/Delhi : 9810452017
16. My Nation, Dubai/USA: 0096-53869295
17. Pirito Purush Pati Parishad Kolkata : 09433094337 / 09231529437
18. All India Forgotten Women, Hyderabad : 09704683163
19. Gujarat Gaurav Raksha Samiti (GGRS) : 9825225526
20. The Akhil Bharatiya Patni Atyachaar Virodhi Sangh (ABPAVS), Gujarat
21. Association of Protection of Mens Rights, Chennai,
22. Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting, Bangalore (CRISP), 9845264488
23. Peoples United Relationship Enhancement, Mysore (PURE)
24. Save Indian Family Organisation Rajasthan, Jaipur
25. Purushak Sangrashan Sanstha, Nasik
26. Men’s Right, Kerala: 9249502138

27. Purusha Vedi(PPPV), Kerala: 9387052990, 0484 2304478