I thought of Gandhi when I read this article ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’ came into my heart. This is a truism.  How is it just to inflict a crime on 2 people because one person has decided to elope with a married woman.  So how does punishing the girls for life change the reality of him leaving?  Still in primitive tribal societies there are unquestioned beliefs and what I am noticing more and more, disconnected emotions.  As a peacemaker I am becoming clearer about the lack of empathy when people are suffering, retribution is felt not empathy for the suffering of the girls.  Why is that?  This is what I would explore to understand why a village council of men (no women I note) decided on committing a crime of rape through inflicting pain on two innocent girls by giving men permission to force their penis into girls to cause them maximum pain.  This is done in the knowledge that the girls have nothing to do with their brother loving a married woman and wanting to be with her.  What I feel intuitively is one approach focuses on pain, fear, revenge and control as a solution and the other action of the brother appears to be love based.  I assume the brother loved this married woman.  However, what I would suggest the brother and the married woman reflect on how the husband may feel at her leaving, the children etc. as he may love her too.  Who knows maybe the husband is abusive and cruel driving her away?  Many possibilities as to why the decision was made to elope, clearly breaking tribal custom and marriage rules.  Such is the complexity of marriage that is more of a bondage (forced) in many cases than a free will association to be with someone out of love and within an understanding of how to make a marriage work as two mutually consenting equal adults.  Marriage itself is an institution that out of fear makes people promise to be together their whole lives, the reality (which is where I focus) is often not the same outcome.  If it is, it is because women or men feel it is socially unacceptable to leave, or they fear going it alone.  In truth people change overtime, people fall in love (powerful experience) then people may feel a calling to do something else. There is much criticism about the West and the acceptance of women and men having sexual relations outside of marriage.  I have experienced this and I found it more honest in my case.  I’ve been married as well but my husband left me.  I told him when we got married he was always free to leave if he fell out of love.  When he did I honoured that and I made my family fuss about him and give him a send off.  He asked me if I wanted money I said no.  I just said if he ever loved me come back.  He was a great husband.  He never forced me into a role, we just helped each other for 11 years.  If he needed me to do all the housework as he was working I did it happily.  If I was working he did all the housework.  We shared everything.  We had our own money and we respected the differences.  I never told him what to do but we worked problems out together.  Sexuality was respect and love there was no violence or fighting.  I look back and consider that a wonderful experience.  Most of our time together was in an unmarried status and it was absolutely no different to marriage, the only difference is I got called Mrs.  Today of course I will maintain my own name as I do not belong to a man, I am free and I am with a person by choice not because I fear aloneness.  Today of course I live alone and have never been happier.

In respect of people playing up on their partners I do not favour hurting partners in marriage.  I would never take another woman’s husband, if that situation happened to me I would have him work out his marriage, if he is not happy then leave his wife if it is not reconcilable.  But at the very least go to counselling and find out what the real underlying problems are and together work on it.  It is called living together as a compromise (sharing a home).  I would never encourage anyone to break the heart of another, but I would advise to be truthful as people are often hurt more by lies and deception.  If the marriage is a lie then children learn that parents are only are together out of obligation and love is not modelled.  Love of course is the central point.  If we act from love in all our decisions violence, pain and retribution will never be an outcome.  Love cares, reveals, shares and heals.  If you do not love someone tell them and look at yourself.

If a person breaks rules, if the rules are unjust (as Gandhi would say) then you have a responsibility not to conform to those rules.  So for a Council of men organising men to rape (forced intercourse) upon two innocent women, they are indeed being authorised to commit a real crime.  So what is rape?  It seems to me many men believe it is just sex and for them, a release.  It is certainly not love for which that action was created.  The purpose of sexuality was to join the masculine and feminine in a loving union strong enough to bring children into the world and to learn about relationship.  When it is true, it is the most powerful relationship.  When it is a violent act of control or power, then it is indeed a crime against the other.  When you force a person and cause them unbearable pain, ripping them, the psychological damage is far greater than the act.  Women (or men/boys) who have been raped carry the scars their whole life.  We are having inquiries into pedophilia in churches here in Australia and why Priests allowed or participated in the raping of children.  Some of the boys now men say they have suffered their entire lives.  In the case of woman they can never have normal sexual relationships again and they find sex not a joy but a horror.  For one partner to no longer enjoy intimacy that is something that is taken away from her or him.  A woman is not a plaything or a being with no feelings, she is human and her rights must be protected by law if men cannot feel empathy.  It is not sex it is power. Be very clear.

There is another side that most men won’t consider, the pain they will go through  having raped another.  They will indeed carry the guilt of hurting women with them their whole life and no matter what they say, in their hearts they know they committed a crime.    Perhaps with the public outcry the village men may come to an awareness around their own injustice which will not bring upon them happiness.  It will divide them from women, as women are clearly not safe or respected.  I recall being with a village in Nepal and noted the caste system.  I asked the castes (teachers) to group into their castes.  They told me which caste they were from.  I then asked each group to state how they felt being that caste.  Interestingly the Brahman were happy and the low caste were not.  Discrimination between the castes is an injustice, I believe Gandhi tried to bring sanity to the divisions between people.  In truth, we are all One.

Does the Indian Government believe in democracy and the rule of law.  Is rape a crime in India?  If not, why not given it harms girls for life?  Is rape in marriage okay or is it a crime? Thankfully in Australia it is a crime and men will think twice.  A woman’s body is her own, it does not belong to anyone else.  The person was born into the world as a sovereign being equal to all life.  That is the reality.  What you do to another returns to the self, this is a universal law.  Some may call it karma.  From my own research that appears to be the way of it.  Unconditional love is the only way karma can be removed.  Something to consider when you seek to harm another.

When you drop the beliefs of the past and live in the present moment (without a story) you will find what you see in another is a reflection of yourself. Today I see people as myself and I treat them as I would want to be treated, with respect.  I care nothing for caste, occupation, status, gender, age – I see every single person of value and equal.  I absolutely love people.  Travelling the world I had the privilege of looking into the eyes of so many people and seeing only beauty.  I believe I saw the truth.  As a clown I brought joy to people, I danced with Indian people, clowned with them, went to Gandhi’s ashram, spoke to young people about peace and mixed with them on the trains.  If I was like the British at the turn of the last century I would have treated them as less (as a white person) and expected privilege.  As a universal person I saw only family in both men and women.   I see how far we are coming as a civilisation and I look forward to young people finding the truth of who they are in this world and loving this world as they would want to be loved.  Then our world will know true peace. The truth sets us free from harming others as we begin to harmonise with reality. Perhaps truth is god or god is truth, what if reality is god, what is happening right now.  What if the past is no longer and the future doesn’t exist?  What of the power of now?  What do you choose love or fear?  What you choose defines your life and future.

NB:  Check out my interview with a man who met Gandhi interview-with-dr-kunwar-singh-on-meeting-gandhi-and-politics-in-australia/

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/india-rape-outrage-village-order-on-sisters-sparks-new-outcry/story-fnb64oi6-1227503963664?sv=49f82f1ebf54c97ba3608fd97eefc965

India rape outrage: village order on sisters sparks new outcry

A village council in India has ordered that two sisters should be raped as punishment after their brother eloped with a married woman, a case that has outraged human rights groups.

Meenakshi Kuwari, 23, and her 15-year-old sister, have been forced to flee their home after villagers ordered that they should be stripped naked and paraded with their faces blackened before being raped to atone for their brother’s crime.

The case is just the latest high-profile incident of rape being used as a punishment by unelected village leaders or councils in rural India.

Similar cases have shocked the nation and the country’s Supreme Court has ruled the council judgments illegal but the practice persists in remote areas.

The family home was ransacked by furious villagers after her brother fled with a woman from a superior caste.

A hastily-convened assembly of the all-male village council in the district of Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, north of Delhi, then handed down the rape punishment.

The two sisters and their father have fled to Delhi and appealed to India’s Supreme Court for protection if they return to the village.

The women’s father has also raised their plight with the national commissions for castes and human rights.

Summit Kumar, another brother to the sisters, has told human rights campaigners that he fears for their lives if they return. Local police offer little protection and have reportedly denied that the rape punishment was handed down as the village closed ranks against the family.

“The family wants to go back to the village but they are very concerned about the threats against them. These sort of orders are consistently meted out by so-called higher caste village leaders,” said Gopika Bashi, a women’s rights researcher for Amnesty International India.

“The edicts are not done in a formal space and nothing may be written down but that does not mean they will not be carried out.”

Rights activists are also deeply concerned about the woman who eloped with Meenakshi’s brother. She is now in hiding and believed to be pregnant.

Though her case has received less attention, her affair with a lower caste man places her in equal danger to the two sisters.

Cases such as Meenakshi’s have shocked India but rape as a punishment remains prevalent in remote villages around India, where patriarchal views on gender still hold sway.

In a high-profile incident last year, a young man assaulted a married woman in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

As punishment, the village leader ordered the husband of the woman who had been attacked to rape the accused man’s 14-year-old sister. Villagers looked on as the girl was dragged, pleading for mercy, into the forest for the punishment to be carried out. In a West Bengal village last year, tribal elders ordered the gang rape of a woman for “falling in love” with a man from another community.

In 2011, India’s Supreme Court has denounced such judgments by village councils as “kangaroo courts” and ruled them illegal. Enforcement remains difficult, however, without support from local police.

The Times