BANGALORE, January 22: Indian laws should be rewritten with a "gentle" tilt towards women, former Supreme Court Judge V R Krishna Iyer said here on Wednesday.Women who have been victims of the present legal system should themselves take up the task of suggesting changes and framing new laws, he added. Justice Iyer was speaking at a workshop on "Reconceptualising Law; Women's Perspective", organised by the Karnataka State Commission for Women.
In a rare experiment, construction workers -- who were mostly women -- had together produced a Construction Workers' Bill, he said.
Noting that women were being called upon to "celebrate 50 years of inequality in its grim, gruesome dimensions", Justice Iyer said the Law of the Land had created an "illusion" and perpetrated a "fraud" in the name of Right to Equality.
Congratulating the organisers for choosing the term "reconceptualising" rather than "reform" or "review", he said the country had accorded less than 0.1 per cent of posts (of judges) in higher courtsto women. This was being deemed as equality. Women were represented only in the lowest echelons of power where their "ritual" or "symbolic" presence was necessary, he added. There was need for a totally new philosophy of jurisprudence when the issue of equality of women came into play, Justice Iyer said. Noting that the reality of womanhood in India -- rich or poor -- was slavery, he said that the term "equality" should be given a completely new lexical and semantic significance.
Pointing out that the first woman High Court judge in the country was appointed during his tenure as a minister in Kerala in 1957, he said: "The soul of India's institutions should be changed to say that women matter". "We want women judges to practice injustice against men so that there is a neutralisation of history," he added.
While Article 51 (A) renounced practices derogatory to the dignity of women, girls were being forced into prostitution through the connivance of politicians and the police. A Devadasi "bought" from
Madhya Pradesh by a former editor of The Indian Express, and produced before the Supreme Court as evidence of the evil practice, was "rescued" from an Agra Women's Home by her former customers, Justice Iyer said.
The "pan-Indian virtue" of burning women was celebrated through the worship of sati. The profound implications of Sita's torture (in Ramayana) and the status of Draupadi and Kunti (in Mahabharatha), were only off-shoots of Manu's (the Hindu law-giver) canons to control women, he added.
The family -- the basic unit of human relations -- considered sacred, had only succeeded in unleashing violence on women. Therefore, the first "battle" for women should begin at home. Even Gandhiji, who preached equality of women, was different in his approach towards his wife Kasturba, he said. "It is a different story when it came to (Gandhi's) dealing with Kasturba, he added.
The demand for equal wages ceased to be an agenda for trade unions in the country, he said. Observing that all
political parties (including the Left) had betrayed women when it came to according 30 per cent representation in Parliament, he said women should show a "new pugnacity and militancy" and build their cadre to represent all fields.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
