Men’s Rights: An interview with Sujit Deshpande

We here at Caustic News believe that the laws meant for protecting our women should not be misused for victimizing innocent men and that the Law should apply equally to every citizen of our country irrespective of their caste, creed, religion and gender. Given the bad reputation that our country has for the innumerable crimes against women, our legal system is unarguably lenient towards women on one hand and often irrationally prejudiced towards men on the other. Thanks to the skewed Dowry laws, Alimony distributions, bad visitation rights and many others, men are often wrongly subjected to agonizing mental and physical torture. With our country making immense strides in this 21st century it’s important we answer and settle these politically incorrect questions once and for all. We earnestly hope that our judiciary becomes judicious enough to differentiate between the abuser and the abused. To understand the situation better we had the good fortune to speak to Mr. Sujit Deshpande, an IIM Kozhikode alumni and a prominent men’s rights activist as well as a member of Save India Family Foundation.

First of all, what motivated you to join this movement?

In 2012, my wife and in-laws filed a false case against me. Being a common man having no prior knowledge of marital laws, I underwent immense stress and humiliation. My health declined as a result and I was absolutely clueless about what has to be done. One of my friends eventually suggested that I contact the Confidare Community Center for men, to seek their help, support and guidance to get through the agonizing situation. I contacted them and started to frequent their community centers. I soon realized that there are a lot of people affected by bad marital laws in our country and felt the need to do something for them. So, I joined Save Indian Family Foundation, a renowned NGO which has been fervently supporting the cause of men’s rights across India for the last 10 years.

What are the top challenges you are currently facing while carrying out your activism?

Though our efforts and activism we are trying to

* Amend the Marital Laws in India to make them truly Gender Neutral

* Raise awareness about the issue amongst the General Public

One of the major challenges that we come across whilst our activism is the reluctance by people to acknowledge that men can also be victims of bad laws. The widely held notion that men are strong enough to valiantly face any problem head-on, is the root cause of the underlying problem.

This seems to stem out of the traditional Gender role assigned to Men as protectors and problem solvers. Men are not expected to be expressive with their emotions, unlike women. Men are expected to be protectors of their family. They are expected to be the breadwinners of their family.

These unreasonable expectations on men make it impossible for them to express their emotions, discuss their problems with their peers/ friends/ relatives. This then leads them to neglect their health, avoid relatives, friends and other near and dear ones and become more solitary and eventually when the situation becomes unbearable, many men resort to committing suicide or becoming mentally ill!

Another reason why people are reluctant to believe that men cannot be victims in a failed marriage is due to the continuous media attention and coverage is given only to cases where women are affected. Most cases where the women are shown as victims initially turn out the other way after an investigation. For example – The Badaun Rape case where the media portrayed it to be a barbaric rape and murder case but it later turned out to be a family feud.

Similarly, in another case in Rohtak where two sisters blamed a man for molesting them and beat him on camera was proved to be false later and it was clear that the women were doing it to gain media attention

There are numerous cases like these where men are the victims and the media only chooses to show one side of the story and later misses out on the man’s side of the story when he is proven innocent

While meeting politicians to bring more awareness about the situation and change the laws to make it gender neutral, we noticed that the politicians are mostly close-minded to the suggestion that the laws need modification. This is due to the fact that gender is the new religion in the present day society. Politicians want to cash in on this to create harsher laws to punish men and, in turn, get more votes from the women.

Nowadays one can see more and more politicians jumping on this bandwagon and more women-friendly laws being passed totally ignoring the situation. For example – Maneka Gandhi in one of the interviews opined that Men are the source of all violence in this country. This is factually incorrect as crime is not gender specific. There are an equal number of women who commit crimes as men. We recently came across a video where a woman was trying to kill her bed-ridden mother in law. We also saw numerous cases where women are increasingly becoming abusive like the case of a woman who provoked a police constable by throwing a brick at him or the famous Jasleen Kaur case in Delhi where she claimed molestation by abusing an innocent guy on the road.

It is not just Maneka Gandhi who thinks like this. While passing the Odd-Even traffic rule, Arvind Kejriwal exempted the women drivers of Delhi. This kind of exemptions and selective laws are absolutely ridiculous. How can women not create pollution while men are only responsible for it?

While talking about this it is also pertinent to mention the interest rates discount given to women by banks, women-only coach on trains, women seats on buses, women quota in the parliament, maintenance granted to working women when they are separated from their husbands and more increasing goodies doled out to them.

While on the other hand it has become politically incorrect to speak about preferential treatment. In fact, women feel that they are entitled to all such goodies and no one should question them.

Recently a proposal was floated to make the Dowry law in India compoundable, so if it goes through then would it end up being the perfect extortion and blackmailing tool?

The Dowry is already compoundable in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Looking at the NCRB data it is evident that the maximum number of cases are filed only from these two states in the country.

Making Dowry compoundable will allow women to file the case and withdraw them as per their whims and fancies. This will only make the life of a man and his family miserable. Currently, a man and his family are automatically arrested when a dowry case is filed on him. Imagine the predicament of the nation when men and their families can be arrested hundreds of times during the course of their marriage. Do you think men would want to even get married in such a hostile situation?

As pointed out India currently has around 5 lakh divorces annually and child custody and visitation rights are badly skewed against the father, so what reforms should be brought out in this regard?

* Deny maintenance and alimony to wives who are well educated and working. Mediation centers and Judges are pushing men to settle their cases by paying up 10 years of their salary. This is unfair to men as most men can’t afford such huge alimony. They might need to take loans to pay up for this.

* Provide equal parenting access to both the parents. This is called as a shared parenting scheme which is already implemented in many western countries. Currently, as the law stands in India, most of the fathers mostly don’t get to see their children after they are separated from their wives. However, they are made to pay a high maintenance for the upbringing of the child/ children born out of the wedlock.

* Include misuse clauses in all of the marital laws. As of now, there is no misuse clause to punish a woman if she files a false dowry, rape, molestation, domestic violence or an attempt to murder case on a man. If a misuse clause is introduced, it will drastically bring down the number of false cases filed. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in its judgment in the Arnesh Kumar vs the State of Bihar observed that more than 80% of the dowry cases are false. Also looking at the number of rape cases filed across the country, more than 75% of the rape cases filed in India are false!

* Prevent Women filing cases under Sections such as 377 which are never meant to settle scores under marital disputes. Sec 377 deals with gay marriages and unnatural sex, this section has been widely misused by women to frame their husbands for having unnatural sex with them in a bid to extort more money from them. Allowing such frivolous cases to be filed would make men lose faith in the Indian judiciary.

* Another emerging trend has been that women are increasingly using the Section 354 (attempt to rape) on their father-in-law’s (husband’s father) to pressurize their husbands and extort more money. Many old parents commit suicide due to the shame in such cases or their health gets severely affected due to the stress after facing such cases. Women should be penalized strictly if they are found to misuse such cases.

There were also reports of including prenups in our system, so what would their impact be?

As long as the skewed marital laws in the country are not amended, there is no point in bringing in the Prenup laws. This is because, you could agree on an amount in the prenup but, she could still go ahead and file a dowry, domestic violence or an attempt to murder case on you to extort more money. Making a prenup agreement before marriage is committing upfront to the minimum amount that you would have to pay. There is no limit to the maximum amount of money that can be extorted from you by filing false cases.

Now we all want gender equality, be it in the workplace or in our homes and neither wants skewed feminists or patriarchs to take over, so can a line be drawn whereby all interests are taken care of?

As I mentioned, amendments to the law to make it fairer would reduce the number of false cases filed.

Have you faced opposition from men while being part of this movement?

Yes. Sounds ironic, right? Since most men are conditioned to believe that they are the protectors and the women are the weak and oppressed gender, we see a lot of opposition from men on this issue.

Do you see any prospect of gender neutral laws being implemented in the near future?

No.

Disclaimer – The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Caustic News.