India had highest level of social hostilities in 2013: Pew Research

[The_Showstopper]

India had highest level of social hostilities in 2013: Pew Research
Friday, 27 February 2015 - 12:45pm IST | Place: Washington | Agency: PTI



India had the highest level of social hostilities involving a religion and China had the most government restrictions in 2013, according to a new study by an American think-tank.

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India had the highest level of social hostilities involving a religion and Chinahad the most government restrictions in 2013, according to a new study by an American think-tank.

Among the world's 25 most populous countries, the highest overall levels of restrictions were found in Myanmar, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Russia, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices, said Pew Research Center's latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.

"Among these populous countries, China had the highest level of government restrictions in 2013, and India had the highest level of social hostilities involving religion," the report said. According to Pew, the number of countries and territories with a "very high" level of social hostilities involving religion fell from 20 in 2012 to 17 in 2013.

"Most of the countries and territories in this category including Israel, India, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories and Nigeria already had very high social hostilities. Two countries, the Central African Republic and Tanzania had very high social hostilities in 2013 but not in 2012," it said.

"Five countries that had very high social hostilities in 2012 did not in 2013: Burma (Myanmar), Lebanon, Sudan, Thailand and Yemen," the report said. The new study finds that the share of countries with high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion dropped from 33% in 2012 to 27% in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available.

These types of hostilities run the gamut from vandalism of religious property and desecration of sacred texts to violent assaults resulting in deaths and injuries, it said. By contrast, the share of countries with high or very high government restrictions on religion stayed roughly the same from 2012 to 2013.

The share of countries in this category was 27% in 2013, compared to 29% in 2012. Government restrictions on religion include efforts to control religious groups and individuals in a variety of ways, ranging from registration requirements to discriminatory policies and outright bans on certain faiths, it said.

As in previous years, Christians and Muslims who together make up more than half of the global population faced harassment in the largest number of countries. Christians were harassed, either by government or social groups, in 102 of the 198 countries included in the study (52%), while Muslims were harassed in 99 countries (50%).

The report said in recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of countries where Jews were harassed. In 2013, harassment of Jews, either by government or social groups, was found in 77 countries (39%) a seven-year high.


India had highest level of social hostilities in 2013: Pew Research | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis

 

[Diggy]

 

[by78]

Hostility toward women is shocking in India.

India’s Daughter: ‘I made a film on rape in India. Men’s brutal attitudes truly shocked me’ | Film | The Guardian

India’s Daughter: ‘I made a film on rape in India. Men’s brutal attitudes truly shocked me’


Jyoti Singh, 23, had cause to celebrate. It was no ordinary Sunday. “Happiness was just a few steps away,” says her father, Badri Singh, a labourer. He and his wife, Asha, originally from Uttar Pradesh, had sold their family land, to provide schooling not just for their two sons but also Jyoti. “Papa,” Jyoti had instructed her father. “Whatever money you’ve saved for my wedding, use it for my education.” Badri’s brothers wondered why he was wasting money on a girl.

On this Sunday, 16 December 2012, Jyoti, a name that means light and happiness, had just completed her medical exams to become a doctor. Speaking excellent English, she spent nights working in a call centre from 8pm until 4am, slept for three hours, then studied. Her ambition was to build and run a hospital in her family’s village. “A girl can do anything,” she would say.

But that evening, in Delhi, she decided to go to the cinema to see The Life of Pi with a male friend. At 8.30pm, on the way home, the pair got into an off-duty charter bus. India’s Daughter, a powerful, brave and heart-wrenching documentary made by Leslee Udwin, provokes grief and anger but also pity for the ignorance. It charts what then happened on that moving bus as Jyoti was brutally raped by five men and a 17-year-old (“the juvenile”), eviscerated, then thrown on to the street. It shows how for the next 30 days across India, women and men demonstrated on the streets of the country’s cities, calling for the equality recognised in India’s constitution but never delivered, marking what a former solicitor general, Gopal Subramaniam, calls in the film “a momentous expression of hope for society”.

“It was an Arab spring for gender equality,” Udwin says. “What impelled me to leave my husband and two children for two years while I made the film in India was not so much the horror of the rape as the inspiring and extraordinary eruption on the streets. A cry of ‘enough is enough’. Unprecedented numbers of ordinary men and women, day after day, faced a ferocious government crackdown that included teargas, baton charges and water cannon. They were protesting for my rights and the rights of all women. That gives me optimism. I can’t recall another country having done that in my lifetime.”


Protesters mark the anniversary of the Delhi gang rape of Jyoti Singh in 2012. Despite legislation, rapes are increasing. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

India’s Daughter is broadcast on BBC4 next Sunday, International Women’s Day, and simultaneously shown in seven other countries including India, Switzerland, Norway and Canada. On Monday 9 March, actresses Freida Pinto and Meryl Streep will attend a screening in New York, launching a worldwide India’s Daughter campaign against gender inequality and sexual violence against women and girls. It begins by 20 million pupils viewing the film and taking part in workshops in Maharashtra, a state that includes Mumbai.

Each country has its own appalling bloody tally. India has a population of 1.2 billion. A rape occurs every 20 minutes. In England and Wales, 85,000 women are raped every year. In Denmark one in five women has experienced a sexual assault. Sexual assault, rape, acid attacks, murder, domestic violence, the termination of female foetuses, sex trafficking and female genital mutilation are all manifestations of male power. What is writ very large in India’s Daughter, but camouflaged in other countries where equality is more strongly embedded in law, is the low value placed on females and the determination of some men, educated as well as the impoverished, to keep women padlocked to the past.

We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman

ML Sharma, defence lawyer in Delhi rape case

“We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman,” says one man in Udwin’s film. What is shocking is that he is ML Sharma, defence lawyer for the men convicted of Jyoti’s rape and murder. A second defence lawyer, AP Singh, says if his daughter or sister “engaged in pre-marital activities … in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight”.

“I began this film with a narrow focus,” Israeli-born Udwin, 57, says. “‘Why do men rape?’ I discovered that the disease is a lack of respect for gender. It’s not just about a few rotten apples, it’s the barrel itself that is rotten.” Udwin was an actress before becoming an award-winning producer. Her work includes Who Bombed Birmingham?, about the miscarriage of justice that imprisoned the Birmingham Six, and East is East. For India’s Daughter she spent 30 hours interviewing rapists including Gaurav, a 34-year-old man serving 10 years for raping a five-year-old. “He told me in minute detail what he had done. How he had taken off her knickers. How her eyes were wide with fear. How he had done it front and back. I asked him how tall she was. He stood up and put his hand above his knee. I asked him, ‘How could you do something so terrible that would ruin a child’s life?’ He said, ‘She was a beggar girl, her life was of no value.’” Udwin found the girl, Neeta, now aged 10, and plans to make a film about her family’s resilience and resistance. “She is doing OK. Her mother is a beggar and has put Neeta and two other children through school.”

Central to India’s Daughter is an interview in Tahir jail, Delhi, with Mukesh Singh, driver of the bus. His brother, Ram, was found hanging in his cell months after the trial. The two lived in a Delhi slum. Also involved was Pawan Gupta, a fruit seller; Vinay Sharma, a gym assistant; unemployed Akshay Thakur; and “the juvenile”, living on the streets since he was 11. They had all been drinking before going out where “wrong things are done”.





India’s daughter

Mukesh Singh says: “You can’t clap with one hand – it takes two hands. A decent girl won’t roam around at night. A girl is more responsible for rape than a boy … about 20% of girls are good.” Jyoti fought back. Singh says: “She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they would have dropped her off after ‘doing her’ and only hit the boy.

“The 15 or 20 minutes of the incident, I was driving the bus. The girl was screaming, ‘Help me, help me.’ The juvenile put his hand in her and pulled out something. It was her intestines …We dragged her to the front of the bus and threw her out.”

Udwin, in Hindi, reads a list of Jyoti’s injuries to Singh, caused by an iron bar and multiple rapes. They include bite marks and massive internal injuries. He shows no remorse. A gynaecologist who cared for Jyoti says for months she asked herself the same question. “Why?”

Jyoti, initially given the name Nirbhaya, meaning fearless in Hindi, to preserve her anonymity, died after 13 days. Her parents, given 2 million rupees (£21,000) by the government, set up the Nirbhaya Trust to help women who have experienced violence. “We want to help those girls who have no one,” Jyoti’s father says.

The government, to quell the protest that followed her death, set up a three-member commission, headed by JS Verma, a former chief justice of India and human rights lawyer. It received 80,000 responses and delivered a landmark 630-page report in 29 days, calling for the law concerning sexual violence to be modernised, removing terms such as “intent to outrage her modesty”. New legislation failed to fulfil many of the report’s recommendations. Since then, the number of reported rapes has increased hugely, as more women come forward.

The juvenile is serving three years. Two of the convicted men are appealing against their sentence, a process that could take years. The judge said they should hang because “this is the rarest of cases”. Except that it isn’t. It is one of many. Just over two years after Jyoti’s rape, a woman was raped by four men, beaten, her eyes gouged out. Jyoti’s father, a man of shining integrity, says of his daughter: “In death, she lit such a torch … whatever darkness there is in this world should be dispelled by this light.”

Storyville – India’s Daughter, BBC4, Sunday 8 March, 10pm

 

[The_Showstopper]

Yet you decide to come in here and post.... What an irony!!!

 

[Diggy]

Yet you decide to come in here and post.... What an irony!!!

kisi ney reply nahi kiya apki thread ko toh socha mai hi yeh formality puri kar deta hu apni style main

 

[SamantK]

India had the highest level of social hostilities involving a religion

Hahaha!

India is rated above Pakistan is surprising and expected from the recent Edits in NYT and WSJ slamming Modi, West is spreading propaganda.

 

[kaykay]

UPA was in power in 2013. Right?

 

[utraash]

Indeed we have some social ills which needs to be done away ........

 

[The_Showstopper]

kisi ney reply nahi kiya apki thread ko toh socha mai hi yeh formality puri kar deta hu apni style main

Har thread pe toh tu formality nahi karta, par ispe kyun taras aagaya?

 

[Diggy]

Har thread pe toh tu formality nahi karta, par ispe kyun taras aagaya?

past few days haven't been good for you showstooper'ji , your party is falling apart , keju did another u turn , lot of turmoil your life is going through so felt sympathetic. I promise to extend this sympathy in future me bhi , pakka .

 

[The_Showstopper]

past few days haven't been good for you showstooper'ji , your party is falling apart , keju did another u turn , lot of turmoil your life is going through so felt sympathetic. I promise to extend this sympathy in future me bhi , pakka .

Thank you for your concern...