victimization of women

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Victimization of Women

M.K Bhavnagar University

Department of English

Sem-1

Name: Hema Goswami

Roll no. : 15

Enrollment no. :2069108420180020

Course 4: Indian Writing in English

Introduction

Violence against women is always remains the current topic for over the centuries. In every field including school, civic work, and in public places women has been victimized. It is found that harassment is more frequent in workplace setting than any other field.

Victimization is critical and its histories are disturbingly common among women (department of psychiatery, 1999). Victimization is both psychological and physical. History should not be overlooked in any person, including severely mentally ill, homeless, disabled, or elderly women.

We have seen many women who never raised their voice against the violence or sufferings. Marilyn 

Manson quotes that:-

    

 “we live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves,”

History of the word

The word victimization comes from ‘victim’. A victim is a person who suffers directly or threatened physical, emotional or financial harm by someone else. It is a crime in society. Normally this crime was done by man over woman.

Victimization is the process of being victimized or becoming a victim (wikipedia the free encylopedia). Victims or abuse and manipulation often get trapped into self image of victimization. The psychological profile of victimization includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of guilt, shame, self-blame and depression. The way leads to hopelessness and despair into the mind of the person.

Victimization in India

In India women also feels less safe (Judge, 2015). Most of all sex became the current issue of feeling unsafe. It is more or less than a conscious process of criminal intimidation by which a man keeps a woman in a state of fear. Therefore an act that exploits or victimizes someone is known as ‘Victimization’. The unfortunate person who suffers from this type of adverse situation is a ‘victim’. There is always a large number of female victimization, if a woman who is tricked or swindled, she is a victim.

It is difficult to know the extent of actual female victimization in several parts of India. It is connected with ragging, rape, cruelty, and witchcraft. The case of victimization was increase day by day and the reason was that female never reported their case to the police. Only few cases are there about which the police knew and they directly send their case to media.

Thorsten Sellin very minutely point out that:-

“Crime arising from primary cultural conflict occurs when a colonial power extends her legal system to her colonial territories. When this happens, traditional practices which are in conflict with the criminal code of the colonial power are made by the illegal by the colonial government.”

Victims of rape, assault, child sexual abuse, drunk driving and domestic violence, as well as the families of homicide victims, are all eligible to apply for financial help. Compensation will always provided to such victimized women but still they remain unaware  of the facilities provided to them. Compensation is for economically Assesable damage resulting from violations of human rights or international humanitarian law, such as:-

      a)  Physical or mental harm, including pain, suffering and emotional distress

b)Lost opportunities including education

c) Material damages and loss of earnings, including loss of earning potential.

d) Harm to reputation or dignity

e) Cost required for legal or expert assistance, medicines and medical services.

Section 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure defines the word ‘Victim’. It stated that “victim” means a person who has suffered any loss or injury caused by a reason of the act or omission for which an accused person has been charged and the expression “victim” includes his or her guardian or legal heir.

  

Basic Help  

As already discuss above that a victim is an unfortunate person who suffers from adverse circumstances and hence there must be financial help for the victims especially for the women victims of rape, assault, child sexual abuse, domestic violence as well as the families of homicide victims. There is not any delay in payment of the compensation to the victim. Special legal literary camps should be done every month to create awareness of Victim compensation. Even if the offender was not identified, but the victim will always identified. The victim or her dependents may make an application to the State or the District Legal Services Authority for award of compensation, when there is no trial takes place. It is the obligation of court to offer free, confidential, practical, emotional and financial support to victims of crime. Specialist services for the victims of crime should to established at local, and national level to help the victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, exploitation, anti-social behavior or hate crime.

 Female Victimization in Fakeer of Jungheera by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio

The Fakeer of Jungheera is the masterpiece of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (bachchan, 2002). There are many themes in this long epic poem:-

1.  Patriotism

2.  Love

3.  Nature

4.  Death

5.  Inhuman practice of sati

The last one is the central theme of the poem. In the contemporary orthodox Indian society, this rotten system had been in vogue and thereby Derozio protested the ‘Sati’ system in social life. He also teaches about this rotten system in his classroom at the Hindu college, Calcutta. The main purpose of writing this poem is only to highlight the issue of ‘Sati Pratha’.

Derozio very minutely describes every theme of the poem, of various aspects of natural scenary, the evils of society, the force of the passion of love which leads to confrontations at different levels. In the very first startling scene Fakeer, the lover of the victimized Nuleeni rescues her from the funeral pyre, and later Nuleeni’s relatives try to rescue her from Fakeer with the help of Mughal army. In this process a fierce battle goes on. The Fakeer fight a lot with all his courage but still he was defeated by the great army because he was only the one to fight against the big army of Nuleeni’s relatives. The Fakeer was ultimately killed in the battle field. Nuleeni cant leave without him and joins him and dies in his embrace. At last the soul of two star-crossed lover departs from this mundane world.

The character of Nuleeni

The widow Nuleeni comes out from a speed caste Magadhan Religionist tribe. Her fair and beautiful face brightens the dark social setting of the poem. Nuleeni was married to a typical hindu Brahmin man, but she never loved him in her lifetime, she only loved to her beloved Fakeer. When her husband was died, she was taken to the funeral pyre for being Sati. In the day of Henry Derozio, Indian subcontinent was caught by many evils like ‘Sati Pratha’, killing girl child by boiling the still born baby in the hot pot of milk etc. (urvi, 2013)

Nuleeni belongs to a conservative Indian society. She is very innocent, pure and beautiful. She doesn’t want to end her life behind a person whom she never loved. At the spot of cremation Nuleeni was bought up by several women and they were singing songs praising sati. Soon Nulleni was escaped of being Sati by the Fakeer to his cave at Jungheera hills. Nuleeni escaped death but she starts a life of forbidden love though frightened by violent social norms. She has a strong belief that her love will definitely makes them victorious, but her hope was of very little age which died soon.

Nuleeni and Fakeer took the risk to escape and elope, rejecting the social order. The upper class family of Nuleeni never tolerate such insult.

 Love, as says the epigraph, is not an object of merchandize, and nothing can be given away in exchange for the heart. The world has no means to buy the store of hopes and feelings. Both these are linked for over with woman’s soul. The Fakeer’s character was not fully developed in the poem therefore the central character in it is Nuleeni not Fakeer. Although the Fakeer has, at one point, been called ‘the holy man’ and ‘a sainted soul, a meek Fakeer. The Fakeer enjoys the bliss of Nuleeni’s love and makes a clean burst of himself:

  “No more to Mecca’s hallowed shrine

    Shall wafted be a prayer of mine

   No more shall dusky twilight’s ear

   From me a cry complaining hear’

   Henceforth I turn my willing knee

   From Alla, Prophet, heaven, to thee.”

Sati Pratha- evil of society

Sati is a practice among Hindu communities where a recently widowed woman, either voluntarily or by force, immolates herself on her deceased husband’s pyre (The abolished 'Sati Pratha', 2015). Sati also interpreted as a ‘chaste woman’ or a ‘good and devoted wife’. There has been many instances of how the widows were shunned in India and therefore, the only solution for a life without husband was to practice Sati as it was considered to be the highest expression of wifely devotion to a dead husband.

History of Sati

The name ‘Sati’ was derived from the old Hindu mythological Goddess Sati  who burns herself because she was unable to bear her father Daksha’s humiliation towards her husband Shiva.

It was regarded as the barbaric practice by the Islamic rulers of the Mughal period. Humayun the Mughal emperor was the first who try a royal agreement against the practice in 16^th century. And later on his son Akbar was next to issue official orders prohibiting Sati. He also issued orders that no woman could commit Sati without a specific permission from his chief police officers. Later on with the passage of time many Hindu Scholars have argued against Sati. But this evil practice still occurs today in some parts of India and is still regarded by some as the ultimate form of womanly devotion and sacrifice.

 Process of  Nuleeni being Sati

 The young  Hindu widow Nuleeni becomes an object of adoration for the outlawed Fakeer. Nuleeni stands at the funeral pyre of her husband ‘like a blessed child of light’. The chorus of women describe the splendor of the heaven which she is to inherit:

    “Happy; thrice happy; thus early to leave

      Earth and its sorrows, for heaven and its bliss;

The chorus of Brahmins comes out with hymn in praise of the bliss that Sati is entitled to get in the other world. The chief Brahmin praises the Sati as being ‘robed with immortality’. Derozio’s descriptions of Nuleeni standing by the funeral pyre of her husband is critical of the practice of sati and of religious orthodoxy. Nuleeni ha sbeen described as a ‘lonely within’ and ‘a pale flower beside the funeral pile’. Her beauty is created perfect by ‘Eternal hand’. ‘Within her suffering bosom’ lie ‘wild thoughts’. Derozio repeatedly emphasizes the sufferings in Nuleeni’s mind and says that ‘Her softened glance reveals the suffering mind’. Nuleeni was in fact, not ready to immolate herself for mere religion’s sake and is looking for someone to come to her rescue:

   “Nuleeni’s eyes is not upon the dead’

     To one after her parting thoughts have fled”

A close observation may very well reveal that in her ‘grief for the dead was wanting’. Nuleeni seems to be ‘bowed to the earth with misery’. Upon the lighted funeral pyre she seems to sing her ‘swan song’. As Nuleeni’s ‘link of being chain’ is to be snapped, a hawk- like attack by the Fakeer rescues her from the ignoble atmosphere, and she is rowed away to the rock island to live in happiness with her former lover, now an outlawed Fakeer.

Conclusion

Love is dominating motif in ‘The Fakeer of Jungheera’ and the poet associates religious images to reveal the sentiment of love. In this way in our society where still backward thinkers living, push forward the evil system for torturing women, and victimized women becomes helpless in the hand of these orthodox people. Many of the wrongs that are done to women have been encouraged by superstitions. The birth of a girl child is considered unfortunate. Girls are still not educated in many parts of our country.

Women are treated as domestic labour and have no financial or decision making rights. The custom of Sati which is described in the poem was practiced in our country. Women are always victimized everywhere, inside or outside. They are not safe in home too, so outside their situation always remain awful.

Bibliography

bachchan, a. k. (2002). H.L.V. Derozio's the Fakeer of Jungheera': A study in the Narrative art. In A. n. prasad, Indian writing in english:critical exploration (p. 288). sarup & sons.

department of psychiatery. (1999, december 22). pubmed.gov. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10623976

Judge, Y. S. (2015, september 6). Female Victimization In India: Recent Trends in Judiciary. Articles on Law .

The abolished 'Sati Pratha'. (2015). indiaToday.in .

urvi, b. (2013, october 14). blogspot. Retrieved from blogspot.in: bhatturvi1315.blogspot.in/2013/10/fakeer-of-jungheera.html

wikipedia the free encylopedia. (n.d.). wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Retrieved august 26, 2017, from en.wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimisation