Village bans cell phones for unmarried women
A local council in northern India has banned unmarried women from carrying mobile telephones to halt a series of illicit romances between partners from different castes, media reports said yesterday.
The Baliyan council in Uttar Pradesh state decided to act after at least 23 young couples ran away and got married over the last year against their parents’ wishes.
"The panchayat (village council) was convinced that the couples planned their elopement over their cell phones," village elder Jatin Raghuvanshi told the Telegraph.
The rules of inter-caste marriages are complicated and extremely rigid in many rural communities in India, with some lovers even murdered in "honour killings" by relatives trying to protect their family’s reputation.
"All parents were told to ensure their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The boys can do so, but only under their parents’ monitoring," said Satish Tyagi, a spokesman for the village council.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Newspaper Article of the Day
From the "India page" of the November 25th Gulf Times (Doha):
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3 comments:
Hussies.
I guess we'll never know if India would have become so rigid without the Islamic conquests, but this idiocy certainly sounds Muslim-ish to me. (Or maybe it's just based in the shame/honor culture common to the East.) But it's certainly waaay too inflexible a society for this American's tastes!
Naah, the caste system has been a part and parcel of Indian culture since the idea of reincarnation to perpetuate an underclass of hated or enemy tribes while simultaneously uplifting favored tribes to royalty.
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