Section 354 got some clarity

Today morning 8 o clock while rushing through the morning activities of breakfast and running to catch the bus to office in time i picked up "TOI" from the door. Saw two headlines on the front page and was forced to put the news paper in my bag to read it on my way to office :

The first one was about the complete game theory of the Cricket world cup with a photograph of the man in blue on it, everything was so familiar, i knew the men in blue, i knew the 3 scenarios of whether India, Srilanka or Bangaladesh will go to the semifinals, i knew all of it so well. And it was definitely interesting.

And second one, just next to this read " Finally, SC defines woman's modesty" with a face of helpless girl completely horror struck. I could niether understand the context nor the headlines. But i wanted to read this.

The tone of this article was a hopeful one where Mr. Dhananjay Mahapatra, the reporter, had menitoned that there is an Section 354 in the law of Indian Penal Code which deals with the offence of "outraging the modesty" of a woman. The word modesty did not have any clear meaning in this article and that was clarified by the supreme court yesterday.

The clarification said " The essence of a Woman's Modesty is her sex"

This moves me, this hurts me, this makes me think and ridicule over how insensitive have we been for all these years towards woman. And suddenly i realize that when people say cricket world cup they only mean about the Men's cricket world cup. So are we true fans of the sport, i must say not really, we have a set frame of mind and we have just been following it.

To me, there are a thousand things which could lead to immodesty while anyone interacting with a woman and this is not just related to her sex. All I am saying is this law is just making the harassment part a little more specific and detailed but saying that “the essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex” is wrong. There are personality traits, freedom, independence, respect, which are a part of anyone’s being and it does not depend on his / her sex. But these are a few things that are not available easily to a woman, and to me that is discrimination and this outraging her modesty, which is not in case of man.

It is about pride that a woman feels for being a woman. But we have now by law associated it just to her sex. And the law goes on to detail what can be possible acts of outraging this modesty which has all the overtones of sexual assault on a woman.

Don't you people feel that there is something wrong somewhere? we need to treat women with more respect. There are a thousand ways in which the modesty of woman is getting outraged.

To me a man forcing his wife to live in a particular way, to behave, to dress, to eat, to think in a particular way is also outraging the modesty of woman. But this has no sexual overtones so it is ok as per SC.

Do let me know what you feel on this.