Acid Attack: Burning Society through Decades

Society is considered as one of the core components of human evolution and civilization. After the Stone Age, human beings formed a community to share their resources, culture, emotion, and compassion known as society sharing common philosophy and goals to achieve proximity of human civilization. During the process, society always kept changing. Sometimes its philosophy was harsh and autocratic and sometimes it changed its common motto to salvation, crossing through various twists and phases we have here as a modern society today.

Men and Women are an integral part of society sharing common goals and lifestyles since past centuries, contributing their part to civilization. A human being is a superior animal and being human there are freedom, dominance, and power over all the living beings. But, within this dominance, there is another form of suppression that made human beings lower grade than the animals. Say that be racial suppression, cultural discrimination, gender biases, religious indifference, and many others. The victims of such never have any opportunity to experience freedom, that freedom that a human being deserves to feel.

Narrowing down to gender biases, we have numerous cases to observe for. Having an existence as male or female, imparted great difference in society, since the early ages to the modern era. People set up their values that the strong get power overall and this caused the birth of dominance and these values guided for gender biases.

Naturally, both males and females share equal strength if provided with proper diet, exercise, and proper thought process. We have several examples in scriptures of Hinduism where women were treated as the form of power and there are theories of male and female being the same soul. But in society, there was some different practice. There is one physical problem with a female as compared to male during the time of menstruation and pregnancy, there comes a bit of delicacy in health issues which so-called dominant males in the society termed as weakness of women. Maybe due to this, there started male dominance over females and the process went on and on to become the culture. Male boasted themselves as protector of females and started exploiting them. They created biases in opportunities and empowerment and that lead to a more devastating situation because women started being backward than men and they are compelled to rely upon men for their existence. Women also accepted this philosophy for centuries and which eventually pushed this society towards male dominant society.

Male dominant society is the synonym for dark reality. By its name, one can judge how women would have been treated in this society. The dominance led women to bind themselves within four walls and within the boundary of social values and norms that do not support empowerment and everybody practiced the culture for ages and it got embedded in the social system and the discrimination moved towards women biasing women and bearing the flag of masculinity through centuries. The dominant males claimed all rights of women towards them and started personifying women as an object. The toy that can give them pleasure, the servant that works for them, and the caretaker that takes care of the rest of the stuff. Women’s’ feelings were not much valued, her dream, her choices and preferences, and her freedom were just guided under socio-cultural norms for centuries and it passed from generation to generation.

Male on the other hand has boasted their masculinity for centuries. Their pride of fighting a war or killing any animal, the pride of abducting any women or creating empire we can have enough evidence from history A king can have hundreds of wives and the queen have to rely upon that king to wait for her turn to receive that love. Women, if not found beautiful, were rejected by males and she would have to live a life of misery. The definition of beauty was derived from pathetic ideologies where women had to torture themselves just to stay so-called beautiful from a male perspective. We have cases from china where women had to maintain their small feet to be beautiful and for this, they had to go through severe torture from childhood. The times when women are married at an early age and they are caged inside their home doing household chores, forced to die after the death of their husband as sati and severe other cases. Male on the other hand had all the freedom to marry again after their wife’s death. There are many such cases from the past and the scars of that time can also be felt at the modern time no matter how evolved humans are.

The modern era, the era of science, the era of change have their own story. Though there have been few opportunities for women, masculinity and dominance are still deep-rooted because still society personifies women as an object and some of the societies and some of the males have tenderness to achieve the thing they want by any method. This is the initial seed behind many of the social crimes. Male has its own dominant ego derived from ideologies of the pathetic society that led them to be ignorant to bear rejections. They blame women for not appreciating their charismatic power of being male and start treating the women as the culprit of the community. Society in many cases supports the same male ideology boosting their confidence.

Society is responsible for every crime. For centuries women are treated as beautiful dolls or toys which is a slave for men and this mentality derived from the self-proclamation egoistic nature of men towards women. Guided by these, they decide to ruin her beauty if not she is theirs; she could not be someone else’s too. This thought process leads to acid attacks, leaving women helpless once again, unhealthy, and rejected. The harsh reality still prevails.

There are other forms of degrading and torturing processes to women as observed in society. May that be rape or threatening or maybe blackmailing and molesting or insulting in the public or bullying or creating rumors all these cheap practices are done under ignorance of society. Rape and acid attack have their most severity which may eventually lead to the death of women. Raping is also an ill masculine thought of self-proclaiming a woman to fulfill their sexual desire and leaving her as an object. This social crime is also the result of social schooling of ill male dominance and lack of proper empowerment to women. The rape cases are increasing day by day globally in this modern society where there are lots of talking about women's rights and empowerment. Why is it so? Maybe we just talk, isn’t it? The question remains unanswered and the justice delays as always.

The acid attack being more crucial, the pathetic act of self-proclamation-driven thought leads some men to ruin the beauty of women so that she can’t have her own family, her own life in the future. The confidence in males is generated by illiteracy and the male-dominant structure of society which refuses to bring a change. Lack of empowerment to women regarding self-defense, education, management, and leadership, make women unaware of the situation and as a result, they have to bear unresisting pain of acid over their body. It is dark and yes it still prevails.

Acid is available in every shop. There is no such law regarding buying and selling of acid considering it as a daily usable product for cleaning. How can the government be so ignorant after having many more cases of acid attack? If we have to buy any ornament there has a series of processes of billing and registering and for acid, there is no record. The culprits have no fear to buy it because of loose governmental planning.

Acid attack is an example to show what extent some men can go to suppress women's rights and human rights and also shows the so-called changed structure of society. Why doesn’t the law enforce strict regulations for the culprit? Just arresting and punishing the culprit cannot solve the problem. In most of the cases, the culprits are also not arrested by various socio-political causes. It is we who should realize the severity of the situation now.

How well we have been informing ourselves regarding women's empowerment? Do we practice equality at home? workplace? Do we restrict our mothers, sisters, wife, or friends within so-called social boundaries? Do you accept female leadership? Are you content, giving birth to a girl child? We should ask ourselves these questions first. Isn’t it the right time to change society now? All of these small questions can bring a major change in society and create an environment for justice: Justice for humanity.

Feminism is not about women's dominance, it is about empowerment and equality. Most of the mafia of the male-dominant structure has deteriorated the term “Feminism “as evil in order to suppress the thoughts and processes regarding women empowerment. Let’s take an example to support the statement. Let’s go into the parallel universe. There is a boy who is restricted to go outside and play because as a boy he has to learn household chores and cannot play football basketball or other physical games. And girls, on the other hand, come home eat sleep and play physical and mental games, and have good opportunities for education. The boy is married at an early age and after marriage, his whole life is limited to doing household chores serving his wife and children and girls, on the other hand, exploring more and more wonders of this world. Now can you say that boys are more powerful than girls physically and mentally, in this scenario? Of course not, then why have you dominating women for centuries saying she is weak? Can we say males are naturally dominant now? No. Strength comes from opportunities and if provided a great opportunity both males and females can play an equal role, uplifting civilization and building a better society. This is the main motto of feminism. To control social crimes like acid attacks, women empowerment, and social involvement to fight towards the issue is far more necessary.

Society can bring change, and we can bring change to society. There will be a green society with beautiful human beings sharing the love. There will be a paradise on the earth and gods and angels will come once again taking the form of human beings. The fire of acid will be extinguished and for it, we must take the initiation. As we all know, it starts with us, starting from our family and leading towards society. 

27 July 2020.