Gender, Religion And Caste

Some of the different aspects of our life in which women are discriminated or disadvantaged in India are:

a) Education: Education is one of the most important factor in which women are discriminated in our country. In India, the literacy rate of women is still lower than men. If we check the facts there are only 54% of the women are literate against 76% literacy among men.

b) Proportion of women in paid jobs: The job proportion of women still have a small share in the highly paid jobs. Women are much hard worker than men even though on an average an Indian women works one hour more than an average man every day but still work of a women did not get that much importance due to which they have to work for low paid jobs.

c) Preference for a male child: In India, still the mentality of many did not changed. They still prefer sons over daughters and find ways of aborting girl child. This abortion has led to decline in child sex ratio.

d) Crime against women: Women in our country are not safe. The crime rate against women is very high. Women gets exploited and harassed at the workplace and also at their home.

Different forms of communal politics are as follows:

a) The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs. Belief in the superiority of one’s religion over other religions are so common.

E.g.: Militant religious groups

b) A communal mind often leads to a quest for political dominance of religious community. For those belonging to community it can take them for of a desire to form a separate political unit.

E.g.: Separatist leaders and political parties in Jammu and Kashmir

c) The most frequent form of communalism is political mobilization on the religious guidelines. It attempts to bring the people of one’s religion together.

E.g.: Many politicians use this technique to influence the voters from the two largest religious communities in the country.

d) Communalism can be ugliest if it takes the shape of communal violence, riots and massacre.

E.g.: India and Pakistan communal riots

Caste inequalities roots yet not completely finished from our country. Most of the people or families still get married with their own caste or tribe. This caste inequality in our country still leads to untouchability among various social groups. Education yet not easily available to the people belongs to low castes. Economic status is also closely linked to the caste system

These all factors and facts are enough to say that caste system and caste inequalities are still prevailing in our country.

Two reasons to say that caste alone cannot determine election results in India are:

(i) In our country, no parliamentary constituency has a clear majority of one single caste. So every candidate and party tries to win the confidence of more than one caste and community. If these parties and the candidate win the confidence of people belongs to various different castes then it is easy for them to win the elections

(ii) It is also true that no party wins the votes of all the voters of a caste or community. Many political leaders and people refers that a caste is a ‘vote bank’ of one party. This simply means that people from that particular caste or community will vote in a large proportion for that party or that particular candidate

The status of women’s representation in India’s legislative bodies in India is as follows:

In Lok Sabha: 10% or less than 10%

In assemblies: Less than 5%

In India, it is very difficult to make it a secular state as communalism has always been a major threat and challenge to the spirit of democracy. Our constitution has made many provisions to make our country a secular state.

Two of the most important provisions that make our country a secular state are followings:

(i) One of the most important provisions is Fundamental rights under the Right to freedom of religion as this gives right to citizens to follow, choose, practice and propagate any religion.

(ii) Another provision that is useful in making our country secular is that our constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion under the cultural and educational rights.

Gender division means division of rights and work on the basis of gender. It means, men always are superior then women whether in the field of job, society or home. This is the poor thinking of our society which leads in social inequalities in the society. Gender division also leads to unequal assign of roles for men and women by the society

Hence option (b) is correct

In India, seats are reserved for women in Panchayati Raj bodies as there is no reservation of seats for women in the cabinets, Lok Sabha and state legislatives assemblies.

So, option (d) is correct

From above given following statements A and C are correct because in communal politics one religion is superior to that of other and followers of a particular religion constitute one community

Therefore, option (c) is correct

Our Indian constitution is most lengthiest constitution in the world. It prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion also provides to all individuals freedom to profess any religion and ensures equality of citizens within religious communities

But it never talks about giving official status to one religion. Hence option (b) is not correct about the constitution of our country

We know that most of the people or families still get married with their own caste or tribe. This caste inequality in our country still leads to untouchability among various social groups. This results for the social division of our society.

Hence, caste is the correct option to fill in this blank

Correct match for the above given list is as follows:

A person who believes in equal rights and opportunities for women and men: Feminist

A person who says that religion is the principal basis of community: Communalist

A person who thinks that casts is the principal basis of community: Castiest

A person who does not discriminate others on the basis of religious beliefs: Secularist

Hence, option (b) is correct