Unmarried women from the Lank village of North India are now not allowed to own a mobile phone. The village population measures a mere 50,000 people in size, but nearby regions have considering implementing the same rules. The reason? Arranged marriages are still the norm in that part of the world, and mobile phones enable couples who are violating their parent’s wishes to keep in touch, arrange secret rendezvous, and in some cases even get married illegally. When illegal marriages happen, people get killed. I’m not joking, they’re called “honor killings“. There were 34 couples who eloped last month and because of that 8 people were executed. No matter what you may think about this, how morally wrong it is, and how these people need to get with the times, tradition is tradition and there’s little the police can do. Of course they try to stop the killings, but when you break a tradition that’s been standing longer than Christianity has existed, you pay with blood.
Local women’s rights group Disha is calling the new laws “archaic”, especially since boys will be able to use their mobile phones. Mobile phones help propel people out of poverty and the ban only keeps women from being able to help their family make extra money. “These [mobile phones] help in easy communication, which in turn help these youth to get jobs. One cannot discriminate use of these contraptions on basis of sex,” Disha president K.N. Tiwari said.
We’re in trying times, especially since the internet is brining cultures from all around the world to our screens. Some people see how relationships work in Europe and America and want to have a piece of that happiness for themselves. Parents get mad, parents sharpen their knives, parents chop off heads. Isn’t a spanking enough?
[Via: The Washington Post]