Daijiworld Media Network – Mangaluru (PMD)

Mangaluru, Sep 19: “Antagonism against the union women and child development minister, Maneka Gandhi, pushes the Purush Adhikar Sangh, to make public its charter.” says a communiqué issued by the Purush Adhikar Sangh, a Belagavi based men’s welfare association which has pan India presence including Mangaluru.

Purush Adhikar Sangh claims to be a champion for men’s welfare and rights, aiming to prevent abuse of those very rights.

The Purush Adhikar Sangh opines that, comments by the minister on men are highly negative, insensitive and derogatory on most occasions, when she speaks her mind with the media.

Statements by Maneka such as, “All violence is male generated” caused quite a stir among Purush Adhikar Sangh members who firmly state, "Even if most crimes are done by men, it's also true that many positive things in the world like science, technology, philosophy, medicine, are also male generated"

Maneka Gandhi

The communiqué also quoted a circular by the minister. "Fathers, if given paternity leave, will just use it as a holiday." To which, they were of the opinion that this was a grave insult to 50% of the population of Indian men.

The women and child development ministry spearheaded a campaign for increasing maternity leaves to 26 weeks or 6 months for working women, which was passed by the Rajya Sabha. The Purush Adhikar Sangh believed, extra work-burden falls on shoulders of men who form the majority of workforce and the ministry does not consider how proposed laws affect men.

An open interactive session on Facebook was organized by the ministry a few months ago, during which, the minister was asked about her initiative for dealing with dropout rates of schoolboys. To which she tersely replied, “Not under me!"

Finally, the Sangh criticized the minister's lack of awareness on basic gender-based suicide statistics in India, where in a Facebook session, she said, suicide rates of women are double or triple that of men, whereas the reality, they claimed was that, suicide of Indian men was twice as that of women.

"The biases of the person will continue to reflect and get entrenched in policies and laws. Therefore, we demand that Maneka Gandhi be relieved of her role as minister of women and child development ministry, and instead another minister should be appointed who has focus on welfare of whole family than just women and children, and who has a balanced and appreciative view of contributions and sacrifices of all sections of society" said the press release of the Purush Adhikar Sangh.

Purush Adhikar Charter

As per its statement, the Purush Adhikar Sangh seeks to reduce suicide rate of men and foster acceptability in society, thus working towards- Abolishing existing laws biased against men or violative of their rights, making existing laws gender neutral to be on par with women rights, removing wrongful implementation processes in executive and judiciary that violate fundamental rights and process of natural justice for men, sensitizing men's issues in society and media.

Furthermore, they aim at- making laws and policies which do not marginalize men in families and society, forming support and counseling groups for men facing abuse of rights just because they are men, rejecting and working against attempts to dilute men’s fundamental rights by the much dreaded women empowerment goals, focusing on role of fathers in family including child rearing, creating awareness about adverse effects of father-child separation under sole custody arrangements following divorce or separation, and working towards creating shared parenting laws with meaningful role for fathers.