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Front Page >> Letters to the Editor  > Story

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Women in Manipur Carve Their Own Destiny – a Rejoinder
Sir,

Apropos of Mr. Th. Santa’s opinion on Manipur in his article as referred above dated 11 Nov/2002 vide ManipurOnline 9-15 Nov./2002 issue, permit me to re-quote , “But in our society, the Meitei women follows the footsteps of their husband like a goat to be slaughtered. We have seen many women doing hard work …..”

This is rather an unkind remark having no direction. Who makes our women do hard work, and rather what makes them to follow the footsteps of her husband like a goat? Manipuri women do not follow their husbands under some compulsion to be slaughtered or the like; they are following their husbands as they have a “love”, a sincere and sacrificing love for their husbands. Many women do hard work because they want to supplement their wants, may be ‘material’ or the ‘mind’ of the family. 

When their husband’s work and efficiency in family craft do not suffice to maintain their homesteads, this driving force inspires our women to come to the forefront out of love of husband, children, concern for family prestige and standard, and help landing properly to the cultural base of the society. My heart goes out to ‘our’ women when ‘man’ makes such unkind remarks. We, men, should stop for a while, look and introspect and search the heart. Can we not visualize the whole scenario of male chauvinism right from the very birth of a boy in a family – brought up like a prince, providing more, and to be very frank, love is lavishly given to them. 

As a result, our “sons” are feeling more self-important, more-protected and more dependent which ultimately make “them” gentler, virtually turning them into a “sadhu” at a very young age, their lack of work culture, depending more on others, reflects the poor performance in study, as for example. Every year the girls are the toppers in the examination. The lack of muscle power of man, more particularly in middle-class family, reflects less performance in the field of sports, the girls are getting more laurels in sports harvesting Golds, Silvers and Bronzes. The truth is that man follows the woman in her footstep and not the vice-versa, under the present scenario of Manipur.

Time has come now to introspect for a home work for a notional change in attitude, if we were really interested to save ‘Man-kind’ from further deterioration. I really envy the lots of Manipuri woman who are making so many good projects taking the advantage of the complacency of man in Manipur. Woman is brought up as a girl-child who are caught young, right from the early-morning chores e.g. sweeping the floor, cleaning utensils, collection of water, cooking, washing the clothes to farm work and weaving, along with regularly schooling and ardent study. This make ‘Manipuri woman’ strong, more intelligent and work cultured. Do we not require stronger man if we really were interested in sustaining our love towards woman in the conventional man-superior society of life? Or, should ‘men’ surrender themselves and what is theirs to them, and theirs converted? We can think of a solution in this direction.

Yours faithfully,

(A. Ibotombi Singh)

Retd. Joint Director CADA, Manipur

Read Article Women in Manipur carve their own destiny

 

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