India is a magical country, as one of the four ancient civilizations, India has thousands of years of civilization history, a long history has gradually formed a unique culture, attracting many tourists to play there.
The holy city of Varanasi, the Taj Mahal, the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the Red Fort of New Delhi, the Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad and other gorgeous buildings make people linger; the crowded and dilapidated slums are jaw-dropping; and the strange customs of bathing in the dirty Waters of the Ganges, drinking cow urine, and coating cow dung all over the body are incredible.
This country where the waters of the Ganges flows, haunting the sound of Buddha all year round, thin sarees cover not only the beautiful faces of women, but also another face of this ancient country that is not known to the world, and the prison where male and female prisoners are held is another feature of this country.
For many Indian women, once they enter the prison for a crime, it means that everything is doomed, the outside world is bleak, and the world in the prison is even more hot, not so much that they enter the prison, but rather hell.
In many countries, male and female prisoners are held separately in different prisons, after all, there is a difference between men and women, and separate control can avoid a lot of trouble and protect personal privacy, but india has very few women's prisons dedicated to women prisoners. It is usually possible to free up several rooms in men's prisons as cells for female prisoners.
Many women enter prison and have to face male inmates to work and live with them. In such an environment, their privacy is not protected and their security is constantly threatened.
Women have no status in mixed prisons, and for them, eating can be a problem.
Whenever it is time for dinner, the male prisoners will eat first, and when they have eaten and drunk enough, the female prisoners can only face the cold residue, but they do not dare to be picky, because if they want to live here, they must learn to be patient.
In addition to their insecure diets, they also face diseases. Many of India's prisons are relatively old, with weak infrastructure, dark and damp environments, rats and cockroaches, which have undoubtedly become breeding grounds for bacteria to breed and spread.
Because of the special physical reasons of women, they must use some special hygiene products at specific times, but prisons rarely prepare these supplies for women, and they have a high chance of getting gynecological diseases here.
Prison conditions are rudimentary, medical staff are seriously understaffed, and once the sick female prisoners cannot be treated in time, whether they can survive or not will be left to fate.
In addition, they will face oppression by prison guards, who will give priority to meeting the demands of male prisoners in all aspects, who are often blind and deaf to the needs of female prisoners. The prison guards do not know how to "pity xiangxiang and cherish jade", and the female prisoners can only carefully listen to the prison guards here and dare not resist in any way.
Women in prison have to bear the same labor as men, some of which are beyond the scope of their physical strength, but the slightest slack will be considered by the prison guards as passive slack, which will cause a bout of scolding. Chronic overwork and malnutrition leave their bodies in an overdrawn state.
If physical torture makes them suffer, then spiritual torture makes them even more devastated.
For them, going to jail is tantamount to losing their future, and her family will abandon them completely because they have humiliated the whole family. Many women inmates are never visited by their families after they are in prison, and they may be homeless after they are released.
Without family affection, it is equivalent to no hope and sustenance, and their hearts are like ashes. Some female prisoners even want to spend their lives in prison because they don't know where to go when they go out. Therefore, from the moment they enter the prison, they enter the gates of hell.
First of all, the main reason is the low status of women in India
(1) India's patriarchal ideology has a long history
As we all know, Hinduism is the state religion of India, and as the oldest, most widely distributed and most widely believed religion in India, it has a far-reaching influence in India.
Unlike Buddhism, which advocates the idea of "equality of all beings," Hinduism not only promotes the caste system, but also considers women to be subordinate to men.
The Hindu classic Manu Law once stated that women's rights should be vested in men, women should be subordinate to their husbands in the family, and they should not have independent personalities.
Indians are devout believers in Hinduism, and they all subscribe to this idea of male superiority over female inferiority, including many women.
(ii) In India, it is already a blessing that women can survive
In October 2019, a man named Hithi Sirlohi in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh sadly passed away just minutes after his daughter was born. He could only bear to bury his daughter in pain, and as he dug the earth, the shovel touched a clay pot, and the cries of babies were heard inside.
Hitchy Sirohi was so excited that he thought his daughter had come alive. However, carefully distinguishing the sound was actually coming from the jar, he opened the jar and saw a baby girl, then he called the police, and the baby girl was taken to the hospital for treatment.
For a long time, the idea of son preference in India was very serious, and girls were seen as a burden. In some extremely poor areas, if the family already has several children, the girls who are reborn later are likely to be cruelly abandoned by their parents.
(3) Special marriage customs make girls a heavy burden on the family
An important reason why parents are reluctant to support girls is that Indian women have too many dowries.
In India, from the day a girl is born, her parents worry about her generous dowry. Marrying a daughter, the parents may have to give everything they have, and even bear heavy debts. Many girls may also be unable to marry for the rest of their lives because their parents cannot afford a dowry.
According to Indian tradition, when a man and a woman get married, the man does not have to prepare too many things, and the woman's parents must not only warmly entertain the relatives and friends who come to watch the ceremony, send red envelopes to the guests (relatives and friends who come to the wedding do not need to accompany the gift), but also marry the daughter in rupees (Indian currency) and gold and silver jewelry.
The amount of dowry a girl has when she gets married directly determines her future status in her husband's family, and many Indian girls have been insulted and even beaten because their husbands and in-laws are not satisfied with the amount of dowry. Some grooms will even leave the bride at the wedding because of the dowry problem.
When a woman from an ordinary Indian family gets married, her parents will have to bear about $5,000, which is equivalent to more than 300,000 Indian rupees, equivalent to more than 30,000 yuan. But the average working class in India earns only about 20,000 rupees a month, and more than 300,000 rupees is an astronomical amount for them.
Many Indian girls do not dare to divorce easily even if they are wronged after marriage, because their parents almost ruined their families to marry her, if divorced, the husband will not return the dowry to the woman, and it will be very difficult to remarry in the future, and the parents will be very disappointed.
Moreover, India only passed a marriage law recognizing the existence of "divorce" in 1955, and India's divorce rate is less than 1%, which is not worth mentioning compared with the high divorce rate of 60% in Belgium, which ranks first in the world.
Indian men do not pay much cost when they get married, they easily get a virtuous wife and a rich dowry brought by their wives, "too easy to get but do not know how to cherish", many Indian men do not know how to respect and cherish their wives after marriage.
Many women in India do not even have the right to education and work outside the home, and their ignorance of thought and lack of economic independence make them dependent on their husbands
Women make up almost half of India's population, yet their right to education and great work potential are largely overlooked.
According to incomplete statistics, the number of female illiteracy in India currently exceeds 180 million, and the female illiteracy rate is very high. Lacking the enlightenment of knowledge, many girls become ignorant, they do not know how to fight for their rights, and they feel that it is right to go against the grain and ask for everything.
Many women not only do not have access to education, but also rarely have the opportunity to work outside the home. After marriage, most of them will stay at home to meet their husbands and children, and take care of all the housework in the family.
A 2015 McKinsey Global Institute report showed that the potential of women in India to work is vastly underestimated:
If Indian women can work on an equal footing like men, Indian women will be able to add $2.9 trillion to the Indian economy by as early as 2025, which will account for 60% of India's annual GDP.
Since many women in India have no job opportunities, they naturally have no financial resources, and every penny they spend is provided by their husbands, so they have to rely on their husbands.
The status of Indian women is not high, and ordinary women still do not enjoy the rights they should have, let alone female prisoners? So it's no surprise that India doesn't have a dedicated women's prison.
According to the data, there are 76 central prisons, 250 regional prisons, 822 improvised prisons, 22 general prisons, 27 open prisons, and 18 juvenile correctional facilities in India.
At least 200 of these prisons were built in the 18th century, with weak infrastructure, narrow and dilapidated infrastructure, and problems such as safety and health, and disease prevention that need to be solved urgently.
As of 2019, prisons across India held a total of 478,000 prisoners, of whom 458,000 were men, or about 96 percent, and women were 19,913, or about 4 percent. But the actual capacity of these prisons is only 403,000 prisoners, and the prisons are overloaded with 75,000 prisoners.
Mumbai Arthur Road Prison, one of the most crowded prisons in India, currently has 2,600 prisoners, but it is planned to host only 800 people.
Compared with the huge number of prisoners, Indian prison administrators, correctional personnel, and medical personnel are seriously understaffed, and in 2020, the cumulative shortage of these three categories of personnel reached 50,000.
Because of the shortage of manpower, but also to save space and facilitate centralized management, many prisons in India do not classify prisoners, resulting in prisoners of different genders, ages, and sentences being locked up together.
However, India is not a prison without good conditions and facilities, india has a famous Ajimer Central Prison, where every 15 prisons will have a super luxurious prison. Not only are there clean beds in the prison, but also all the necessities of life and all kinds of electrical appliances.
But to enjoy this high-end prison, you have to pay eight thousand rupees (equivalent to eight thousand yuan) a month. Only high-caste, wealthy prisoners can afford this money, and ordinary Indian female prisoners are simply not blessed.
India's mixed-sex prisons have a long history, and the treatment of women in prisons can be imagined. Therefore, the women of India are extremely obedient, and they dare not go beyond the thunder pool, because once they enter prison, what awaits them will be a dark life.
In recent years, the status of women in India has improved, and I really hope that this situation can be effectively improved in the future!
What do you think of the fact that there are very few dedicated women's prisons in India? Welcome to come together.