Roopa Story: The Face of One Victim of Dowry
Roopa’s is young woman whose husband and in-laws forced her to consume acid when her parents refused to pay them dowry.
Roopa´s story
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Roopa’s is young woman whose husband and in-laws forced her to consume acid when her parents refused to pay them dowry.
Roopa´s story
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Roopa’s story is so sad. At least her suffering
serves to help shine a light on women’s
plight in a male dominiated society with its
assorted abuses. I am from the West. We have
the story of Adam’s Rib. The demotion of women
is a stragety to exploit them. The de-humanization
of any group is done by assorted vested-interest
and delusions. I think collective efforts
like Rita’s 50 Million Missing is the way for
us to fight and finally win this struggle with
these brute forces.
Neil Pharr
June 26, 2008
This story’s anti-climactic ending made me cry as after reading about Roopa’s rescue and recovery, we were informed about how she returned to live with her abusers. Certainly a testament of how the “rescue” efforts need to begin with teaching woman new ways to view themselves, and asses their value as independent of spouses. It involves education that will bear impact on their very psyche. Ultimately it involves a major shift in the way the consciousness of the Indian people as a whole regard females. The brute force, in my opinion, is the popular destructive attitude that woman are worth less than men. I believe that Roopa would have not returned to her abusive spouse, has she been raised to believe in herself and her own value independent from that of a male she is connected to. My heart goes out to all woman in India, and all over the world, who have yet to find their own independent sense of self. May Roopa’s plight remind us of this innate value in women that has yet to be fully exercised. And, may all women who ever think ill of themselves, or look outside to find their own value, engage Roopa’s tragic story as a reminder of how dangerous that can be. For we may be able to rescue the victim from the custody of the victimizer, but we cannot extricate the victim-mentality/identity from the victim’s sense of self without much deep psychological treatment. It is a treatment, I fear, most woman in India need, before they too suffer the fate Roopa has: a compromised life, at most. Even after so many efforts were made to rescue her body! Perhaps it is the minds of Indian woman we should urgently aim to rescue? Fifty million female bodies may be already missing, but how many Indian woman are missing their soul? Those do not show up in the statistics. The whole crisis leaves me with a heavy heart.
Mrs. C. Ghosh
September 25, 2009