Perpetually Perplexed

First of all, I must thank Arnab Goswami. If not for his way of conducting the debate about why the documentary should be banned, and his usual style of not letting others complete their statements, I would not have watched the documentary in youtube. The documentary shows a poor couple from village, who sell their land to fulfill their daughter's dream of becoming a doctor. That is a great thing in our country, where most parents if at all they educate their daughters, they educate only for finding a good husband for them. It also shows the Nirbhaya who wants to study and help the people of their village. At the same time, it shows the convicts who feel that, it is girl's fault for going out in the evening, that too with her male friend. If you blame their background and lack of education for such a warped opinion about women, their lawyer has similar opinion. His now famous statement that " he will burn his daughter or sister if they have affair before marriage...

Najiba is being shot by gunmen in aremotr afghan village . A crowd surrounded is cheering instead of trying to stop the murder. They are even filming the event. This is honor killing in Afghanistan. I was reading this article in TOI regarding the fate of Afghan women. There have been 56 honor killings in last four months in the country. And we all know that Taliban has almost stopped education of girls. How long will these women suffer and why? And why is the world a mute spectator? It is not that the country was like this for centuries. In 1970s, 70% of teachers in Afghanistan were women, 40% of doctors were women and so were 20% of civil services.  If so, when did things go wrong so badly? When the cold war started and Russia backed party started ruling Afghan lands, it declared equal rights for women. On its part America, funded and encouraged Taliban which wanted to take women to 15th century. What happened after that is history. But in this war between US and Russia, ...