Know Your Rights

Know Your Rights

An informed citizen is an empowered citizen. Knowledge of one’s rights is of primal importance in conceiving, demanding and ensuring a just society. All human beings are entitled to certain fundamental rights. Part III of our constitution guarantees the following basic human rights to all sections of the populace irrespective of race, place of birth, religion, caste, creed or gender.

•    Right to Equality
•    Right to Freedom
•    Right against Exploitation
•    Right to Freedom of Religion
•    Cultural and Educational Rights
•    Right to Constitutional Remedies

However, these rights do not remain absolute and hence are subject to reasonable restrictions in view of protecting public interest. Other than these basic rights entitled to all, our constitution makes some special legal provisions for women .They are:

•    Right to lead an independent life free of violence
•    Right to a life of dignity and integrity
•    Right to food
•    Right to shelter
•    Right to health
•    Physical and sexual rights
•    Right to choice of work and safety at work
•    Pregnancy and child- rearing rights
•    Right to opinion
•    Right to property
•    Right to choice of dress
•    Right to freedom of worship
•    Right to privacy
•    Right to all other internationally ordained human rights

A stratified society can conspire to manipulate the vulnerability suffered by its women shackled by gender dictates. There has to be widespread public awareness that a woman is entitled to seek judicial interventions in cases of the following:

•    Domestic violence
•    Enforcing continuous and prolonged starvation
•    Restraining movement
•    Inflicting physical and mental torture by preventing communication with children
•    Physical abuse
•    Acts that are directed towards manipulating mental states of the woman which include insulting,
      bullying, and yelling
•    Preventing the building and maintaining of social relationships
•    Hurling insults at the mother in front of children that mount up to mental abuse
•    Refusal of the father to take up paternal responsibility in order to inflict mental torture on his spouse
•    Divorce threats because of dowry demands
•    Sexual abuse
•    Rape
•    Sexual abuse at work and other places
•    Sexual trafficking
•    Commercialized sexual abuse and coaxing into sex
•    Refusing treatment and other requisites to ensure reproductive health
•    Prenatal sex- determining tests and female foeticide
•    Denying right to property and inheritance
•    Discrimination of sexual minorities, HIV infected women, women prisoners, homosexual women,
     physically and mentally challenged women etc.
•    Gender discrimination and manipulation
•    Any form of presentation, representation, or advertisement that will tarnish her image in the society