(YouTube Video of wife beating husband)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqGSTEmSLw
This simple video shows Sanjay Mahajan (name changed), an educated young man in the city of Mumbai, India being beaten by his wife, while his son is seen alternately sleeping and observing the abuse from the couch. When I met him in 2009, he handed me a compact disk containing video of several hours of abuse by his wife. Motivated by scenes like this, I will be travelling to the International Men’s Issues Conference in Detroit to highlight plight of thousands of Indian men like Sanjay Mahajan.
If global feminists, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID have their way, men like Sanjay will continue to be denied protection from domestic violence in India. Yes you heard it correctly. And unfortunately it’s American feminists who have created this situation in India.
Am I being too hasty in making allegations against credible organizations – those which outwardly seem to believe in compassion, love and sympathy for all human beings? Let us look at the facts.
USAID funds lobbies for enactment of Second Domestic Violence Act in India
What is USAID? United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the charity arm of US State Department. In 2003-2004, USAID funded Indian feminist collective called “Women Power Connect” for lobbying for a second domestic violence act (link).
India already had a domestic violence act called “Section 498a” or the law to protect women from cruelty by husband and his relative and it was enacted in 1983. Needless to say, the feminists in India and the world convinced USAID and the Indian Government to exclude men from any protection while lobbying for a second domestic violence law.
The second domestic violence law of India is named “Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act” (PWDVA) and it was drafted by Indira Jaisingh, a lawyer of Supreme Court of India and an elected member of United Nations CEDAW (link).
Feminists have opposed protection for men from domestic violence in United States for a long time. Now, a few of them at least in media are acknowledging that DV on so called privileged white men in US is also an issue. However, the same feminist leaders are fighting hard to deny men protection from DV in developing and third world countries.
In short, feminists are promoting violence against men in third world countries.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds India’s Domestic Violence Survey
Since 1992, the Indian Government has conducted a nationwide survey on Family Health covering more than 100,000 people in every 5 to 7 years. The last National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) was conducted in 2005 and, due to pressure from USAID and feminists, a comprehensive survey on domestic violence was also included. This survey deliberately excluded male victims of domestic violence (PDF link page 493 or chapter 15) .
The manipulation is evident from this question to women on spousal violence. Men were not even asked, if they faced domestic violence (page 520).
To measure spousal violence by women, NFHS-3 asked ever-married women, Have you ever hit, slapped, kicked, or done anything else to physically hurt your (last) husband/partner at times when he was not already beating or physically hurting you?
The results of this survey were widely quoted and used to lobby for India’s 2nd Domestic Violence act for “only women”.
The latest Survey (NFHS-4) is planned to be conducted in 2014. Interestingly, though Indian Govt has plenty of money, this survey is funded and its methodology is controlled by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, UNICEF, UNFPA and other global feminist agencies. They all enjoy excluding men from the Survey itself.
http://www.rchiips.org/nfhs/
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India. Three rounds of the survey have been conducted since the first survey in 1992-93. Technical assistance for the NFHS was provided mainly by ORC Macro (USA) and other organizations on specific issues. The funding for different rounds of NFHS has been provided by USAID, DFID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, UNFPA, and MOHFW, GOI.
Indian Men’s Rights Activists have been very vocal about this blatant denial of fundamental rights to men like Sanjay Mahajan and they have written to these organizations involved asking them to include men for the survey on domestic violence.
Feminists’ Position on Protection of Men from Domestic Violence
It is clear that influential feminists are waging an undeclared global war on men and have been openly lobbying to deny men any protection from domestic violence in third world countries. Every year, hundreds of feminists from United States travel to India to work closely with their feminist sisters there.
Is it not hatred, by people who work to deny men protection from domestic violence? Does not that make feminists a hate group?
Interestingly, men’s rights activists highlighting these anti-social activities promoting hatred and discrimination are painted as hate mongering idiots. The western media to some extent has joined them without trying to find out the facts – and in the process it has worked to discredit itself.
No doubt, there are some men who being frustrated at being denied protection from domestic violence, being denied shared parenting, or being falsely implicated in rape cases are angrily lashing against feminists and perhaps at women in online forums. Is there no basis for their anger?
Is asking for basic human rights of men the same as trying to protect male privileges and patriarchy? Does Sanjay Mahajan in the video above seem like a man with privilege? His own son was there on the couch as his wife was hitting him.
I would request all readers to be sympathetic to male victims of domestic violence in India and write to Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, requesting them not to exclude these victims from the nationwide domestic violence survey. If men are denied their human rights, men in India will not mind protesting peacefully outside offices of Microsoft in various locations in India.
Contact Details of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Main Office
500 Fifth Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109
(206) 709-3100
info(at)gatesfoundation.org
Media Inquiries
(206) 709-3400
media(at)gatesfoundation.org
East Coast Office
PO Box 6176
Ben Franklin Station
Washington, D.C. 20044
(202) 662-8130
India Office
011-91-11-4713-8800
info(at)gatesfoundation.org
Editor’s note: The image at top of the article depicting domestic violence, “Woman Striking Man With Broom,” was painted in Calcutta, India, in 1875.
