Humour
Damn Those Pesky Cell Phones:
India's Hindus Want Unmarried Women Hands-Off The Gizmos
YAHOO NEWS
A local council in northern India has banned unmarried women from carrying mobile telephones to halt a series of illicit romances between partners from different castes, media reports said Wednesday, December 1,2010.
The Baliyan council in the Uttar Pradesh state of India's sprawling Hindi-belt decided to act after at least 23 young couples ran away and got married over the last year against their parents' wishes.
"The panchayat (assembly) was convinced that the couples planned their elopement over their cell phones," village elder Jatin Raghuvanshi told the Calcutta Telegraph.
The rules of inter-caste marriages are complicated and extremely rigid in many rural communities in Hindu India, with some lovers even murdered in "honour killings" by relatives trying to protect their family's reputation.
"All parents were told to ensure their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The boys can do so, but only under their parents' monitoring," said Satish Tyagi, a spokesman for the village assembly.
Traditional Hindu society breaks down into brahmins (priests), kshatriya (soldiers), vaishya (merchants) and shudra (labourers). Below the caste system are the Dalits, or "Untouchables".
Caste categories often determine Hindus' life prospects, and conservative families will only marry within their own caste sub-division.
[Courtesy: The most appropriately named - Yahoo News]
December 6, 2010
Conversation about this article
1: Meher Kaur (Paris, France), December 06, 2010, 12:14 PM.
It is true ... all good ideas do come from that fount of all wisdom that Hindustan is! I think it's a brilliant idea, banning young and nubile women from such evil distractions. In fact, I'd go all the way. All females of the species should be required to stay away from these damn things ... and leave the good world a free and open field for the men, especially of the Hindu ilk!
2: Jesroshan Singh (Malaysia), December 06, 2010, 1:10 PM.
All Sikhs knew, after 1947 and 1984, that they were surrounded by cow-brained idiots. In fact, much of the country is wacko. Guru Nanak did his best to do away with brahminism, but sadly for humanity, it keeps on rearing its ugly hydra-head ... and getting worse by the day.
3: Justin Harbord (Illinois, U.S.A.), December 06, 2010, 1:12 PM.
Trust India to observe, at least in some nook or corner, the stupidest practices imaginable ... and more. It is the one country in this world that comes closest to the inter-galactic cafe in Star-Wars: you can let your imagination wander into the most bizarre hell-hole you can conjure in your warped brain, and you'll find a counterpart of it, alive and well and in its full unearthly, uncivilized glory, somewhere in India. Where do they get these wierd and weird ideas from anyway? Extra-terrestrials?
4: Ajay Jhunjhunwala (Noida, India), December 06, 2010, 2:03 PM.
The Times of India is currently aggressively promoting a feature entitled "Women Want More". Yes, it appears that our dear Hindustan has just discovered that women have needs too, just like men. The idiots involved in the cell-phone ban, it appears, haven't been reading The Times of India, and are still in the dark ...