A woman burned alive

My name is Aradhna..  I am an Indian-American. I have been living in America for 15 years. After I had finished my studies, I came to India and bought a house in an area which was a balance between a posh and middle-class category of city.

I met lots of people there, made some friends and have lived nicely. One thing which astonished me about that place was one family. That family was very odd for me, but in fact, I should say very backward, compares to the place their house was situated in. They were my neighbors so. Obviously, I was very close to them and had time to time interaction with them.

The thing odd for me about them was that they had a tradition in their family which was very odd and different, compares to the customs I have known of my life living in India in the past.

They told me that we regard our women as a part of their husband. This sound okay until now but then, they said that if the man dies then the women, his wife will be shaved bald and will be burned alive.

This comment of theirs or this tradition of them made me sick to my throat. I being Indian women knew that, yeah there are some traditions in India which are really anti-women and very backward even by Indian standards, but this thing made me think that women are not human even and this place in inhabitable for women

Still, I kind of ignored it and lived my life there as I wanted until one day I came to know that a man in my neighborhood has died naturally and now his wife will be put to death by burning alive.

I being shy but educated women thought of stopping them from doing this. I was reluctant at first, but then, I thought if I do not stop this atrocity now then, millions of other women in India will be treated like this.

I came to them and politely asked them not to do this act. I told them that, they have a daughter a mother and other relatives who are women and if they want them to be treated justly then why kill the women who came to this house from other house after marriage. What wrong has this woman done to you? Is marrying your son was her mistake?

I tried to talk them out of it, but they were so engraved in this tradition that they didn`t even think about it. They tried to kill me like the women they were about to burn alive, but then when I tried to run away, they asked their family members who were young and extremist ideology man to catch and beat me. I tried my best to run away from them but I couldn`t. They beat me like I am some animal and everybody was watching me like I am a criminal.

I remember I was so injured that I was lying there like a dead body and nobody came to take me to the hospital. I became unconscious and then I don`t know how but I awake in the hospital.

You all people would be thinking, what happened to the girl who lived in my neighbor’s house and was about to burned alive. When I returned to my house after a week or so with having been under treatment, I came to know that on that very day, she was burned alive in front of hundreds of people and she cried but couldn`t do or say anything.

After that day, my world has changed upside down. I went again to America and had been living there ever since. But, till today my question to myself and the world is that what was the mistake of that woman? Is she being women and living in a society which doesn`t regard women as even human being is her mistake?

Why the world treats women like this? Doesn`t the women have the same heart as the men do? Isn`t it the same women who have given birth to men? Then why men are treating women like this.

This problem is not going to be solved if the society doesn`t realize one thing that Men and women both are part of each other and if you are willing to burn women alive because of her husband being dead, then you should burn men alive too if his wife dies.