Violence at Home with the Excuse of improving weaker Family Members

When talking about corporal punishment, as I did in my entry yesterday, the thought of domestic violence is never really far. Why? As I mentioned yesterday already, it is not only a common opinion of many teachers that a good beating is good for manners, discipline and general betterment of a child but also the point of view of many parents, at least here in India. And when you talk of parents hitting their children the thought of husbands hitting their wives is not far. Domestic violence is still a very big problem in many countries around the world and also in India.

I don’t know if you can call this terrible practice culture or tradition but if any of those words is defined by its regular appearance, then this might be just right. There are men for whom it seems to have become a habit to beat their family. Sometimes the children did something naughty, sometimes the husband thinks, from his perception, that his wife did a mistake, which could as well be wrong and often it is just out of the blue, because of his bad mood or for some small reason that was absolutely unimportant.

There are many people who see nothing wrong in this, even when they are openly confronted with the topic. A lot of those people say that it is even their duty! They honestly believe that this is their role and they have to beat their family. Who would be so stupid to tell them this? Unfortunately it is written in the most holy of books! These people can give proof in religious scriptures that order them to beat their wives and children in order to discipline them and make them obey. Again the same argument, it is done for bettering them.

Obviously it is always the one who is weaker who gets beaten. You won’t normally see a woman beating up her husband. Husbands won’t be those who pretend to have fallen down stairs or who say they got hurt while doing work in the house. It is the wives. And fathers are not the ones who have pain in sitting because their bottoms are sore from a spanking of the day before. That is the children.

It is just wrong. If you like to hit someone, try hitting someone of your size! If you can’t, find a solution for your problem in another way. It doesn’t matter what your wife or child did, violence is never the right response!

If you really believe that the one you are beating could improve in any way through this act of violence, you should actually follow the same rule. If you, an adult, do any mistake, you should go to someone who is stronger than you and ask him to beat you a bit so that you can better yourself. Because this seems to be your solution for bettering anybody!

If this was true however, one could just beat up all criminals and thus solve any problem of crime because they would improve their morals in this way!

In our culture you may have seen one more thing: those who don’t hit and beat at least threaten their children with beating them. They make a sign with the hand, showing them their palm as if they would soon hit. So you see, even those who refrain from violence believe it is necessary to use it at least as a threat. Can we not fully leave the violence behind?

I know it is a process of change that people have to go through in order to reach to non-violence but I hope that more and more people realize that this is the only way for the future. Wherever on this world a father or husband still beats a wife or his children, do your best to make him understand that it is wrong. We have to be able to live in peace, most importantly in our own homes.