September 25, 2020
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DISCRIMINATION LAWS ISSUES

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DISCRIMINATION LAWS ISSUES

Author : Garima Sethi

INTRODUCTION

Discrimination is prevalent not only in India by around the word. This evil is practiced from time immemorial, whether it is racial discrimination, gender discrimination, discrimination on nationality, disability discrimination etc. although many provisions at international level are made that say that there shall be no discrimination among people as we all are human beings. Discrimination as abovementioned are practiced from time immemorial are its roots are quit deep engraved in the society.

Discrimination is not only done by people of a nation but it is also encouraged by the law making bodies. One must think that how law making bodies can discriminate anyone when it makes laws and specifies that all should be treated equally? Let’s understand this behavior of law making authority more specifically and understand the actual nature of the laws made which are discriminating people in later part of this module.

ANALYSING THE DISCRIMINATION LAWS

Discrimination means to treat people unjustly and partially. It can be practiced on the basis of race, gender, nationality etc. There are many international organizations working to eliminate this evil practice some of them are,  UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) IHRC(International Human Rights Commission)  etc. but it is very difficult to abolish this practice from the ground level. Now as we have earlier have discussed about how law making authority which boost the growth of discrimination.

The governments analyze the need of a specific group of people who are in a need to get protected.  This decision of ‘whom to protect’ in return makes a mindset in the society that if they are in a need to be protected so they are weak in some aspects then only protection is required.

This mindset of people will ultimately result in difference in perspective and they are then discriminated on the bases they are protected by the government. e.g. if the government makes provision to protect a specific gender say women, now people will start to discriminate on grounds of sex that if a human is female then she’s weak and needs to be given partial treatment.

The orthodox thinking of people lead this idea ‘protection of a section of the society means it is the affected zone’ and affected section means some partial treatment is must, so that they can uplift that section but instead of uplifting they are mistreated.

The government in course of uplifting the section of society it weakens it by specifying that it is weak and needs protection. People are discriminated not only on basis of gender, race, caste etc. they are also discriminated in Employment, e.g., the post is available for a male professor or female professor, category of person who will get promotion, which employee will get how much pay etc.

If we think that people are discriminated only when they are from a schedule caste or have a dark color so we might be wrong on this fact. People commit suicides and feel helpless when they are not given equal status in the society.  Some laws which are discriminatory in nature are given as below-

All the above-mentioned laws were either repealed or their name was changed.

Further in this module we will be able to understand the nature and the situation of India in discrimination in the Indian society.

INDIAN DISCRIMINATION LAWS

Discrimination in India is very deep rooted, from the medieval and early medieval India phase India has experienced the caste system. The hierarchy implied that the brahmans were the people who were given all the preferences and the lower caste people were termed as untouchables. The untouchables were considered as people who were poor and they were not socially accepted as well.  This problem of caste system I.e. discrimination on the bases has impacted Indian society so much that it has its influence till now. Types of discrimination laws-

  1. Racial discrimination laws
  2.  Employment discrimination laws
  3. Gender  discrimination laws
  4. Caste discrimination laws

SOME CHANGES  MADE IN LAW TO ABOLISH DISCRIMINATION

The Untouchability Offences Act, 1955, which in the year 1976 was renamed as ‘The Protection of Civil Rights Act’, made the act of untouchability as punishable offence. This is in consonance with Article 17 of the Indian Constitution which has abolished the practice of untouchability in any circumstance. Section 7 of the said statute specifically mentions  offences that may arise as a result of the practice of untouchability. In 1986, the Parliament passed the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act to prohibit indecent representation of women through. The Act has has specifically clarified on what denotes ‘indecent representation’ and this includes the depiction of the figure of a woman in any way such as her form or body or any part that is portrayed in an indecent or derogatory manner and which also hurts the public sentiments. There are certain exceptions as well such as in the

ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS

When the need to abolish these laws was felt, the parent laws were abolished and also many anti-discriminatory laws can into being. These laws aimed to abolish discrimination of any kind so almost every kind of discrimination had a new anti-discriminatory law. From discrimination of gender, race or even anti-discriminatory laws in employment were also made. The need of the hour was felt and amendments were also made.

CONCLUSION

In this article we  were able to draw out the meaning and some consequences arising out of discrimination. Also national and international laws  were specifically mentioned in order to understand the scenario on both national and international platforms. Abolishment  of discrimination laws and repealing them  with  anti discriminatory laws are specifically provided.

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