Police in the southern Indian city of Mysore have arrested a wealthy man for allegedly making his daughter beg as a punishment for poor school grades.India has a caste system where people are not supposed to enter into activities outside the social. I assume that it would be okay for a poor child to beg, but not a wealthy child.
The man, named only as Prakash, was arrested under the juvenile misuse act after the girl was seen begging outside a temple in her convent school uniform.
He says he did not physically punish her but wanted her to see "how tough life is without proper education".
The 12-year-old girl has been placed in a government child-welfare centre.
When asked by passersby why she was begging, she pointed to her father who was sitting nearby in his car.
An angry crowd gathered and took the man to a nearby police station.
Mysore's deputy commissioner of police, Basvaraj Malagatti, quoted the man as saying: "I have not beaten her or punished her physically.
"I just wanted her to realise how tough life is without proper education."
But an angry crowd took the dad to the police?!
This shows that there are busybodies all over the world who will try to tell parents how to rear their kids.
The dad was trying to teach his child a lesson. He was not violating any law. I don't think anyone else is in a position to say whether he was using good judgment or not. Even if you agree with the crowd that it would have been better to teach the lesson in some other way, what do you want the cops to do? Put the dad in jail? Send a social worker to micro-manage his family?
Update: A reader points out that begging is illegal in parts of India, so my assumption was incorrect.
2 comments:
I know you want to believe that dad is the victim here, but did it occur to you to question whether what he was forcing the child to do was legal or not? In fact Mysore, in which this incident took place, was one of the first Indian states to adopt an anti-beggary law:
"The issue of beggary initially emerged as a health problem. West Bengal came up with the first law, then Mysore and Madras. Now after independence we see 18 states with beggary laws."
So, in fact, the father was forcing his child to commit an illegal act. Do you not think the bystanders and police were justified in stopping him?
Who's the victim here, George????
Care to issue a retraction???
I did assume that begging was legal in India. If that is not true, then I stand corrected.
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