Women in India

A few days ago I wrote a little about the poverty in India and hope to address this again in more depth in a future post. But as I prepare for my 12 day journey to India (leaving 11 days from now), I am struck dumbfounded by an article in the BBC News today (yes, I am reading international news attempting to get a grasp on contextual happenings before I arrive).

The article was entitled "The Girls Stolen From the Streets of India", and used an ethnographic approach to highlight one instance of an incomprehensibly sized issue. Here is how the article begins:

 “The death of a student who was gang-raped on a Delhi bus has prompted anguished soul-searching about the place of women in Indian society. The widespread killing of female foetuses and infants is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages”

You can read the entire article here, but the article continues with the story of a young girl who had been missing for a while, who was discovered by police who reported she had been kidnapped and then sold to another family in northern India.  According to the article, this is happening at an alarming rate (reported at more than 35,000 missing per year…and that is remembering that only about 30% of the cases are actually reported).  Add to the kidnappings and trafficking more than 50 million females who have been lost to foeticide, infanticide, and neglect or abuse causing death in early adolescence or younger.  Unicef says that this is equivalent to genocidal proportions.

Lured away from their poor homes with the hope of work in larger wealthier cities, then sold for about 55,000 rupees ($1,000 American), these girls and young women are the latest casualties of a country with such incredible socio-economic disparities that human beings justify selling one another to get ahead.

Forget the fact that we apparently have learned nothing from the history of slavery and human trafficking that has transversed time and geography, what is it in the human being that allows someone to think that this is alright!?!

How do you speak truth to people that believe that other people are nothing more than property?  Maybe the better question is what should be taught to the Christian leaders (the people we will actually be meeting with while in India) that they can internalize and model and teach to those they shepherd in their local congregations once we’re gone?  How in the world do you begin...how in the world do you show that Christ can transform an entire culture?

I don't pretend to have answers to these questions or the thousands of others that are running through my head...this is just my latest theological conundrum in relation to my upcoming trip to India.

I invite your thoughts and comments.