For this reason starting in 2013, a phenomenon began unprecedented in US post 1776 history. US college students turned against free art, free speech and free thought; partly because they thought these were forms of oppression. Before 2013 in public opinion polling, young college students had always been the most supportive of free art, free speech and free thought of any demographic.

But what shocked universities and researchers the most was that many students gave medical reasons for why they opposed free art, free speech and free thought. Many young kids genuinely were afraid that they would be medically harmed if exposed to different ideas and perspectives. And given the skyrocketing rates of psychological illness, rates of prescribed use of heavy brain altering medications, depression and suicide among 18 year old college females; this view has to be seriously explored.

One recommendation some give is to delay college until young people are emotionally mature enough for college. In the 1950s, perhaps 14 year olds were generally emotionally mature enough for college. Maybe the age at which many students are similarly emotionally mature is 24 years old? Maybe 22 years old?

Shafiq, what do you think can be done about the soaring rates of mental illness, large dosage prescribed psychiatric drug use and suicide among young upper middle class and to a lesser degree middle class young females?

One of the reasons I think Asian societies need to prevent post modernists from taking over K-12 and college education is because of mental illness, prescribed psychiatric drug use and suicide among young people. Another is that I think young people benefit from learning to use their existing intelligence, logic, science, openness (also called art). Post modernism as currently misunderstood teaches children to think illogically and irrationally.

Yet another reason is because I think a massive focus for young people and all people should be on increasing intelligence, physical health and mental health. Part of how should be to strongly encourage:
—exercise (including through team sports, dance)
—stretching (including through ballet, martial arts, Tai Chi/Qi Gong and Yoga)
—breathing
—meditation (including through brain electro-therapy and brain sound therapy (music))
These increase capacity, competence and merit. Which is far more useful than post modernism, which at its core assumes that “oppressed” people [a made up nonsensical category that mostly does not exist in the real world] cannot become wise, powerful and sovereign.

The fact remains that Indian women are approximately 15 percent of the world’s population of women but form 40 percent of those who kill themselves. What do male suicide rates have to do with this ?

The only silver lining is that this overrepresentation has been declining with time.

Regarding the OP’s post –

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/-one-indian-commits-suicide-every-4-minutes-men-more-vulnerable/609058.html
Note – Nearly 70 per cent of all suicide deaths in India involve males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
China – Where more women commit suicide than men.
Also note that Sri-lanka which scores higher than most Indian states with regards to all major indices has a very high number of suicides.

A reversed gender pattern? A meta-analysis of gender differences in the prevalence of non-suicidal self-injurious behaviour among Chinese adolescents – {Note thee other 2 nations with higher suicides among women than men}
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-017-4614-z

The OP conveniently overlooks the comparative picture Lancet study provides of young people aged 15-40 yrs. taking their own lives in India & overly focuses on Female suicides to blame the so called “South Asian culture” & “Patriarchy”. If this is true then the same can be said about “Hypergamy” & more male suicides in most parts of world.

// one-fifth of Indian women still marry before the age of 15 //
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-gender-child-marriage/indias-child-marriage-numbers-drop-sharply-driving-down-global-rate-unicef-idUSKBN1GI03F
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/bid-to-stop-child-marriages-nhrc-report-says-rte-should-be-extended-to-children-till-18-years-5351429/

https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/india/
https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/pakistan/
https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/bangladesh/

The author overlooks all differences so that he can put his prejudiced “South Asian culture” to broad brush the various different reasons for prevalence of these practices in these nations.

Just for comparison – https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/sri-lanka/

I wonder what is the statistical contribution of Muslims in this practice in non-Islamic nations ?

The other blind spot i want to highlight is that these experts speak to reaffirm the Western prejudices to increase their ‘Academic Credibility’ or else just check how great scholars are cited for years {Western or Non-Western} while most of the Academia just works by reaffirming each other’s bubbles regarding various issues & solutions of world by citing each other until people give a jolt to their prevalent worldviews {e.g. Note discussions regarding critical theory, Identity politics, Globalization etc.}.

I wish author would not have tried to straight jacket this serious issue to put forth his own prejudiced ideas to the whole region & as an suicide survivor myself i would like to request the OP to take great care and less prejudiced view while discussing such issues & the sources for their prevalence.

Link to the Sudha Murthy’s story:

https://books.google.com/books?id=MwVqgO6u-_QC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=stove+burst+or+dowry+deaths+sudha+murthy&source=bl&ots=wzEqSoiBVk&sig=5_Y2RKXvrRDbFfZ7YZvIcGs3OvM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiq44axvb3dAhVpZN8KHapjAVAQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20whole%20atmosphere%20was%20deeply%20depressing&f=false

Mombati mafia Lol

What could be some reasons for such a high incidence of suicides among both women and men of AP, TS, KA and TN? I can think of a few but don’t know if they are correct or not. For example, I suspect student suicides to be a big problem because there is an extremely high pressure towards academic performance and from an early age, students tend to deeply internalise a vision of complete and abject failure of life and betrayal of parents if desired level of academic success is not achieved. While the parents may not be a direct cause of this in many cases, they typically tend to contribute to the problem by not explicitly and continually making it known to children that a bit of an academic failure is not a reason to decide to end one’s life and that they would love and support them no matter what.

And regarding the wife-beating, dowry deaths, etc. phenomena, I believe that D’s assessment in his/her newest comment is correct, the questions of patriarchies, matrilinealities aside (btw south Indian kinship systems are also not matrilineal (there are only traces of matrilineality in some situations where a maternal uncle and maternal grandparents perform some religious rituals for children; other than that, families are completely patrilineal. And a thing like “matriarchy” does not exist in south India, probably never existed, quite as extremely rare as it is in the wider world. Even in small matrilineal pockets like the erstwhile Nairs of Kerala, the ultimate boss of the house used to be the eldest male progeny of the matron) though it could be said women typically tend to enjoy more freedom and autonomy than a textbook patriarchy which also probably is rare). I imagine wife-beating would have been quite common in at least Telangana and Andhra Pradesh during the 1950s, 60s and earlier and decrease it must have been doing but still probably a very big problem. My maternal grandmother herself was a victim of horrible domestic abuse that included beating in the hands of her husband in the 1960s who would have very well continued the practice into much later times had he not died himself for whatever reason (there is at least a single-digit percentage chance that he committed suicide himself). And dowry deaths definitely definitely used to be a very big thing too, though I hope that they are not such a big thing now (but I strongly believe that they they exist at least). My maternal grandmother told me three or four dowry death stories of women about whom she heard in a small region in the Krishna district around that period of 1940s-50s. The author Sudha Murthy also wrote about the incidence of the dowry-death problem in Karnataka in one of her books (I read her books quite a while ago but I googled and saw that the book is “Wise and Otherwise” and the name of the story is “Stove Bursts or Dowry Deaths?”) and I remember that the particular non-fiction incident that she wrote about in “Stove Bursts or Dowry Deaths?” was particularly gut-wrenching to me at the time.

Thanks, I should’ve read more carefully.

Numinous, few who criticize Manusmriti understand Manusmriti. Manusmriti does not apply in Kali (since 3012 BC). Manusmriti says that laws have to be continually updated and evolved for changing times. I could look up the exact verse number if you wish.

The number one target of marxists/post modernism is Judaism which they hate for no rational reason. Number two target is Hinduism/Buddhism . . . which they blame for Nazism and the holocaust (the demonization of Myanmar is part of this). Number 3 target is Christianity. Number 4 target use to be Islam (which Edward Said fought against). But around 2015 this suddenly changed. Now post modernists are confused about Islam or engage in sophistry (pretend to be pro Islam while secretly trying to destroy Islam). Marxists are still anti Islam.

‘how the parts of India which are most notorious for patriarchy…’

The thing is its unclear how much of this generalization is true or if true, how it translates to wife-beating, female suicides and female foetocide. For eg: the most notorious wife-beaters seems to be in Telangana, well into the Deccan.

“Among men, the highest acceptance for this form of domestic abuse was in Telangana. The survey found 75 per cent men in the state thought it was justified to beat their spouses.”

The national average is 42%.

I have brought up the horrible female sex ratio at birth of TN and how its getting worse (with appropriate caveats added about data thanks to comments). These are all areas also known for pervasive honor killings and caste violence. That there is a pre-concieved notion of North India as the epicenter of all things undesirable for right-thinking people doesn’t mean it’s actually something reflected in reality.

Religion-wise as well, there are a few stereotype-busting surprises. Its neither Hindus nor Muslims who approve of wife-beating the most but supposedly the most educated and arguably the most westernized of India’s religious groups.

“The survey also says that of the respondents, Christian men and women justified physical abuse the most among religious groups. Of members from the community, 56.9 per cent of Christian women and 51.6 per cent of men said any of the circumstances listed justified physical abuse.”

https://theprint.in/governance/more-women-than-men-think-wife-beating-is-justified/29808/

Possible, though more like those who are very mood-affiliated on class-struggle, a class that strictly contains Marxists. Agree with the analogy about Americans. My problem was not with blaming Hinduism here though (a lot of which would be understandable); some sort of “alogical” (as opposed to illogical) maneuvering.