Women’s Rights Are Limited and Suppressed in Indian Society

… NRI Nikki Haley ex- Governor and UN ambassador

New York, Mach 30, 2017// NRIpress.club/Sunny Verma/ Gary Singh

Nimrata Nikki Randhawa (Nimrata "Nikki" Haley after her marriage) made history in 2010 when she was elected the first female governor of South Carolina and in November, 2016, she accepted Donald Trump’s offer to be his ambassador to the United Nations.

In 2015, as a Governor, she became popular in US when she called on the state to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse. The massacre prompted many in South Carolina to question, “The flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.” South Carolina later removed a Confederate flag from its Capitol grounds.

In 2016 election time, “She criticized Trump throughout the Republican nomination campaign and endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio during the South Carolina primary. After Rubio dropped out, Haley backed Trump opponent Ted Cruz. In October, she said she would vote for Trump, but was “not a fan.”

In November, 2014, she along with 18-member delegation from South Carolina, traveled to India and responding to media queries, Ms Haley said she wanted to promote business ties between her state and Indian companies.

• “India is my second home. Attracting investments from overseas companies is my job, but building business ties with Indian companies is my personal desire”, she said.
• Besides seeking investment in automotives, tractors, agriculture, tourism, pharmaceuticals and IT, Ms Haley said partnerships with higher educational institutions or universities to promote research and training would also be welcome.

Women in India are suppressed by Telling her Mother’s Story ..Nikki Haley:

“I am a big fan of women and I think any democracy must allow really lift up women,” Nikki Haley UN Ambassador told the story about her mother following her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “My mother, who had studied to be a lawyer in India, was not allowed to sit on the bench as a judge because of the situation with women in the country during that time.”

She further said that nations’ goal should always be to empower women and show how they can be fantastic leaders, “and to help them get there and when they are successful, support them on it and encourage them on that.”

Indian Media started to criticize her statement and wrote in some news papers:

• India was already having female judges sitting on benches long before her mother tried. Her comment seems to be based on misinformation
• Justice Anna Chandy was the first female judge in India and also the first woman in India to become a high court judge. She was was appointed as a munsif in Travancore in 1937.
• This female is proud of being American & we Indians keep trumpeting of her being "Indian born" . Let's not expect any favours from her though she is born to Indians.

Most of the NRIs accused the Indian media of mischaracterizing her statement.” Dr. Suresh Gupta told NRIpress. “ We, as NRIs LOVE India and  we have the right to criticize on the issue of Human rights and other problems in India.”

Bollywood actor Kirti Kulhari feels women in the country have been suppressed a lot with several restrictions on them about how to conduct their life. “Even today, a girl in a normal house will be told how not to dress up, not to come late in the night, not to smoke,” she added.  ….hindustantimes.com Sep 14, 2016

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Haley claims mother denied judgeship in India for being woman

By Arul Louis
New York, March 30 (IANS) Nikki Haley, the US Permanent Representative to the UN, has claimed that her mother was not allowed to be a judge in India because she was a woman, while in fact women have been judges in the country since at least 1937.

Answering a question about the role of women at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, she said, “When you didn’t have a lot of education in India, my mother actually was able to go to law school. And she was actually put up to be one of the first female judges in India, but because of the situation with women she wasn’t allowed to sit on the bench.”

“But how amazing for her to watch her daughter become governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the UN,” she added.

Haley’s parents, Ajit Singh and Raj Kaur Randhwa, reportedly emigrated from India in the 1960s. But more than two decades earlier a woman, Anna Chandy, had become a judge in Travancore in pre-Independence India.

Chandy was promoted to District Judge in 1948, the year after Independence, and became a High Court judge in 1959. Chandy was able to sit on the bench and function as a judge all through — years before Haley’s parents left India.

UN Ambassador is a cabinet-level position in the US and Haley is the first Indian-American to reach that position. A Republican, she was the elected Governor of South Carolina state in 2010.

Haley said that she is “proud” to be the daughter Indian immigrants who believe the family is “blessed” to be American.

Prefacing her answer to a question about President Donald Trump’s attempts to temporarily restrict people from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees coming to the US, she said, “I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every day how blessed we were to be in this country.”

“I do believe that the fabric of America is legal immigration. That is what makes the US so fantastic,” she said.

Haley’s father is an agricultural scientist and a professor, while her mother is a businesswoman.

Haley denied that Trump’s attempts to restrict people coming in from the six countries was based on religion and pointed out that several Muslim-majority countries were not covered by it.

“I don’t think that’s what this is,” she said.

“If that were the case, there are another dozen, you know, Muslim countries that could have been on the list.”

She said that nothing should be banned based on religion.

“We will never close our doors in the US. We won’t. But what we did do was take a pause.”

Because of the difficulty to properly vet people from those six countries and the refugees, Trump had wanted the temporary ban.

“This is not about not wanting people in,” she said adding that it was about keeping the terrorists out.

She noted that her husband, Michael Haley, a captain in the Army National Guard who served in Afghanistan, helped two Afghan interpreters and their families immigrate to the US.

The difference was that they could be properly vetted, but it was not possible in all refugees cases and the administration was stopping them till the problem could be resolved.

A US court has stayed Trumps orders temporarily banning people from six countries coming to the US.