A part of Indian society has accepted the concept of single parenthood, surrogacy, adoption, and sex with open arms. But a section of society still holds on to the taboos prevalent in the country for decades. One such act that is considered unethical in the Indian society is ‘sex before marriage’. When a person (especially a woman) indulges in sex before or out of marriage, she is subjected to humiliation and shame in the society.
A similar case of moral policing has come to light in Kerala where a teacher was sacked by the school for giving birth to a baby just four months after her marriage.
The pre-primary teacher of a government UP school in Kottakkal sought police help after the school authorities and the parent-teacher association did not let her join the duty after her maternity leave was over in January 2018. The 33-year-old teacher has also accused the parents of verbally abusing her at the PTA meeting, reports TOI.
As per the complaint filed by the woman, she has been divorced for some time and had already started living with the man she was planning to get married to next, as the divorce procedures were delayed. They later legally got married in June 2018 after the divorce procedures were completed.
The woman approached child rights commission seeking action against the school where she has been working for the past 5 years. Accordingly, the commission sought a clarification from the deputy director of education (DDE).
The DDE ordered a probe and after the inquiry issued a directive to the school authorities to let the teacher rejoin her job at the school. But the school principal and PTA members were not ready to follow the DDE’s orders.
“We approached the school authorities citing the direction from the DDE. They convened a meeting, in which they verbally insulted me, besides refusing to allow me to rejoin. I filed a police complaint on June 14. The school authorities don’t have the right to discuss my personal life at a PTA meeting. I don’t know why they are bothered about my marital life and my pregnancy period,” the teacher said.
“We have started an investigation against the school authorities based on the complaint and a case would be registered after recording the woman’s statement,” said sub-inspector of Kottakkal police station Sandhya Devi.
While the nation is progressively working towards eliminating the orthodox mentality in society to get rid of baseless taboos, cases like this leave us disheartened. We hope this kind of moral policing ends soon!