Declining Morals of Pakistani Society: Domestic Abuse and Violence
Many stories of domestic abuse and violence prevail in social and mainstream media. We read and watch many real life stories of people, especially of women, who are the real survivors and losers in this continuous struggle for peaceful life. Those are the brave people, called survivors, who defeat their fears and speak for their rights and disclose the kind of violence and abuse that not only harm them physically but tortured them mentally. While the stories of losers are disclosed by their audience including the silent observers and murmuring voice supporters.
However, not all stories contain protagonists who could be called brave survivors who have raised their voices against their rights or losers who failed their lives while enduring this lethal problem of life. There exists an in-between category: coward survivors.
These survivors are coward as they cannot tell their story of horror to the world neither they reach to any institution develop to address their problem. They only can scream and cry alone as they require relief from their internal thoughts and most importantly have to maintain the respectable view of their family from which society sees them.
They cannot defeat the fear that upon screaming loudly, their family who is involved in such domestic abuse and violence with them will be seen by a disrespectful eyes of society. Hence they endure, remain silent and do not provide address to anyone of their physical and mental wounds. These survivors are the ones suffering the most. One among such survivors is Zoya.
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Zoya belongs to a middle class family. Her mother is a housewife who herself was a victim of domestic abuse by her husband and In-laws. Zoya being first child of her mother was a victim of her abuse. Whatever she inherited from her husband and in laws in the domain of domestic abuse and violence, she returned it to her daughter with more than double in intensity. The kind of abuse in which Zoya’s mother was involved was not intentional as no mother can harm her child. It is just a reflection of her mother’s mental health. The domestic abuse and violence that she has been facing from past 20 years has affected her mentality negatively. That negative mentality has not only poisoned her own life but the life of her daughter also. Hence domestic abuse and violence has become a kind of virus that transmitted from her mother to her daughter and probably in the coming generation that Zoya is nurturing. In her early twenties, Zoya could be an asset for the country but given her circumstances, the probability of it is minimal.
Zoya is just an example. There are numerous young people like Zoya in our toxic society whose mental health has been deteriorated systematically by their own close people. It is because of such domestic abuse and violence in our society that development in Pakistani society is halted. There could be development in numbers. Pakistan’s GDP growth can have an increasing trend but as a society, our moral and values are declining.
These are the circumstances that air problems like domestic abuse and violence which become the root cause for other problems in a society like sick mental health, suicides and other major crimes that include violent behaviors. The only panacea of such problems is the need of increasing morals, and developing the habits of patience, endurance, respect and cooperation. Only then we can get rid of this domestic abuse and violence that has rotten Pakistani society.
About writer: Sumbul Imran is a law abiding citizen of Pakistan. She is a graduate of Sukkur Institute of Business Administration with an interest in social, economical and political affairs of the country.
