Hey, What About Men’s Rights

Courtesy of Men’s Rights Association Men’s Rights Association (M.R.A.) members with banners and placards in Pune, Maharashtra, on International Men’s Day in this Nov. 19, 2012 photo.

NEW DELHI â€" In India, women’s rights have received a lot of attention recently.

Too much attention, according to one small but passionate organization, India’s Men’s Rights Association.

The group was started in Pune in 2010 to “specifically target the issues men are facing in everyday life, and how they are being discriminated against by society and the law,” said the group’s founder, Atit Rajpara, 34, in a telephone interview. “Whenever any lawmaking is happening, no one thinks about the men.”

The group’s stated goals include: breaking the “false myth” of the male-dominated society, rebelling “against social mindset assumption of men being born criminals” and creating a “Men’s Welfare Ministry.”

Mr. Rajpara said his group tried valiantly to have their point of view heard by the Verma Committee, which was set up after the Dec. 16 gang rape in Delhi to review how India protects women. The committee and other activists ignored 5,000 e-mails sent by Men’s Rights Association members on the issue, he said.

“We are not against women,” Mr. Rajpara said, but he contended that women are abusing laws that are already on the books to torment their husbands and other men.

Mr. Rajpara was married in 2004 but had an acrimonious divorce. At one point, his ex-wife sued him for child support, he said, even though they had no children. It took him a year and a half to clear his name and get the child support demand dropped, he said.

The new “antirape” law, which passed both houses of India’s Parliament this week, ignores 50 percent of India’s population, he said, and could be used to falsely target men.

Members and fans of the group were heatedly discussing the new law on the Men’s Rights Association Facebook page on Friday.

“Here comes the first misuse,” the group titled a Facebook post of an article from The Times of India about a man who could be the first in India to be booked for the crime of stalking, now a criminal offense. The paper reported that 20-year-old engineering student filed stalking charges against a man who kept sending her explicit text messages, even though she told him she was not interested in a relationship.

“Only becuz of those bastards protesting at India gate all men will suffer,” one fan of the men’s rights group commented on the article.

The site is heavy with pictures decrying the treatment of men (“Men, this is how the world sees you,” reads one photo of a roll of toilet paper) and petitions like this one, which declares, “Rape is a shield for a woman to harass men sexually and get away with it.”

Writing about the new antirape law, another Facebook commentator introduced a possible future strategy for the group’s members: “Now it’s better to avoid women, like u avoid cobras…”