Janata Dal-United chief Sharad Yadav demanded on Tuesday that those boys and girls who defy the dictates of institutions like the Khap panchayat should be given protection and employment. It will promote inter-caste marriages, he asserted.

Participating in the debate on Anti-rape Bill in the Lok Sabha , Yadav said those who dared to break the shackles of tradition to uphold great human value of love and human dignity needed support from society.  “It is not easy to do such brave acts,” he said.
He asked law makers to “look beyond immediate needs of controlling crime against women.”

The bill did not have come in the way of healthy and natural relationship between men and women. “We have to think of a broad social change aimed at annihilating the caste and other social stratification,” he said.

In a passionate speech, Yadav quoted great scriptures like the Mahabharat and referred to age-old social inequalities with which Indian society is infested and said the real need of our society was to create an atmosphere of ‘genuine humane gender relationship.’

“We need to change those portions of our scriptures which reinforce anti-woman views leading to their exploitation,” he said. The present bill might address immediate problems, but it would hardly be able to find a long-term solution to our social problems that had distorted the relationship of men and women. “What we need is to have a futuristic vision about the whole issue,” said Sharad Yadav.

Nationalist Congress Party Leader Supriya Sule attacked the view that the law might be misused. She appealed to men to trust women. She stressed the need for a strict anti-rape law to make women secure from the criminal assaults they had to face often.

Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete had an entirely different viewpoint on the issue. He  pleaded for moral policing to combat violence against women and held ‘western culture’ responsible for crimes against women. He claimed that the Shiv Sena had made Mumbai safe for women.