New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) Women need more to be respected than worshipped, Delhi High Court Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya said on Tuesday, as he called for a change in mindset to achieve gender justice.

Speaking at a programme on the celebration of International Women's Day, Justice Upadhyaya said the society needs to shun "the baggage of 2,000 years" to offset the gender-related iniquities.

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"In my understanding, women need to be respected more than they are to be worshipped. That would be my request to all present here. You know, in the society at various forums, we keep on talking about gender justice, gender-related issues," he said at the programme organised by the Delhi State Legal Services Authority.

The chief justice said the injustices prevalent in the society keep happening in our presence, in front of us, before us, but many a time, we remain in a denial mode.

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"So that denial mode has to be shunned and we have to come out of it, recognise the problem, and then only we will be able to sort it out," he said.

"For addressing such issues first of all, what every single member in the society needs to do is to change the very mindset. Now, if anyone sitting here asks me about my age, I would easily say I am 59-60 years of age, but actually, in fact, I am 2,000-plus 59 years of age.

"The reason is that whatever has undergone in these 2,000 years in the society I carry this baggage with me, and therefore, with the changing society, with the changing terms in the society, if you have to reach out to the women and remove the gender-related inequalities and other kinds of injustices, we need to shun whatever baggage we carry, baggage of 2,000 years behind our our our own group," Justice Upadhyaya said.

Discussing the history of International Women's Day, he said the day was a result of a concerted effort by women demanding their rights.

"The first such effort which strengthened this movement, or which culminated in celebration of International Women's Day is the demand by a section of women for a limited number of working hours and for their right to vote. You will be astonished to note that in countries like the US, the right to vote was not available to women," he said.

Justice Upadhyaya said Indians are lucky that framers of the Constitution of India gave this right to everyone, irrespective of their gender.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)