Please help me understand this Indian "law"

[DodosAreDead]

It is legal in India, which was the whole point of the thread.

I'm someone who was a victim of Indian corporal punishment when I was a kid, which has caused several mental health problems for me now. If you think Indians value children, you should read the law I posted again. It essentially says that children under 12 years of age are the property of their guardians, who can do anything to them as long as they claim that it was "for their benefit". This is despite the fact that all the research shows that corporal punishment is a disastrous practice that only leads to more violence and social pathology.

As an Indian, I can readily admit that I never understood the cherished Indian value of "respecting one's elders". If that's true, I should respect a 1000-year-old banyan tree above anything else. The truth is that children are only going to respect people who command their respect, and if you're an elder who uses corporal punishment against a child, you're very unlikely to earn that child's respect. Ageism, the belief that older people are more deserving than youngsters, is rampant and accepted in India and is a social evil like racism or casteism.

I am in complete agreement with everything you said except the fact that Indians don't value children, but maybe that's simply because of my own experiences as an Indian kid being different than yours. I never felt like I was an unvalued child, and I don't think the kids I know feel it either, but it's a huge country with so many varying cultures that I'm definitely more than willing to accept that this may not be the case in many other places. I think I was talking more from my experience in the area where I live, which may not be properly representative of entire India. 
Oh, and obviously I am in complete disagreement with the "respecting one's elders" thing too, or else I wouldn't be on here arguing with a bunch of people over twice my age. 

Yes, there are huge problems here. The rape culture being one of them. That doesn't mean the entire society and all the laws are absurd, you know. It's a country of 1.3 BILLION people, which is practicing a successful [?] democracy. It is, truly, the biggest democracy in the world. That's something that needs to be considered before dissing it. 

That's a debatable proposition.....

I mean successful as in truly being a democracy, not successful as in creating a developed or prosperous country.