WUNRN
Women’s Feature Service
India – There Is Just No Defending
Marital Rape
Even though the issue of safety of women has taken center stage in India, debates around whether marital rape should be punishable continue. (Credit - Yogita on Wiki under Creative Commons 3.0)
By Syeda Hameed
Delhi (Women’s Feature Service) – “When we spoke to
women in the villages of Himachal Pradesh they said with one voice: ‘Didi, we
love your Dr Sneha and the manner of her struggle to bring health to villages
in our far flung areas. But can she raise her voice against our biggest enemy, marital
rape? We suffer untold pain when we are forced by our men night after night to
have sex. Just rid us of this menace’.”
The Population Foundation of India (PFI), a leading
think tank on population issues in the country, has a flagship show, ‘Main Kuch
Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon’ that is aired in the prime time slot on Doordarshan’s
national channel, where Dr Sneha is a role model for the 21st
century woman who is defined by her personhood. Before it was to start its
second season, which is currently on-air, a team from PFI, under the leadership
of its irrepressible CEO, Poonam Muttreja, and the show’s genius director,
Feroz Abbas Khan, had visited the field to collect valuable feedback from the
rural viewers. This stark reality was shared by a group of women from villages
around Rakkad in the hill state.
In Parliament, recently, Minister of State for Home
Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhry, made an amazing statement. He told the
House that marital rape cannot be criminalised in India due to various factors,
which include ‘level of education, illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs
and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as
a sacrament’. This was in response to a question by Member of Parliament, Ms
Kanimozhi, who asked whether the government was bringing an amendment to the
Indian Penal Code (IPC) to remove the exception of marital rape from the
definition of rape. She had also inquired whether CEDAW had recommended to
India to criminalise marital rape. ‘Yes, it had,’ replied the minister, but
‘the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably
applied in the Indian context’.
Just a while back, I was part of a meeting where we
were talking about male attitudes. During the discussion, someone posited: ‘how
is the rapist looked at in our society?’ I said: ‘The rapist is given benefit
of doubt, condoned or forgiven.’ When I said that, I was thinking of all the
rapists that have haunted me since I began work on violence, right from
Bhanwari Devi to Mathura to Pragati Vyas to the infamous Sudesh Jhaku case. In
most cases, the rapists were let off, often to go out and repeat their crimes.
One man in the far corner of the room took great offense to my statement and
asked me to eat my words. However, I refused to regurgitate what I had
personally experienced.
A UN report has pegged the marital rape figure in
India at a disturbing 75 per cent. Although we often divert attention from this
burning issue by disputing data, how long can we go on denying the fact that is
right before our eyes? India has often been called the rape capital of the
world and there is enough evidence in the daily news to establish this as our
most uncomfortable truth. That marital rape is real and visible on the
palimpsest is an undeniable truth. Yet, the one person entrusted with the
responsibility of the safety of women, the man in charge of Home Affairs,
believes that this crime should be regarded as ‘normal’ because marriage in
India is ‘sacrament’ and 'sacred'.
I was thinking of one of the most heinous cases of
mass rape committed almost quarter century ago, the echo of which refuses to
die down. Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir valley, where the security forces entered
the village at 11pm, against every rule in the book, to conduct a cordon and
search operation. Over time, 100 women had reported rape by men in uniform.
Where violence unleashed on women's bodies to establish control is a global
phenomenon, in the case of marital rape it is the same desire for control but
at an even lower manifestation. In fact, you violate what should be most
precious in your life. The myth is, since marriage is sacred, the woman must
willingly subject her body to being used and ravaged. Even today, in some parts
of this continent the trophy of triumph post-wedding night is the bloodied
bedsheets held out by the older women in the family - themselves victims of
patriarchy - as proof of the torn hymen. All violent concepts, words and acts.
The very fact that blood thus shed becomes reason for rejoicing establishes the
fact of marital rape. No one interrogates the pain it causes.
The Minister gave many epithets to justify the marital
rape exception in the law, from illiteracy and poverty to social customs and
values. Should we then look kindly at the man who forces himself on his
unwilling partner because he is poor, he has not gone to school or that he is
respectful of ‘customs’? Does it mean that poor men can't be kind and sensitive
towards their wives? Does it imply that a man who can't read and write is a
sexual brute and the one who can is the very milk of human kindness? Is
violence against women only the domain of the poor and the wretched?
India became signatory to the Convention to Eliminate
all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in June 1980, which has a
clear injunction against marital rape: 'Violence Against Women shall be
understood to encompass… sexual abuse of female children in the household,
dowry related violence, MARITAL RAPE’. Thirty-five years later we are still
debating the question at the highest level. It is time we listened to women's
voices, urban and rural, and legislate against this heinous practice.