India as a nation and our leaders as our “representatives” have the power to face an endless level of injustice, indignity and disrespect for our women. We can actually tolerate any kind of non-sense around us with equanimity. I know, I am sounding harsh but before I apologize I want each and every person reading this article to ask themselves ‘Do we have any concern at all for these atrocities faced by women beyond residual anger?’ and the worst comes when our law makers pass comments like “Sexual violence can be apologized for” and justify boys-will-be-boys-laissez-faire attitude, when CM reacts to a media reporter, “Are u not safe? You are not feeling any danger, are you? Then why are you worried?” and when an incendiary comment is passed by a leader that “I will make my boys to go and rape the women of opposition workers” not only disappoints but coerces me to ask Do our hearts really have values of love, compassion, sympathy and empathy or is it just an organ which pumps blood? Now, I will move a step further and discuss some cruel and gruesome incidents which will give you Goosebumps but only if you have a soul! Tales of Horror Well, I am in an ambivalent position while writing this for two reasons, firstly, I am not sure which incident to start with because we have endless brutal stories and secondly, how to pen it down because even the thought of writing it makes my hand shiver. But still with the hope that we have not reached the horrifying point of ‘no return’ and normalizing rapes with our cool attitude, I would like to “rewrite” one of the most recent incidents where a six year old girl was raped inBangalore, and also in Budaun where two girls who went to the fields to relieve themselves did not return as they were raped and hanged from a tree. Also, how can we forget the Nirbhaya rape case of December 16, 2012 who was raped brutally. The case falls under the ‘rarest of the rare category’. I have just highlighted the headlines of our daily newspapers which we read, we rage and very casually turn the page! So now what? Can we ask ourselves at least for the sake of humanity ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘till when’ & ‘how’ the walls of such deep rooted social evils, that we have constructed, can be deconstructed? Delving Deeper When I say delve deeper, I want all of us to think about the deepest roots of the problem, the ‘seed’ of which was sown by “Patriarchy” (pita, pati, putra). The male domination in our society sees women as subordinate to men and as an instrument of oppression. I want you to think of a ‘disease’ namely, domestic violence, which has afflicted the majority of Indian women and is being transmitted from one generation to another. It has been observed that husbands who have witnessed their fathers physically abusing their mothers are more likely to abuse their wives. All of this occurring in the presence of a supposed medicine called the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. I don’t want you to focus on the candles we light and the slogans we raise outside but of those 91,202 women who have been the victims of dowry deathsfrom January 2, 2001 to December 31, 2012. Most of them were set ablaze and died screaming and shouting inside their homes. At the root level, I want all of us to note that, in India, a crime is committed against a woman every 3 minutes! Ask yourself, why does India need feminism in the 21st Century? The answer lies in the question itself. Ask your souls why the single largest democracy is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women to live in? According to National Crime Records Bureau, 80% of girls become victims of eve teasing, stalking and molestation everytime they step outside their homes. A rape victim not only suffers physically but also has to go through the toil of medical examinations and the endless interrogations. I don’t want you to sympathize but empathize with a girl who steps outside with a thousand thoughts in her mind whether she will be able to return safely or not! After a deep analysis, the only thought which comes to my mind is that every passing minute, crimes against women are rising. Disheartening is the fact that the expression of violence has risen to the heights of viciousness and the indispensable Right to life, protected under Article 21 of the Constitution, is considered as a rubberstamp for women. What should be done? Let us move to one of the most integral stage of this article, the stage of zeal and fire to create the change we desire to see. Reformation or Punishment? First of all, we need to introspect whether we want a short term easily implementable solution like capital punishment or do we want the system to be reformed and transformed from its roots? I believe in the saying ‘If you truly want to change, you must first be willing to change your mind’. We need to check our stereotypical thought process which restricts the liberty of women. Instances of rape have occurred where victims as young as 6 years suffered the wrath of the perpetrators. So the argument that women dressing inappropriately instigate men to commit such crimes sounds nonsensical. Initiatives should be taken from school level as adolescents are among the most vulnerable & impressionable of the demographic groups. Sex education must be imparted in schools which will help them understand their biological developments and feed their inquisitiveness. Trained counsellors & psychologists should be appointed to impart quality education. Efforts must be made to ensure an increase in the literacy rate of women so that they can have a better knowledge of their social, legal & moral rights.Independent groups such as a group of pink clad Robin Hoods - Gulaabi Gangshould not be suppressed and must be provided with amnesty so that they have the courage to take a stand against the indifferent system. We all have idols of goddesses in our homes, but stop and take a look at the status of women at home. Is she treated kindly or is she a victim of cruelty and the pawn in the hands of men? Technology can be wisely used and apps can be created which will help women in danger to detect their location and to contact the nearest police station at the earliest such as “Vith U” app and strict rules should be made so that police officers can think beyond their indifferent attitude. The Media should also come forward, not just as a spectator who presents these cases as “breaking news”, but with a solution oriented approach to bring changes in the system by emphasizing that justice delayed is justice denied! Astonishing is the fact that 1 in every 3 women in Europe under the age of fifteen is a victim of sexual violence. As also declared by ‘Kofi Annan’, Secretary General of the UN in a 2006 report of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, “Violence against women and girl is a problem of pandemic proportions. At least 1 out of every 3 women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her life with the abuser being someone known to her”. Thus, I believe that reformation should be done at the global level & this issue needs to be discussed in international organizations. So, at last, a humble appeal to everyone reading this article that please stop justifying this brutality and see it as a cause of alarm and call for action. The condition has assumed the form of an epidemic. The need of the hour is to shake ourselves out of this apathetic and defeatist mentality. Therefore, I believe that we must fill our soul with zeal, passion and fire to empower women by reconstructing this deep rigid social construction. As Albert Einstein has truly said “The world will not be destroyed by those who do the evil but those whose do evil but by those who watch them without doing anything”. Now, you decide whether you want to fight this evil with a mere sight or destroy the system and challenge the change. Because "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH". - Shristi Gupta (Authour is a Second Year Political Science Student at Ramjas College)
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Gender is a matter of culture; it refers to the social classification into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. Our social consciousness has also embedded the concepts of masculinity and femininity, so gender is an important discourse which we cannot ignore. Since legislation is one of the most important instruments of government in organizing society and protecting citizens, the discourse on gender and legislation has got significance. The debates in parliament reveal a great deal about gender relations. When we look into the debates on women reservation bill, we can see that popular perception is influenced not only by patriarchy, but also by misogyny. For example Sharad Yadav’s much reviled comment, derisively referring to “short-haired women” (par-kati mahilaen) who would overrun Parliament (Menon, 2009). But opposition to this bill cannot be totally characterized as anti-women, since there is a question of upper caste women vs OBC men. Such sentiments better depict in the words of OBC representative, Nithish Kumar, ‘’we would not allow the social composition of the social composition (of this house) that has been achieved after a long struggle to be changed from backdoor’’ (Randall, 2006, p. 67) In the 2005 debate over amending the Hindu Succession Act to give daughters equal right to property with sons, MPs from the Samajwadi Party protested, arguing it would create ‘ashanti’ (disquiet) at home, pit brother against sister and so on (jagori, 2009, p. 16). So is the psychology of our political class!! The analysis offered by the legal system is not proportional to the woman’s experience and in essentiality is male dominated and gender biased; that all analysis of a given situation which demands legal and state intervention weighs heavily towards the male experience and fails to address the women’s question. If we look into the question of surrogacy debates, it conceptualizes women as a ‘natural body’, as the object of a contractual relationship (Menon, 2012, p. 192). In case of medical termination of pregnancy act (1971) feminist like Nivedita Menon argues that ‘it was not the concern for women, but the motive of population control’ that acted as the rationale behind MTP Act (Menon, 2012, p. 204). The ineffectiveness of law should also be discussed, in case of dowry law Srimati Basu argues that the Dowry Prohibition Act (amended in 1984) is ineffective because it can do little to address the social mechanisms through which dowry flourishes, and can come into play only if a complaint is filed (Menon, 2012). The fact that both giver and taker of dowry are held equally culpable is an inbuilt disincentive to report demands for dowry. Feminist legal analysis has helped to explore the rules and practices that are discriminatory in their impact. Nandita Haskar examined the way in which law has reflected patriarchal oppression. She not only pointed out the laws that continue to discriminate against women, but further connected these laws, and judicial interpretations of these laws, to patriarchal social relations in which women have been oppressed (Ahuja, 2010, p. 8). Even the debates on uniform civil code hardly touched the question of gender justice. This debate often revolved around communal politics and was rarely surfaced in public discourse as a feminist issue. In the case of Shah Bano Judgment, it was viewed as ‘anti-Muslim’ rather than ‘pro-women’. Personal laws have become the primary site of a constitutional and structural opposition between the fundamental rights of minorities (to religion) and of women, and always this opposition was settled in favour of religion. We have enough examples of sexist courtrooms, fuelled by patriarchal understandings on issues. The 1983 judgement of Gujrat High Court states that ‘’corroborative evidence for a charge of rape was not necessary in general and that a women’s complaint of rape should be taken on its own merit’’ (Menon, 2012, p. 116). The judgement looks like progressive, but its justification is totally anti-women. ‘’Indian society unlike the permissive west is tradition bound and a woman was unlikely to make a false accusation of rape, as she would be reluctant to admit any incident likely to reflect on her chastity had occurred.’’ (Menon, 2012, p. 117) This implied that, western women are more capable of making false accusations. This is detrimental to the woman's identity. On the 9th of February 2008, Chief Justice of Karnataka, Cyriac Joseph and State Human Rights Commission Chairperson Justice S. R. Nayak remarked that ‘’immodest dressing was the cause of increasing crimes against women ‘’ (Menon, 2008). Such irresponsible responses are self-explanatory on the psyche of our honourable judges. Section 377 of our constitution penalizes sexual activity ‘against the order of nature’. This prescription of heteronormativity[1] is a way to punish a greater threat to social order. There by dissolving LGBT rights. Section 375 IPC, recognizes only penetration of vagina by the penis as rape. All other forms of sexual assault are considered as lesser crimes, deserving a smaller quantum of punishment. Thus penetration by objects or in the case of very young girls, by a finger, does not constitute rape (Menon, 2012, p. 114). According to Nivedita Menon, section 375 IPC is a way to protect patrilineal descent and property systems. The implications of section 377 IPC and section 375 IPC can be read together with Flavia Agnes remark on rape laws.‘’Rape laws are based on the same old notion of chastity, virginity, premium on marriage and the fear of female sexuality’ (Menon, 2012)’. According to Catherine A. Mackinnon, ‘neutrality of law treats and affects men and women differentially as it is based on male norms, male experience and male dominance, to the total exclusion of women’s experience from the“male-stream” law, and thus law has contributed to women’s oppression’ (Ahuja, 2010, p. 4). If the principles of justice are not to apply directly to institutions such as courts and constitutions, legislatures and laws, then one might well ask what is the point of having them at all? - Ashique Ali T Works Cited Ahuja, N., 2010. www.academia.edu. [Online] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/1562885/The_Need_to_Understand_the_Womans_Question_and_its_Implication_on_Women_in_Patriarchal_Society [Accessed 9 09 2014]. jagori, 2009. [Online] Available at: http://jagori.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/dowry_infopack.pdf [Accessed 10 9 2014]. Menon, N., 2008. Judging Women. [Online] Available at: http://kafila.org/2008/02/20/judging-women/ [Accessed 9 12 2014]. Menon, N., 2009. www.kafila.org. [Online] Available at: http://kafila.org/2009/06/07/and-arent-obc-women-women-loud-thinking-on-the-womens-reservation-bill/ [Accessed 9 9 2014]. Menon, N., 2012. Feminism and the Family – Thoughts on International Women’s Day. [Online] Available at: http://kafila.org/2012/03/08/feminism-and-the-family-thoughts-on-international-womens-day/ [Accessed 9 9 2014]. Menon, N., 2012. Seeing Like A Feminst. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Randall, V., 2006. Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Women's Reservation Bill. Comparative Politics, 39(october). [1] Heteronormativity refers to the overwhelming power of the assumption that heterosexuality is natural and normal, and is the norm to be emulated. |
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June 2016
AuthorsAshique Ali T |