Violence against women

Rape of a young student by five people in New Delhi, on 16th December 2012, has sparked outrage across India. Unprecedented public anger against this heinous crime has suddenly brought the attention of the entire nation to the decimal safety of women in India. This incident seems to have touched public conscience and has shaken up the soul of India. Around the world, people have suddenly woken up to the enduring scale of crime and cruelty against women in India. The tag of “largest democracy in the world” sounds like hot air in front of alarming figures of violence against women.

As per TrustLaw, a news agency run by Thomson Reuters, India is the worst G20 country in which to be a woman. I am not surprised by this revelation. But I was definitely surprised to find that India also has the distinction of being in the list of five most dangerous countries for women to live (also included in the list are Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan and Somalia) due to staggering number of cases of  sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape and female infanticide and foeticide. Violence towards women raises essential questions about our values and attitudes towards women.

Rape cases registered a 9.2% rise over the previous year with over 24,000 cases in 2011. A recent survey by a leading Indian newspaper, Hindustan Times, revealed that 78% of women were sexually harassed in 2012 in capital New Delhi. Even a simple stroll outside their homes has become a humiliating experience. This sexual harassment can vary in severity from sexually suggestive remarks, winking, brushing in public places and catcalls to outright groping. We hardly notice any of these men being castigated by people or authorities.

On the contrary, we indulge in moral recrimination of our girls! We arraign and accuse our women of not dressing modestly or not putting their gaze down! This repulsive view of things acts as a maintaining factor for this behaviour.
It is heartbreaking to know the repulsive situation of the majority of women in India. According to the United Nation Population Fund Report, around two-thirds of married Indian women are victims of domestic violence. A study conducted nine years ago in 2003, sponsored by the State Women Commission, revealed that 30 per cent women in Kashmir were physically abused by husbands. However, experts claim that the figures have already reached over 40 per cent and are increasing alarmingly. Ironically women from “largest democracy” are living in “sempiternal hell” within their closed walls. It is disturbing to find the scale of this dehumanising behaviour towards our female population in all communities of India.

​Causes of domestic violence in our society can vary from dowry, interference from in-laws, misunderstandings, giving birth to female babies, jealousy, to cooking a bad meal. We were brought up in a society that encourages gender bias, the powerlessness of women, suffocating idealised concepts of family life and power imbalance in our patriarchal culture resulting in over-inflated ego of being a man. Institutional and legal factors such as inadequate or unclear policies can also maintain this menace. Victims of domestic violence can develop a psychological phenomenon called learned helplessness where people exposed to unpredictable and inescapable negative stimuli may become passive and unable to protect their lives.

According to a report by UNICEF, 50 million girls are missing from the population of India due to systemic gender discrimination. As per the provisional data released by the census office in 2011, national child gender ratio (0-6 years) has declined to 914 girls for every 1,000 boys as compared to 927 in 2001. Jammu and Kashmir witnessed the worst decline, where the ratio plunged to 859 girls for every 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group, down by 82 points from 10 years ago, making it the third worst state after Haryana and Punjab! A study published in leading medical journal “Lancet” in 2010, found girls in India (aged one month to 5 years) were dying at a rate that is 4-5 times higher than boys that age due to pneumonia and diarrhoea. This study highlighted social bigotry as the cause of the skewed survival rate of girls in our virtuous society. While the world around us is discarding primitive traditions, India seems to be contriving new path of gender discrimination.

Some of the explanations for this silent genocide include: women being perceived as inferior to men in a patriarchal society; sons being considered an “asset” who have the potential to earn and contribute to family fortunes; daughters being perceived as a “liability” as she is going to marry off to another family and not contribute to family fortunes; a belief that sons extend the lineage; the burden of raising a dowry for daughters marriages; sons being a means of support to ageing parents; easy availability of sex determination tests including ultrasound; and unethical medical professionals who have made it easy to determine foetal sex and provide selective abortion. It is estimated that this unethical medical practice has grown into a US$ 244 million industry in India.

There is growing anger that reports of crimes against women are not taken seriously and conviction rates are meagre. It is encouraging to see the level of outrage and condemnation by all sections of the society against the acid attack on a woman in Srinagar and newspaper reports of incidents of rape in Kashmir. Public demand for changes to the laws on violence against women has rightly become nosier. Role of authorities especially police have been highly criticised due to their resistance to register complaints and provide timely help to victims. Charities working for women’s welfare need to lobby for strong legislation against these menaces and pursue individual cases with authorities.

​Setting up of Women's Helpline and Women Police stations have been advocated as effective measures to curb sexual harassment. People are demanding that men charged with domestic violence should be terminated from their jobs to send a strong signal to these perpetrators. The setting up of Refuge Shelters and counselling centres for victims of domestic violence have been found effective in developed nations. Authorities should also provide free legal aid to unemployed victims of domestic violence to help them to pursue abusers through the legal system. There is an immediate need to raise awareness in people about the attributes of a civilised citizen in the 21st century. This awareness needs to be imparted in all settings including family, schools, community centres, religious centres and work places. Our unconscious resistance to gender equality is promoting this decadence in our society. 

( This article was originally published in Rising Kashmir India)