{"id":636,"date":"2007-03-07T13:11:22","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T08:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/?p=636"},"modified":"2007-03-07T13:11:22","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T08:11:22","slug":"domestic-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2007\/03\/07\/domestic-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

"All men who love their wives hit them" said Mrs. R to me – a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. As I tried to pick up my jaw that had hit the floor, I argued that my father had never hit my mother …. Mrs.R sagely told me… "then he must not love her". Mrs. R was not an uneducated woman from rural India. She came from a ‘good’ family, was educated, had a career and ran her home with an iron fist. And she was not a resident of Patna or Itawa or Salem, but a posh postal address in London. I lodged with her family when my parents were transferred back from England. But given that she was 50 something when I entered my twenties … I put down her pronouncements to the fact that she came from another time and space and had a warped sense of morality. However, in the last dozen or so years that i have been back in India …. there are a number of female friends of mine who have told me more or less the same thing. While none of them linked up a loving husband to domestic violence, the overwhelming consensus was that it was ok to be hit once in a while. It happens everywhere, they told me. And, it is ok for a man to demand ‘conjugal’ rights even when the wife doesn’t want it. … they reasoned … afterall, that is the purpose of marriage. And most of my friends are ‘educated’ ‘professional’ women. None of them wants to take the matter further, in terms of reporting it to the police or womens’ support groups. "what will people say" and ‘these things happen’ seem to be the common response. So the results of the latest National Family Health Survey<\/strong><\/a> … whlich states that 37% of women in India face domestic violence … does not really come as a surprise to me. If anything I would think that the figure is low … I am sure that a lot of women have lied in the survey. Do you really want to tell a complete stranger that your spouse hits you? or worse, would you think that a slap or two is violence? While the Government’s legislation on Domestic Violence seems to be a step in the right direction, there is a far more fundamental battle to be won. And, that is to ensure that change happens at the societal level. Legislation of this nature, while it is to be applauded, will only work if society thinks that something fundamentally wrong. Unfortunately, in our society the role of women is so denigrated and so below that of men, that change in attitudes a major uphill struggle. Education is definitely one way, legislation is another. But, both are at a meta & macro level. Change like this has to start at the family unit. It starts from ensuring a basic level of equity — if not equlity — in dealing with the boy child and the girl child. It starts with husbands understanding that it is not ‘dharma’ to hit their wife. It starts with the wife not putting up with being slapped around. It starts with the extended family who intervene and show disapproval. And then moves on to a system that supports a woman who wants to walk out of an abusive relationship. We have the legislation in place, but none of the rest. Maybe it is time to look at the symptoms and prevention in addition to looking at crime and punishment. addendum<\/strong><\/em> : the reason why the ‘educated’ is in quotes is primarily because the survey believes<\/strong><\/em><\/a> that domestic violence is highest amongst women who are not educated and who reside in rural India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"All men who love their wives hit them" said Mrs. R to me – a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 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