The Modi government’s recent decision not to criminalize marital rape has once again brought to surface the perennial underlying, hidden problem of the decadent patriarchal mindset in India.
Marital rape is in itself a very complex and a sensitive issue which has to be dealt with extreme sensitivity and caution and it’s certainly not supposed to be brushed under the rug.
Let’s introspect this in detail.
Any sexual intercourse without consensus in a marriage can be termed as marital rape. Such cases are increasing at an alarming rate and in most cases the victim is the female partner i.e. the wife. It’s very horrifying and saddening that a wife needs protection of the law from her own husband but the circumstances and time demand it. When the constitution was written, maybe such cases were not reported but now with the rise in such cases every year, the need of the hour is the formulation and implementation of a stringent law. The very thought that each year several such cases are reported throughout the country, but a judicial process cannot be initiated only because there is no law which criminalizes marital rape and the victim has to either return to her torturous life or file for divorce on some flimsy grounds is heart wrenching.
The complexity of this issue is mainly due to 3 reasons-
- The victim is too traumatized to speak out because: The offender is none other than her spouse who she is legally married to, so complaining against him would naturally imply the breakdown of her marriage and hence, she would also have to suffer a backlash not just from her in laws but also from the society and sometimes her own parents.
- The victim is generally not financially independent and has to depend on her spouse for fulfilling the basic necessities of life so filing a complaint against her spouse is not just a fight for her dignity, but a huge challenge to her own survival, and her children’s entire future is also at risk.
- Medically, this offence also poses a problem since in the general rape cases the medical examination can easily ascertain if the victim was “penetrated” biologically, but sexual relations are a part of matrimony and hence assertion of the fact whether the intercourse was consensual or not would be a tricky task if there are no other injuries to the victim.
Cases of marital rape are increasing at an exponential rate across the country and till a few years back, such cases were a rarity but these days every other daily screams the gory details of some brutal marital rape case reported in the city. These cases are not just horrific because a loved one is involved in the offence but because of the level of torture that is involved. Whether it’s the case of a woman who was forced to have an intercourse during the labor pains, or the numerous cases where objects are inserted inside the victim causing grievous internal injuries, or the case where the woman’s private parts were subjected to electric shocks just for fun or the instances of subjecting the women to extreme torture during the act that she passes out or is left writhing in pain in a pool of blood are not isolated instances which are rarely reported and can be ignored. Such cases not just exhibit the criminality of the perpetrators mind, but also prove them inhumane and hence should not be allowed to stay in the midst of the society.
The government made the decision not to criminalize marital rape on the grounds that “marriages are sacred in India”. What I fail to understand is how is the sanctity of the marriage maintained when one partner abuses or assaults the other? What is the difference between a rapist and such a partner, in the eyes of the law when they both are commuting the same crime? How does the husband become his wife’s owner and treat her like his property and hence an object.
What drove me to write this article was the realization of the hard hitting reality that a female is a burden to her father before her marriage, a property to her husband and in the end she is at the mercy of her son. The justice Verma committee set up after Nirbhaya rape case also recommended criminalizing marital rape, the parliamentary committee headed by the BJPs Venkaiah Naidu rejected the proposal.
So, what’s the government waiting for? Is it compulsory for thousands of women to suffer at the hands of their so called “better halves”?
In the end, I raise a simple, yet unsettling question-
Why shouldn’t a husband who rapes his wife be treated as a rapist, when a husband who murders his wife is treated just like a murderer?
Or is the husband really the owner of his wife or as they say in Hindi “Pati”= “Owner”?
