"How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?"
This evergreen line of Bob Dylan hits us every time we witness a gruesome murder of dignity, respect and humanity. Every time it knocks us down and reveals the real us – patriarchal, masculine, misogynist to the core where women are either the protector of the culture or merely the reproductive machines serving the pool of society's workforce.
And whenever there is any news of brutal rape or intimate partner violence, instead of pointing the fingers at our corrupted conscience we prefer to direct it to the victims or survivors. The script doesn't change even if the body of the woman is chopped into 35 pieces and spread across the national capital in the shiny midnights.
The latest comments of union minister Kaushal Kishore that the 'educated women' should get registered first before staying away with the 'live in partners' coming in the backdrop of Shraddha murder case further reveals our obscene masculine beliefs that denies agency to women.
Shraddha who fell in love at Mumbai came to Delhi only to escape the societal prejudices on interfaith couple. However, she was not safe even at her chosen 'home'. She was not only being strangled to death by her loved partner Aftab; rather he chopped her body into 35 pieces, stored it in a fridge and used the silence of Delhi nights to spread the body parts across the city.
Shraddha chose her own life but was unable to determine her fate – it was scripted by the coercive masculine rage that didn't let her glow in the city that is commonly known as 'Dilwalo ki Delhi'. As the minister said the live-in relationship actually led to the unfortunate incident, if they got registered would she be able to save her life? The gendered intimate partner violence in India is so rooted that a recent research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows that one woman in every three suffers out of it but only one out of ten manages to report it.
While we think that the homes are the most secure place for the women, the research points to the opposite. The edifice of our faith on the safety of home got crumbled down during the Covid 19 period when the families were locked up inside their 'safe homes'. Immediately after the lockdown, the numbers of domestic violence cases surged at such a pace that on April 6, 2020, the general secretary of the United Nations (UN) called for a 'ceasefire' and asked the global leaders to address the "horrifying global surge in domestic violence.”
As per the data of National Commission for Women (NCW) the domestic violence complaints whereas in the first week of March before the lockdown was imposed stood at 30; it shot up to 69 in the first week of lockdown only (March 23- April 1). The rising complaints led to NCW starting a WhatsApp number for registering complaints.
However, the issue of accessibility then became the biggest deterrence. Jaya Valenkar of the renowned women rights' organization 'Jagori' told India Spend “If a woman has to complain or seek help from a helpline about her family being abusive, she needs to have a landline or mobile phone while being 100% sure that she is not being overheard--whether it is her marital home or natal home."
In a country where as per the mobile gender gap report, women are 20% less likely to own a mobile in contrast to men, it is anybody's guess how the women from their 'safe home' can register a complaint.
That the root of the violence is the patriarchal family structure can be further found in the works of Malavika Karlekar, the co-editor of the Indian Journal of Gender Studies. In her 1998 research paper titled, Domestic Violence published in EPW, she noted that despite humongous data, in Indian academia the works on family violence is not that prevalent. The reason that she cites pertains to "its inviolability as an institution reaffirmed by an environment which limits interaction and discourse between the professional academic and the activist."
The sacrosanct image of the family created by the cisgender heterosexual men and upheld by the masculine society doesn't let us look at its irreparable flaws. The union minister who suggested that Shraddha should have got married and entered the family structure simply represents the prevailing heteronormative idea of family and kinship.
Rukmini Sen, a professor of sociology in Ambedkar University Delhi in her EPW paper titled, Stay Home, Stay Safe: Interrogating Violence In the Domestic Sphere says that "for many married women words like "caged," "trapped," "confined," and "control" have been used synonymously with the home.
According to data of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2018 domestic violence is one of the topmost crimes against women with "majority of the cases being registered under 'cruelty by husband or his relatives' at 31.9%."
After long-drawn women's movement though Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) was passed in 2005, the ground reality hardly changed. Legal scholar and women's rights advocate Flavia Agnes in her 2019 paper What Survivors of Domestic Violence Need From Their New Government righty says, “Even after a decade and a half, the assurances made in the act have not been actualised when we examine the cases which are filed under this act.
In reference to several case studies, she showed though PWDVA had expanded the meaning of domestic violence including verbal, economic, sexual and emotional violence and gave provisions for urgent redressal along with maintenance, the prevailing prejudices in the society that determines the actions of police and Judiciary didn't let it flourish.
The recent revelation about Shraddha that she was admitted to hospital in Mumbai with bruises in 2020, far before she came to Delhi indicates that she has been into this abusive relationship for long. Why couldn't she file a report? Her family's denial perhaps deprived her of the space to share her struggles. Shraddha like millions of women searched for her 'safe home' where she will neither be judged, nor be subjected to violence.
It is not about whether the woman is married or staying in a live-in relationship; Violence is embedded in the patriarchal structure and the so called 'sweet home' becomes the site of perpetration. In this context, one cannot help but recall the words of sociologist Marianne Hester: "Domestic violence goes up whenever families spend more time together, such as the Christmas and summer vacations."
