Unlawful Entry

After years of fighting for a law defending women from violence at home, India's feminists are now up in arms against a proposed legislation on the subject. Because the Protection from Domestic Violence Bill tabled in the Lok Sabha earlier this month, they fulminate, is no more than a shoddily drafted piece of tokenism to placate battered women. Which if passed by the Lower House in its current form—as seems likely—will harm more than help the cause of the shattered, suffering victims.

Women activists have been organising seminars and protest rallies against the Bill on a war footing this past week, drumming aloud the gross deficiencies including its definition of 'violence', its 'frightening omission' regarding a woman's right over her matrimonial home, and the regressive insistence on mandatory counselling for victims of domestic violence. The Bill as it now stands—say members of a nationwide coalition called the Women's Groups Campaign for a Comprehensive Civil Law on Domestic Violence against Women—will prove "very dangerous" in its implications.

"The Bill actually legitimises certain kinds of violence," argues Mumbai-based feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes. "It allows for a man to beat his wife under certain circumstances." For instance, the Bill says it is not domestic violence if it is not "habitual" and does not make the victim's life "miserable". Also, if a man beats his wife to protect his property it is not domestic violence as the Bill perceives such violence as the man's right to "defend" himself. These clauses worry activists like Anuradha Rajan of the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW). Domestic violence as an offence punishable with imprisonment up to one year isn't going to get any convictions if definitions are so amorphous, she says. "It leaves too much to the subjective perceptions of judges and ignores all the detailed definitions of violence in international treaties to which India is signatory; definitions which acknowledge that women aren't just beaten, but psychologically, sexually, and economically abused as part of the daily torture they suffer at home."

There are also objections to the glaring exclusion in the bill of a woman's right to her marital home. Advocate Indira Jaisingh of Lawyers Collective, a women's rights initiative, has critiqued the omission in a comprehensive brief on the subject: "The one remedy required against such violence is an unambiguous declaration that the woman has a right to reside in the shared household. The recognition of this fact is the basis of all domestic violence litigation across the world. The declaration of this right to reside in a shared household is the best guarantee to ensure that violence is prevented. It must exist in the law, failing which, this law must be rejected by the women's movement."

Another provision rankling feminists is the clause that the magistrate "may at any stage direct the respondent or the aggrieved person, either singly or jointly, to undergo mandatory counselling with any service provider". Such a directive, they argue, is against all principles of counselling. The victim and the abuser being in an unequal situation, joint counselling cannot be seen as conceivable. Counselling of the victim has to be voluntary—not imposed—is the demand; with mandatory counselling only for the abuser.

Meanwhile, where are the resources to implement the justice the bill promises to disburse, asks Ranjana Kumari of the Centre of Social Research. "Not only is the bill a weakly drafted, indifferent piece of legislation, it provides for no allocation of funds for the victims' relief." Short-stay homes, training centres to encourage economic self-sufficiency, even the counselling centres are already in sore shortage.

Latest court statistics (collated in 1999), already list over 1,42,000 cases under trial or pending under 'cruelty by husbands and relatives'. An International Institute of Population Studies survey revealed attitudes (even among women) that justify, if not condone, wife beating. Of the 100,000 married women interviewed, 56 per cent thought it was okay for men to beat their wives under certain circumstances.

Understandably then, with such alarming aggression facing the Indian woman even in her home, feminists are fighting tooth and nail for a more stringent law against domestic violence. The minimum non-negotiables as laid down by them are: categoric definition of domestic violence, declaring the woman's right to reside in her marital home, empowering judges to grant residence orders, provision for emergency monetary relief and custody orders, mandatory counselling for abuser and not victim, and the vesting of jurisdiction in the civil court to exclusively deal with cases so as to avoid multiple legislation. The hope is that with a strong law, the war against domestic violence will be easier to fight.