Suman K. Sharma
When so much has been seen, heard and said about the status of women since that dreadful rape of a 23-year old girl in New Delhi on 16 December, 2012, is there any need to write yet another article on the issue? But why not? Women continue to be molested, raped and exploited. Nothing much has changed, except that the word ‘rape’ has been repeated so often these days that it has almost become a common term in our day-to-day talk inside home and out on the street. Such is the magic of human speech that even the most horrendous terms lose their odium if repeated often enough.
Rape is a violent attack on a woman. It causes her severe injury, often leading to lifelong impairment or even her death. The crime germinates first in the would-be perpetrator’s mind: that the potential victim is not a human being like him; that she is to be vanquished with brutal force. The blinding storm that rages in the rapist’s mind obviates the bond that ordinarily links one human being to another. The woman before him becomes yeh kaun? – ‘who, man’?
We venerate women as the shakti-incarnate. India is the land where as many as nine nights – nav ratras – are set aside every year to worship woman in all her facets. Perhaps, then, rapes should not have been happening with us.
Ideally, they should not, but they do. The irony is that while putting woman on a pedestal we have ended up treating her differently than we treat man. This becomes obvious when a kanya grows up or is given away in marriage and becomes a wife to a man. Has any mother ever thought of ‘giving away’ his son in marriage to a girl/woman? But to revert to the issue at hand, a kanya is allowed a few precious years to live for herself. Once she turns into a wife, it is expected of her to live – and spend her entire life – in service of her husband, her children and her husband’s family at large. Families – and by extension, the society in general – expect women to be submissive, all-giving and pliable. So pervasive is this mindset that a girl/woman would be prepared, even against her better judgment, to sacrifice her individuality and merge her entity with that of her husband/father or family elders.
Here is what some Jammu women (their names changed) had to say about themselves:
Priya is a 19-year old girl. She lives with her uncle’s family as both her parents are dead. Priya has not been able to study beyond the tenth grade. Asked about her choices of further studies, a career and a marriage; she said she would go by the advice of her elders (read her uncle-aunt), she can’t think of having a choice of her own. Sunita, her aunt, is 34 and a mother of three. Like Priya, she too is a school drop-out. Her biggest regret is having borne three daughters (no matter that all the three girls are bright and beautiful) and not having been able to make a career of her own despite all her intelligence. Sunita hails from a large family of a remote village in Rajouri. Married off when she had just turned 18, she found herself abruptly transplanted to the big city in a family of total strangers. How did she manage to pull on? “I had my mother’s advice to follow,” she said. “My mother told me to forget the home that had been mine till marriage and never go back to her with any complaint against her husband or his people. In my day-to-day conduct here in Jammu, I had the example of my bhabhis to follow.” Sunita thinks her happiness lies in the happiness of her husband and ‘correct’ upbringing of her daughters. Her 10-11 year old daughter is already adept in doing household chores – washing, cleaning, making an occasional cup of tea for her father and tending to her baby sister. Chitra, in her mid-forties, is another woman who came forward to share her feelings. ‘Convented’ and a graduate from the university of Jammu, a school-time athlete and sports person and now an accomplished actor who has performed in several tv serials as well as played major roles in a couple of feature films, she was married off at a very young age. This out-going person could not rest contented with the role of a wife and mother and went ahead – of course with the approval and support of her husband – to dabble in theatre. It was only a matter of time before she started taking her hobby with the seriousness of a professional and the result was for everyone to see. Her ultimate objective in life? To see that her husband and her children are happy and contented. Across the city lives Divya, all of 29. Daughter of well off parents and the only sister of two brothers, Divya had everything going well for her. Good schooling, degrees in Commerce and Education, then MBA. Ran own business. Then came the question of her marriage. She had to foreclose her options before the wishes of her family and tie down the knot. At the time of the interview she was seriously pondering whether she had done the right thing.
What image do we get from these snippets of conversation? That educated or not, a girl/woman is nurtured to genuflect before others every time a matter comes to a head. That she is an individual only in so far as numbers go, but deep down, her individuality does not really count. That she may have as many choices as her circumstances permit in dresses she wears, the food she takes, the schools and colleges she joins and so forth; but she has little choice against the will of her family and that of the community at large. That what is looked down upon as an aberration in man (don’t ‘hen-pecked’ husbands receive the society’s derision?) is considered a supreme virtue in woman. That she exists, in other words, not for herself but for others.
Mind is everyone’s last bastion of defence. If mind is strong, a person can contend against any tyranny or injustice. But if the mind is programmed to accept subjection from the start, then no amount of laws and law-enforcement can be of help. Today, if girl/woman is ill-treated in any manner, the society has to ask itself whether we are nurturing girl/woman adequately on both mental and physical planes to defend herself against the would-be molesters and rapists.
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