Disguised gender crimes: A tale of truth!

Ritam Banati

The piece is really a story that is surfacing from the forgotten corners of my heart, which has started drawing succour from the logic of my mind. Do you remember that old TV programme where the man writes on the screen - “It’s a man’s world”, and then the woman’s lipstick adds ‘wo’ before man. And it becomes, “A woman’s world”. The fact is that an average woman is desperately seeking to carve a dignified path for herself in a world that remains largely male-dominated. And many a times there is only one thin line between domination and suppression. And because the problem does not get tackled here, suppression leads to exploitation that results in crimes being committed. But before the story is unfolded, one point which I would like to assert is, some crimes in this world are not socially acknowledged and they can also not be legally punished. Yet their gravity remains and the impact they create on an innocent life, cannot be ignored. While meticulously analysing a true story in my mind, I try to put forth here a couple of real situations from the book of life of an ordinary young woman to support my point. Hunger was biting at her belly. Tension was hitting her mind. The foetus was crying out. She asks for food. “It is not ready yet,” she’s told. She complains to her husband. The callous reply by family members to husband, “Why can she not cook for herself?” There is nothing wrong in the response as such. But, when the woman has diarrhoea during initial pregnancy, then at the most she can only come to the dining table. How can rotis be tempting to her when she needs some light food? The above situation is just one small example mirroring this victim’s agony. The anguish started much before she conceived. At that time, due to a mentally suffocating environment owing to feeling compelled to confine herself to one room due to her presence not being acknowledged and verbal taunts that implied she must leave the house permanently among a slew of other humiliating remarks and at times actions, the girl used to leave for her parents’ place often. She felt instantly alive and happy on stepping out of the house. Perhaps, at that time, she did not tell everything to her parents because she did not want them to worry too much. But that mistake proved to be her undoing much later. But then an opposite situation also presented itself. That was the time when she was in a very vulnerable state due to the combined happenings of the day, including sexual misbehaviour by one member of that family which left her in so much shock that she just kept mum and overlooked it. All this happened in her husband’s absence. She started missing her parents badly and was desperate to leave immediately. She was told that the driver was outside and she should go with him. But she could not find him anywhere. Because she wanted to immediately rush to her parents, she hopped in the auto and left. She was in tears that time. Being provoked like this to leave the house should be interpreted like what? The shrewd tactics were such that in the presence of her husband, many a times there was no pretence to be nice. At times there was. And when the nastiness happened in front of her partner it was not bad enough to call for any kind of a retaliatory step. The trap was laid. When the wife told him what she wanted him to know, he thought it was too much of an exaggeration. The point I am trying to drive here is that grounds for marital rift had been laid quite well. And this continued till the time she was living with them. The question that she was asking me is what was their motive when the marriage was a purely arranged one? This is a microscopic analysis albeit a miniature version of events that bordered on criminality that can never be proven to the legal system. The acts are criminal because the perpetrators knew the immediate and long-term repercussions. The intention was to achieve the objective by a gradual process of inflicting mental torture. The tactics were politically astute. Who would believe if the process was so slow? It will take time for the victim too to realise that she is being victimised. When she is bearing a child then in her oversensitive state and limited thinking, the process of understanding gets diminished even further. However, the tragedy of the entire situation in which she is still trapped is that there were happy moments too for her while she was there. And she was thoroughly confused most of the time due to the presence of both situations, albeit at different times. Unfortunately the story does not end here. What subsequently starts is the course of victimising the victim by trying to irreversibly damage her credibility and the approach to prove if need be that the gravity of the intended crime was not as much as it was construed. This woman is not a perfect person. She may have a couple of her own dark secrets. But this is no justification for domestic violence of any kind. To conclude she tells me, “I dare today, this International Women’s Day, to hurl accusations against the women of that house more than at the men”. Hats off to those women who got reduced to a slump by suffering too much; yet they mustered enough courage to stand tall again - with dignity. Nonetheless, the need for a positive force around is needed for a woman victim to help her in helping herself. The question really is, how can one consolidate this mechanism in our society? On International Women’s Day, I would like to assert to all, “It is not a man’s world. It is not a woman’s world.” This world thrives only on humanity.