Battered women-A sordid truth

Ipsita Baishya

She lies there like a lifeless ragdoll beaten black and blue by the beast, She complains not, only her eyes well up with tears, precious tears Her muffled sobs an expression of her torture and torment She knows not for what she lives Always at the receiving end of her callous man’s ire and reproof She beats her breast in dismay… However much we might try to overlook or feign ignorance, violence against women is a reprehensible and shameful reality that cannot be denied. Most of our female counterparts face such an ordeal day in and day out losing all their self-respect and dignity in the process. We do not have to look far for all this. The moment we pick up the day’s newspaper or switch on a news channel we are bound to encounter some reportage of women victims subject to some such crime. My neighbour Mita is a software professional and her spouse is an MNC executive. But despite being economically well-off and educated she is a mute sufferer at the hands of her husband who often beats her. This clearly shows that domestic violence is not just confined to the lower strata or the uneducated. Rather it is an endemic problem that knows no national boundaries, no cultural boundaries, no class or caste boundaries and no religious boundaries. Violence against women continues to be the reality of women’s lives even today inflicted by men, by women, by trans-national actors and by the state. It continues unabated in situations of armed conflict and in times of peace. It continues to takes place outside and inside the home. Violence against women and girls is a prime health and human rights concern. Women can experience physical or mental abuse throughout their lifetime, in infancy, childhood and/or adolescence, or during adulthood or older age. While violence has severe health consequences for the affected, it is a social vermin that warrants an immediate coordinated response from multiple sectors. The high incidence of gender-based violence in conflict zones is particularly alarming, and has been increasingly evidenced and documented in a range of conflict situations. In this scenario women have become more vulnerable to violence, especially in militarised areas, and as displaced persons and asylum seekers. A case in point here is Darfur.Much of the violence perpetrated in the Darfur conflict has resulted in grave human rights violations against women. These violations against women and girls include abductions, rape and forced displacement. In this era of neo-liberal economic globalisation, private players (including multinational and transnational corporations) are also becoming more unscrupulous in their war for profit, plundering natural resources and violating people’s rights in the process making women easy prey. In India, especially northern and southern parts of the country the regressive tradition of dowry continues to be the signature of marriage. Actually, it is nothing more than ghastly avarice and yet another means of criminal violence against women. While the laws remain stringent -- a dowry death is a relatively easier crime to prosecute than murder -- the crimes continue unabated. Most go unreported, unregistered. And of those reported according to statistics, only a bare miniscule are legally pursued. The largest democracy of the world, sheltering more than a billion souls; the birth place of a great civilization; the place of origin of Vedas full of respect for women; the great cultural land – India, fails to protect its daughters, the shield of law fails to safeguard them. Episodes like Nandigram are surfacing, where women were raped by police personnel during police action. Nandigram is not the only place in the list of sexual violence against women. It is accompanied by Singur where the front runner Tapasi Malik, the supporter of Save Agriculture Committee got missing and was later found dead in the hole of automobile factory. Such instances are not few and far between.The list goes on and on. The General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and invited governments, international organizations and NGOs to organize activities designated to raise public awareness of the problem on that day. The draft expressed alarm that endemic violence against women was impeding women’s opportunities to achieve legal, social, political and economic equality in society. The Assembly would reiterate that the term "violence against women" would refer to acts capable of causing physical, sexual or psychological harm, whether in public or private life. Women activists worldwide also also observe the day commemorating the brutal assassination, in 1961, of the three Mirabal sisters who were political activists in the Dominican Republic. The Mirabal sisters are a symbol of resistance against the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic then.Since 1981 women`s activists have celebrated this day as the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women to gain momentum and solidarity in their struggle against violence against women. Eliminating violence against women has long been a goal of the United States and requires a multifaceted strategy that incorporates a variety of legal, educational, health, and infrastructural reforms. There are several impediments often in the form of influence of social and cultural norms in determining what constitutes violence, impeding universal consensus on a definition of violence against women; and changes in reported rates of abuse according to the definition of violence used, the way questions are asked, the type of target population, and the setting of the interview (privacy, familiarity of environment, etc). India too has woken up to the stark reality of gender based violence The passage of the Domestic Violence Act comes as a wake-up call. For the first time in the history of legal ramifications directly linked to women, the state has recognised that violence is not only physical and/or sexual. Equally, violence can be psychological, verbal, and economic and act as warning signs of future physical violence. With this in mind, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, has laid down stringent rules to prosecute men who harass, beat or insult women at home. The rules, notified on October 25, 2006, classify domestic violence under four categories - physical, sexual, verbal/emotional and economic. Anything remotely resembling abuse by a man of his wife, live in partner or child, can land him in jail for one year or cost him up to Rs.20,000 in fines, or risk being booked under sundry sections of the Indian Penal Code. Feminists worldwide may cry hoarse about a range of issues concerning womankind but violence against women is also a grave problem begging for attention. The sooner they deal with it the better for the plethora of hapless women living in abject misery and utter subjugation. After all it would not be totally amiss to name violence against women as one of the many Frankensteins of patriarchy …