A documentary about India featured women speaking about their abusive marriages and men discussing the hazards of educating women. It was more than a decade ago, and even now, nothing has changed. The society’s perception of women has not changed at all. Marital rape is still legal. Abusive marriages are shoved under the guise of keeping the family together for the kids.
Criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh,” the Indian government has said, in a blow to campaigners ahead of a long-awaited Supreme Court decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people in India for generations.
In India, it is not considered rape if a man forces sex or sexual acts on his wife, as long as she is over 18, due to an exception in a British colonial-era law. India has struggled for years to tackle high rates of violence against women, with a number of high-profile rape cases sparking nationwide anger and drawing international headlines.
The government’s formal opposition to the marital rape criminalization campaign comes two months after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the West Bengal city of Kolkata sparked mass outrage and protests in the country, with hundreds of thousands of doctors striking to demand better protection for health workers.
On Monday, a man was charged with her rape and murder, an official source at the Central Bureau of Investigation told CNN.
In its argument against criminalization, the Indian government said that a woman’s consent is protected in marriage, but there is “a continuing expectation, by either of the spouse, to have reasonable sexual access from the other.”
It added that, “though these expectations do not entitle the husband to coerce or force his wife into sex, the consequences of such violations within marriage differ from those outside of it.”
The government also claimed existing laws on sexual and domestic violence were sufficient to “protect consent within marriage.”
Mariam Dhawale, General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association – one of the petitioners fighting for criminalization – said consent inside and outside of marriage are “not two different things.”
"Consent is consent,” she said. “In our country, a woman is not thought of as an independent human being, as an independent citizen of the country. She is like, sort of an appendage to the husband. She’s subordinate, she’s not a separate identity as such.”
Shifting that belief will take more than changing a law, but it’s the “first step,” said Bharadwaj.
“It’s a cultural revolution underneath,” she said. “Until and unless you make a big statement that this is not okay, the culture will never shift, because by not having that law, the culture is accepting of that violence.”
Dhawale said marital rape is a big part of the violence reported by women who seek help from her organization, but they often avoid coming out in the open with their allegations.
"Because they know that nobody will believe them, and it’s not considered a crime,” she said.
Do you know how many women out there in India get sexually assaulted in a day? I am only talking about the reported cases. Who knows how many are unreported. Do you know how many wives out there must be getting assaulted by their husbands and yet can't go to the court because marital rape is legalised in India and according to the court, it's the wife’s duty to please her husband. Think about the women of my country. What kind of hell they all must be going through. I am privileged enough to have the autonomy to make my own decisions and I do take full advantage of it, yet my hands tremble as I write about the state of the less privileged women in my country.
Stand against Marital Rape in India.
Stand against the decision of Supreme Court.
Save the women of India. Let them live. Let them be free.
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