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Marital rape is still legal in India - here's the story of one such woman I know. 71 years since independence, 69 years of being a Republic, and we still live in the last century!
Marital rape is still legal in India – here’s the story of one such woman I know. 71 years since independence, 69 years of being a Republic, and we still live in the last century!
According to section 375 Indian penal code, a man is said to commit ‘rape’ who, except in the case of certain exceptions (given later), has sexual intercourse with a woman under circumstances falling under any of the 6 following descriptions:-
The exception: Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, if the wife is not under fifteen years of age, is not rape.
She is a 23 year old young woman, married when she was 19.
She was the best student in her class. After marriage, he didn’t allow her to study. Each and every day, he sexually assaulted her. He forced her to watch violent porn videos and also forced her to act like the woman in the video. He used her all day without her consent. The nights with him was the worst of nightmares for her. He considered her as a toy. And her NO was just two letters to him.
Her biggest torture was that after all these cruel things happened to her in their bedroom every night, he forced her to smile and act like his ‘better half’ in front of others.
For society, for the family, and even for her own parents, the terrible things she faced were just “a matter between husband and wife”. Every time she spoke to them, her parents spoke to her about the importance of adjustment in her marital life. When she talked about the pain she faced in the room, her family talked to her about being well mannered and calm, and advised her to live up to the image of a good wife.
This is not just her story, it’s the story of millions and millions of women all over the world. According to UN 75% of married women in India face marital rape.
52 countries in the world have criminalised marital rape, but not yet in India – India is one of 36 countries where marital rape is still legal – among which are countries like China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia – even 69 years after we have become a Republic. The sad part is that society, the country’s laws, and even the family is justifying marital rape. In the Indian context marriage is considered ‘sacred’ so that marital rape is in out of question. It’s not a criminal activity in India. Because man has a marriage certificate for raping his wife.
Yes! And India is the largest democratic country in the world. What irony!
When will all this change?
Image source: a still from the movie Provoked
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As he stood in front of his door, Nishant prayed that his wife would be in a better mood. The baby thing was tearing them apart. When was the last time he had seen his wife smile?
Veena got into the lift. It was a festival day, and the space was crammed with little children dressed in bright yellow clothes, wearing fancy peacock feather crowns, and carrying flutes. Janmashtami gave her the jitters. She kept her face down, refusing to socialize with anyone.
They had moved to this new apartment three months ago. The whole point of shifting had been to get away from the ruthless questioning by ‘well-wishers’.
“You have been married for ten years! Why no child yet?”
I huffed, puffed and panted up the hill, taking many rest breaks along the way. My calf muscles pained, my heart protested, and my breathing became heavy at one stage.
“Let’s turn back,” my husband remarked. We stood at the foot of Shravanbelagola – one of the most revered Jain pilgrimage centres. “We will not climb the hill,” he continued.
My husband and I were vacationing in Karnataka. It was the month of May, and even at the early hour of 8 am in the morning, the sun scorched our backs. After visiting Bangalore and Mysore, we had made a planned stop at this holy site in the Southern part of the state en route to Hosur. Even while planning our vacation, my husband was very excited at the prospect of visiting this place and the 18 m high statue of Lord Gometeshwara, considered one of the world’s tallest free-standing monolithic statues.
What we hadn’t bargained for was there would be 1001 granite steps that needed to be climbed to have a close-up view of this colossal magic three thousand feet above sea level on a hilltop. It would be an understatement to term it as an arduous climb.
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