Cold SnapDragon

Of Rocks and Necklaces...

2025-10-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

Last year, after learning how to crochet (or, at any rate, after learning how to hold a crochet hook), I promised myself that I'd introduce myself to a new craft each year. So, I've been very pleased to have had jewellery-making creep upon me unexpectedly.

All of my own everyday jewellery was stolen a few years ago; not a significant monetary loss since all of it was ‘fake’ but a disappointment nonetheless since it had been carefully curated and was irreplaceable.

I found that I didn't quite like what I saw in the market. Or liked it, and found that I was too miserly to buy it — I'd wanted a painting-in-a-pendant to start off with, and found some truly lovely pieces being sold but they cost significantly more than I was willing to pay for them.

My solution was to buy a pack of bezels, and stick pictures into them. The first, an Indian miniature cut out from the page of a book.

I used Fevicol instead of varnish — should anyone ever need the information: there are different types of Fevicol and at least one of them is transparent when it dries. Of course, after pouring it out, I didn't spend the next half hour obsessively Googling: "How long does Fevicol take to dry?"

Making other pendants was then easier. A close-up from the Book of Kells cut out of a postcard, religious but not ostentatiously pious, a Ravi Varma portrait from some packaging, and flowers from a 5-year-old pocket diary.

The gold paint I added made the lady look like a mediæval icon. Not a problem if one doesn't mind that (and I don't) but perhaps not quite true to the artist's intentions.

Plenty of elements simply came from bits and bobs around the house:

The large brown beads with golden flecks in them which I used in one necklace were once handbag charms, removed since I prefer my bags unembellished, while the turquoise millefiori beads came from a bit of an obsession I began to develop with them and various other lampwork beads after reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier in which a woman lives through the centuries, courtesy a conceit which makes Venetian time run slowly, embodying resilience, pragmatism and a devotion to her art.

Of course, I had a few mishaps along the way too… One morning, a tube of glitter glue exploded all over me while I was trying to make a pendant for a friend. Thankfully, I happened to be wearing a dress I hated so I wasn't unhappy to see the last of it and, as a result, our rangoli this festive season sparkled; I wanted to safely use all that I had.

Most of my stock of glitter glue is now over. I'm not sure I trust myself to handle it safely.

Other experiments turned out better, and I find that I'm much happier counting beads than imaginary sheep to counter daily stresses.

I don't have the faintest idea how to do anything complicated but find that I enjoy simply stringing beads together and being up to my eyeballs in crimps and chains, jump rings and split rings, beads and bails, most of which I'd never given a thought to and certainly wouldn't have been able to name a few months ago.

I'm also beginning to find my way around pliers — who knew there are so many kinds?! And, as a bonus, I've finally strung together shiny red plastic beads I bought on holiday in Bologna some 35 or more years ago.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this adds up to but it brings me joy.

Along the way, I've been reminded of how much minerals and gemstones fascinated me when I was younger (I had a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia), and of my quartz collection, a few pieces gifted to me, and the occasional one bought, the most ordinary-looking stones sometimes split apart to reveal wonders.

My rock collection too was stolen (long, long ago). Much to my chagrin, I once saw what I'm certain was my largest piece, white quartz on one side of a stone about a square foot large, embedded in the floor of a shop, and have little doubt the thief handed it over to the owners to curry favour and friendship. I'd taken a toothbrush and soapy water to it so many times as a child that each undulation is imprinted in my mind.

I'm now trying to reintroduce myself to rocks… It is just slightly ironic to me that my love of necklaces ultimately seems to boil down to: “I like rocks.”

I hardly ever use jewellery. I haven't put on a pair of earrings for over a decade, and I now find that I won't be able to without first visiting a doctor; my ear-holes have closed. But rocks…! Though my collection is long gone, as it turns out, necklaces enable me to turn that interest, anything but dead, into ‘useful’ objects.

One of my projects has been to try to recreate a necklace my mum lost, a white pearl and black onyx necklace interspersed with golden beads from Grenoble. It was lost on a visit to relatives in Shillong in the 1990s, apparently flushed down the loo we were later told once it clogged the drains. The less said about that visit, the better.

I used inexpensive black tourmaline and white moonstone instead of the original pearl and onyx along with brass beads.

“Jewelry is symbol and signifier, a tangible stand-in for intangible things. It can mean not just wealth and power but also safety and home,” as Aja Raden says right at the beginning of Stoned which I've been reading. I think I know exactly what she means when she talks about jewellery being about more than wealth and power.

I also love how it can take one on a tour of the world, whether it's through the earth's history as Baltic amber, Australian Mookaite, Kambaba Jasper (usually from Madagascar), or American Shattuckite do, to name but a few, or through artistic traditions like those of making lac beads (in Kashmir) or lampwork beads.

More than anything else though, I'm happy that the necklaces have taken me back to a long lost source of wonder for me: “I love rocks.”

(Parts of this post were earlier published on SocMed.)

A Sahib who Chose to Bask in the Indian Sun

2023-09-20T04:31:00.005-07:00

Thomas Waterfield with Korobi, Bikram, and Nandita Saikia (Pune, early 1990s)

A mention of the British officers of the Raj does not necessarily send one into raptures. However, there are exceptions. Thomas Waterfield, affectionately called Dada, who fought to acquire Indian citizenship after independence, was one of them.

He was finally granted Indian citizenship in 1950, and lived in India till his death on the fifth of this month, his final years having been spent at a riverside home in Warje. In later life, he used the surname, 'Gay', as it was easier, he said, for Indians to pronounce.

Dada was born in Devonshire, England, 96 years ago and grew up in a luxurious home. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to India as a young Indian Civil Service officer, as had his father and grandfather before him, in 1928. During the Raj, he served as a Magistrate, an Assistant Collector, a Judge, as the Registrar of the Bombay High Court, and as a Commission Chairman.

He met Barbara, who would later become Mrs Waterfield, while he was in India. They had four children: Roger, Rodney, Hugh, and Susan. When India finally became independent in 1947, Barbara went back to England along with their children. Dada, however, chose to stay on in India and adopted a number of children, whom he brought up as his own.

After independence, Dada worked as a journalist, a ghost writer, a film consultant and as a teacher at the Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He knew Marathi perfectly, and translated Marathi classics into English. He wrote a book of short humorous stories, Androcles and the Tiger, which was published in 1962, as well as a book of poems, The South-West Monsoon Has Withdrawn, which came out in 1984.

Thomas Gay spent several years at Pratibha Advertising in Pune, which was then a part of the Kirloskar Group. It was there that I was first introduced to him as a child several years ago; my mother, Korobi, worked with him at the ad agency. All that stands out in my mind of that first meeting is a large bowl of water and some chapatis on his windowsill, kept there for birds.

That Dada was an ardent nature-lover was the first in a long series of things I was to learn about him. In those years, he often took me for long walks teaching me about the flora and fauna we encountered. In doing so, he also taught me one of the most important things I have ever learnt: to take time off to appreciate the wonders of nature which surround us all the time, but which we often fail to notice.

Dada was deeply interested in wildlife; he wrote a book on Indian butterflies, and tried to do everything possible to eradicate the superstition that surrounds snakes. I remember an incident he once narrated to me describing how he convinced the inhabitants of a small village in Maharashtra that the green tree snake does not kill people by landing on their heads from tree tops. In fact, it cannot do so: its head is soft and feels like rubber.

Nature was far from Dada's only interest. He was an avid philatelist and numismatist, making intricate coin holders using customised plyboard sheets stacked in bread boxes. He often said, "When you collect coins or stamps, you learn a lot about history, geography, art, and culture. All countries represent the best of themselves when they design their stamps and coins." Dada freely shared his hobbies with children and seemed to be able to bring those inanimate objects to life.

He was also the only person I have ever come across who could talk about Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit with just as much ease as he could discuss the classics in Greek. He was interested in music and had an extremely large collection of classical music, which he often listened to along with audio recordings of Shakespeare's plays. However, it was not the variety of Dada's interests and his knowledge that made one admire him. It was his character.

During a recent visit to his home, I met a lady named Monica. She was an orphan who'd known Dada before independence. "I met Dada on the Deccan Queen. It was a very different train in those days. There were separate sections for the Indians and the British. Dada treated me in the dining car. After that, he often came to visit me and brought me presents," she recalled. "Dada was planning to adopt me, but, after independence, we somehow got separated and I had to leave without even saying good-bye to him, although he had been so kind. I came across his name entirely by chance more than 50 years later and I thought he might have forgotten me. When a mutual acquaintance mentioned my name, he said nothing for a few moments and then pulled out the page of his diary wherein he had described our first meeting."

When I met Monica, she had come to spend time with Dada in his time of need. The wheel had come a full circle.

(A version of this piece was first published in the Times of India on 7 October 2001, a few days after Dada passed away.)

On the Wearing of Sarees

2020-12-21T08:36:00.011-08:00

A Banarasi Saree

I’ve had sarees wear me far more often than I’ve had myself wear sarees. I can’t see the grace or the elegance of a person, myself specifically, that so many rave of whilst wearing a saree.

Sarees themselves though, I do see. As works of art that take skill to create far beyond what many a contemporary, upper class artist can lay claim to, even if the artistry of the weaver isn’t acclaimed in the way the supposed talent of the well-connected urban artist is. As part of a larger whole, with a history often connected to exploitation and casteism but, still, essentially stable and predictable. As a testament to endurance and longevity which has, almost unchanged, survived the centuries. As a connection to a continuity, reaching back through the generations, which makes minor everyday turbulence fall into place simply by making it seemingly inconsequential.

The wearing of a saree: armour, almost shroud, disguise, convenience. I may not see the elegance of a saree on myself but I am cognizant of the practicality of not feeling obliged to adhere to the latest fashions in the wearing of a saree – there are no latest fashions – and of, what is to me, the sheer delight of having avoided often time-consuming expectations of 'proper' accessorisation attendant to more modern attire without making the slightest effort to do so. To me, the wearing of a saree isn’t an effort. It’s usually less than a two-minute investment of time; far less time than it would take me to wear anything else I could wear. And being able to turn any saree into a chrysalis in seconds should the need arise, hiding myself beneath its folds till no one sees anything of me beyond what I want them to see, makes for sanctuary.

There is, of course, the well-entrenched idea that the wearing of a saree lends a woman, particularly the visibly young(ish) urban woman, gravitas. Beyond that though, the ability to virtually remould one’s image or to simply disappear at will is often underrated. The ability to be vastly outrageous and to verbally challenge social norms in a manner which would almost never be accepted from a woman in any other attire. Simply because the saree can be used to create the perception of being non-threatening, of respecting tradition – even the most regressive tradition and even if one doesn’t have an iota of respect for it – of supposedly being ‘on the same side’ as some of the most conservative people around. The saree is as much weapon as it is armour.

It is, for me, also tangible reminder of the life I’ve lived; so many of my sarees are marked with memories of unpleasant experiences with men. I haven’t discarded any of them: they are a constant reminder of what I have survived, of what I now know I can survive. Of who I am. To live life is too often to live through the violence of patriarchy.

The memories are not all ghastly though. There are sarees from people I’ve loved, who’ve loved me. Sarees which, even if they’re now unwearable, once belonged to people who matter to me and which I’ve spent a relative fortune restoring because the sarees are all I have to touch, because letting go of the sarees could feel like letting go of a part of them.

My sarees call out to me, reminding me of people I’ve known, and sometimes loved; they are often works of wearable art which, steeped in history, tell me that there is a point to it all and which, when they wear me, are pure unadulterated joy.

(On #WorldSareeDay, sharing a personal note I'd written years ago about the wearing of sarees. The sheer variety of Indian sarees is, of course, astounding and many of them have been assigned geographical indications which are intended to protect them and the artists who create them. Sadly, Indian handlooms and hand-printing have been struggling to survive, and although recent years have seen a limited resurgence of sorts, it has become clear that the grant of a geographical indication, while helpful, isn't enough in itself to ensure that an art form thrives.)

Domestic Violence in India and the Pandemic

2020-10-27T23:30:00.001-07:00

(A version of this piece was originally written upon request in 2020 for the Times of India although it was withdrawn because of suggestions to change it in ways the author, Nandita Saikia, was uncomfortable. Although it was written when fear of COVID-19 was especially high, with good reason, the pandemic seems to have merely brought pre-existing issues into sharp relief, issues which, sadly, have not yet been resolved ensuring that this piece is not yet irrelevant although it could, perhaps do with some updating.)

We know with reasonable certainty that the pandemic we're currently in the midst of has not enhanced women's safety in the least. There's not a day which goes by without horrific reports of violence against women in the media, and anecdata suggests that domestic violence has been increasing exponentially although addressing it is difficult and, perhaps understandably, does not appear to be anyone's highest priority even though it may be a life-and-death issue for an abused person.

Indian law on domestic violence has not changed drastically. It may be possible to invoke criminal law particularly against physical assault although the efficacy and desirability of the carceral justice it metes out is debatable. Civil law presents abused persons with a number of paths to attempt to protect themselves including by separating from their abusers. And there remains the hybrid of criminal and civil law that is the Domestic Violence Act under which orders pertaining to protection, custody, residence, and finances can be sought.

In a welcome move, the scope of residence orders which can be issued under the Domestic Violence Act has recently been widened by the Supreme Court although, if their practical effect would be to leave abused women in hostile environments, as important as shelter is, seeking such orders may not always be appropriate. Also, since the COVID-19 crisis began, actually invoking the law to aid one is even more of a challenge than usual.

Enforcement agencies, inadequately resourced at the best of times, are under tremendous pressure due to the pandemic and, even if one is lucky enough to have personal resources at one's disposal, accessing a lawyer and making one's way through the legal system, which is still adjusting virtual proceedings and to the demands which the pandemic has made of it, is a challenge for many of those who would benefit from immediate assistance.

Beyond the legal sphere is the issue of abuse which is simply not addressed by the law. Criminal law, for example, is rarely willing to recognise marital rape as a crime, so it is impossible ascertain the extent to which its occurrence has increased since the pandemic began using crime reports. Even in ordinary times, we simply do not have an accurate understanding of how prevalent marital rape is beyond indications in health surveys which are alarming.

Accessing the law is, however, nowhere near enough to counter domestic violence. In the immediate aftermath of abuse, it is often also critical to be able to access appropriate healthcare.

What would have otherwise been a fairly routine trip to an emergency room is now fraught with additional challenges: the healthcare system is unusually strained, and making arrangements for issues as basic as consent for surgery can pose a particular challenge especially if family members are not supportive of an injured person accessing healthcare. Not finding hospital rooms easily means that those who have been injured may be forced to seek healthcare wherever it appears to be available. And, should a surgery be botched, it may be a challenge to find other surgeons to ameliorate the issue.

There is little to aid those who are subject to domestic violence even in urgent cases. The already-fragile infrastructure to address immediate issues currently seems to be on the verge of collapse. Shelters and women's rights organisations, not necessarily reliable even before the onset of the pandemic, plod on though what they can do, even when they do their best, is limited. Almost all that remains relatively intact is the slim possibility of social support.

On one hand, the ostensibly liberal amongst us continue to ask why abused women don't 'just leave' seeming to believe that the question isn't both ridiculous and intrusive. If not anything else, although each woman's motivations differ, the reasons why women stay in abusive situations have been established: they could include fears about respectability and acceptance, financial constraints, not recognising abuse for what it is, and having concerns about the custody of children.

On the other hand, the avowedly conservative amongst us tend to focus on what abused persons supposedly do to provoke abuse, and tend to suggest that those who are abused modify their conduct to avoid being further abused. In doing so, they ignore the fact that many abusers are abusive simply because they know that they will not be held accountable.

Considering that standing up for a person being abused is often expensive, time consuming, and emotionally draining, it is not surprising that expressions of concern, regardless of whether they come from liberal or conservative people, often seem designed to elicit, ideally from those being abused, reasons why no-one needs to get involved. Such reasons can help salve our conscience when we do nothing worth mentioning to counter abuse we know of in our social circles.

Abused persons rarely have networks to support them simply because we are not willing to invest the resources necessary to develop support systems. Nonetheless, if there is an iota of sincerity in our expressed concerns about domestic abuse, it is imperative that we make the effort to provide logistical, financial, and emotional support to those who are abused, and to visibly stand against those who are abusive. To refuse to actively assist persons being abused, if one can, is to be complicit in abuse.

[Link] The Rule of Law

2018-11-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

I critique the rule of law with reference to violence and its own history, pointing out that it has often been 'the voice of the immensely privileged codified in statute and subordinate legislation' in a piece that was published by Smashboard and later by Firstpost.

Extracts

"...the rule of law is not an egalitarian concept and its history demonstrates that it not underlain by gender neutrality. It may be possible to force it into another, less discriminatory mould more mindful of equality and individual rights but that would require recognising our current understanding of the rule of law for what it often is: an idea perpetuated by white men living in sexist societies themselves and forming the theoretical basis for the racial hierarchies which plague all of us today, often with their ideas being used to support economic drain and worse of countries primarily populated by non-white peoples.

[....]

The Constitution of India promises individuals equality and dignity. However, that promise may well be betrayed by the rule of law if it is not structured to avert violence induced by such facets of one’s identity as gender, sex, and sexual orientation.

[....]

Violence is unlikely to be eradicated in our own time but it can be contained, and it is legitimate to ask that the rule of law be structured to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. The most vulnerable are not just those who are poor but anyone who lacks the privilege of power which is, of course, most of us and women, upper class or not, in particular. After all, privilege is always relative, and persons who are abused invariably have less privilege than their abusers. If the rule of law is not structured to address the concerns of those with comparatively less privilege, its adoption would too often merely result in access to law and not in access to justice."

Anti-trafficking Initiatives and Resurrecting Indentured Labour

2018-07-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

(Note: This post is primarily about the intersect between the raid/rescue model & NRPFesque policies in the context of DV and the shape which laws governing the field could be made to assume in the future.)

~*~

Indian trafficking law is a complex mix of constitutional law guaranteeing the impermissibility of the practice of human trafficking, criminal law, and labour law. It is consolidated nowhere but finds mention piecemeal across a number of statutes.

Criminal laws in the field have tended to try to protect trafficked persons (questionably, sometimes from themselves by refusing to acknowledge their ability to consent to acts in relation to themselves) while labour laws have generally tended to attempt to realise the hope of being able to engineer a more equitable society through the instrumentality of the law (with varying degrees of success, to put it mildly).

In consequence, Indian law has not thus far single-mindedly pursued a strategy of removal and rescue. That strategy is largely the brainchild of Western neo-abolitionism developed in consonance with philanthro-capitalism, and it can easily manifest as indentured labour redux with state complicity.

In its earlier avatar, the horrors of supposedly-legal indentured labour practised by colonial powers were experienced by colonised peoples particularly after the nominal abolition of slavery. In contemporary times, the model in vogue doesn't promote forced, unremunerated labour quite as blatantly. Instead, trafficked persons may be removed from the environs they find themselves in, ostensibly in support of their human rights, following raids possibly conducted by law enforcement. However, despite such removal, the country in which trafficked persons are rescued may not force traffickers to pay them adequate reparations or afford them adequate rehabilitation opportunities itself.

Even if traffickers are jailed, at the micro level, retribution devoid of reparation does not immediately help trafficked persons to rebuild their world. And, at a macro level, non-payment means that, if the trafficked persons have crossed international borders and are subsequently deported (of course, at state behest), the money which they should have been paid likely remains in the country in which those who trafficked them have benefited from their unpaid labour, the country in which they were ostensibly rescued. Due to this, the “fight against modern slavery” could this easily resurrect one of the least appealing facets of what was once the coalition of colonialism and capitalism: forced, virtually unremunerated labour extracted from the world's least privileged people.

The problems which the raid and "rescue" model can potentially cause become exceptionally clear if persons are trafficked across international borders by those with whom they share a domestic relationship. This is simply because, should such trafficked persons report abuse and not have the necessary paperwork to remain where they are being abused without their traffickers’ aid, far from receiving support, they could well find themselves being deported perhaps to another abusive situation. And, so, the model could well disincentivise abused persons from reporting abuse and force them to endure in horrific conditions. In effect, the model has the potential to result in states setting up Rape and Assault Facilitation Services in the name of anti-trafficking operations or in lieu of immigration and border forces whether or not that is their intention.

Even where domestic violence isn't part of the equation, a person forced to work in a factory, for example, may be far better served by strong labour laws and, if required, sympathetic immigration laws which ensure humane conditions and fair pay for work should they want to continue working instead of being “rescued” and bring deprived of a job and, possibly, what little safety they have in the process. This chance that there could be alternatives to being “rescued” that trafficked persons may prefer is one which the largely-Western crusade against “modern slavery” has almost consistently failed to recognise much less facilitate.

Together, neo-abolitionism and philanthrocapitalism tend to exhibit enthusiasm to uni-dimensionally measure the success of anti-trafficking measures by counting "rescues" in the field of the messy, uncountable complexities of human life. What they display a distinct lack of enthusiasm for is the prospect of engaging with individuals, valuing their lives, listening to individual aspirations, and attempting to accord respect to the desires humans beings at the individual level so as to facilitate the best possible outcomes for them, outcomes which may not involve what could well be ham-handed rescues.

Unfortunately, the lines of thought which support the raid and “rescue” model have not been entirely contained within the West. India's proposed law on trafficking appears to pay homage to it. One can only hope that better sense prevails and that Indian strategies to address trafficking do not sink to the level of merely counting supposed rescues.

Consent v Dominion: Sexual Offences in Indian Law

2018-07-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a matter in which it is expected to determine the Constitutionality of Section 497 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code. This provision is popularly understood as one which criminalises adultery, and the IPC itself supports this understanding by calling the offence ‘adultery’. However, if the particulars of the offence it describes were considered, it would emerge that the provision is, more accurately, one which can criminalise a man who knowingly has sex not amounting to rape with a married woman without her husband's consent or connivance.

Making the provision as it now stands truly gender-neutral, as many demand, would not allow unfaithful wives to be jailed at their husbands’ behest. Instead, it would allow wives to have their unfaithful husbands’ women lovers jailed.

Although much public discourse treats IPC Section 497 as being discriminatory towards men since it cannot currently be used to jail women, it is quite firmly embedded in a worldview that treats women as the property of their husbands. These are husbands who would once, as the law earlier recognized, have had the liberty to decide when to have sex with their wives regardless of their wives’ feelings on the matter.

Current law has begun to acknowledge that this approach is problematic, and has begun to shed it. It now contains a mishmash of provisions some of which recognise women's rights and others which do not. Marital rape, for example, is recognised by the 2005 Domestic Violence Act but is still barely recognised by the 1860 Indian Penal Code despite its having been amended in 2013.

As far as IPC Section 497 which deals with adultery is concerned: if a man were to have sex with a married woman both with her consent and with her husband’s consent or connivance, her husband could potentially still be liable for having trafficked her. Although this is largely an academic possibility as it is difficult to envisage its realisation in real life, it remains a possibility because trafficking law does not require the person being trafficked to be transported anywhere for the offence to have been committed, and treats the consent of the trafficked person as being irrelevant.

Drawing on international law, the Indian Penal Code essentially defines trafficking to mean using unsavory means (such as threats, abduction, and deception) to recruit, transport, harbour, transfer, or receive one or more persons in order to exploit them. The exploitation could be physical or sexual, echo slavery, or involve forced organ donation. And the Code categorically states: “The consent of the victim is immaterial in determination of the offence of trafficking.”

This is not the formulation used in the ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’ which, in its definition of trafficking, treats victim consent as being irrelevant only if any of the listed unsavoury means have been employed.

The IPC formulation diverges from that seen in international law and reflects the Indian social tendency to deny some people agency, particularly if they happen to be women. And, as an aside, the IPC also makes it difficult to contemplate the legitimacy of voluntary sex work not undertaken by an individual in isolation.

The failure to acknowledge a woman's consent to mitigate what would otherwise be a clearcut case of trafficking and, in other circumstances, the refusal to consistently recognise her withholding consent in what would otherwise be (marital) rape may seem unrelated. Nonetheless, they evidence a deep-seated confusion in the law about whether sexual interaction should be legitimised on the basis of ‘consent’ or ‘dominion’, in the sense that some conservative interpretations of scripture began to understand the latter term over a millennium ago.

Men, in that ancient Biblical telling, created in God's image, have God-given dominion over all the Earth's other living beings apparently including women. The understanding that men have primacy seeped into modern Indian law through statutory provisions introduced by the British to the country which, being patriarchal itself, was receptive to them. Even where we've tried to modernise the law to negate dominion, we haven't fully embraced consent as the IPC definition of trafficking shows.

The patriarchal structure of the law is finally being challenged now although it hasn't been entirely overthrown which is what has resulted in statutory confusion. In courts and beyond, we're questioning laws which criminalise homosexual acts and adultery, and which decriminalise marital rape. We're also engaging with the issue of why the crime of rape shouldn't be relationship- and gender-agnostic.

Currently, we are at a crossroads. We can choose to cling to the laws and social norms which colonialism and conservatism have left us with, and leave women at the mercy of patriarchy along with men who do not conform to patriarchal expectations of them. Alternatively, we can choose to go down a different path in which each individual’s autonomy holds sway instead of the age-old notion that a patriarch, whether in the form of a living person or a state which exclusively upholds his desires, holds sway.

There is every indication that we will choose not to continue to discriminate against people depending on their sexual orientation and the allied choices they make. We may also see ‘adultery’ as contemplated by criminal law being decriminalised. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, that courtesy will be extended to every adult at least in relation to their private sexual lives with no-one being subject to another's dominion and each individual's choices in regard to their own life being respected.

[Link] IPC Section 377 Should be Read Down, Not Struck Off

2018-07-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, infamous for criminalising homosexual acts, is the legal articulation of a traditional Judeo-Christian worldview (easily grafted onto conservative Indian thought) which has no place in the modern world. Even so, striking it down in its entirety would not be ideal, I argue over at Scroll.

Extracts

Section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code is part of India’s colonial legacy. It criminalises homosexual acts using Victorian-era euphemism every bit as non-specific as the Biblical precepts it is supposedly in consonance with. [....]

Section 377 thus, in some circumstances, can accord relief to wives whose husbands rape them. Along with a 2017 Supreme Court ruling, which essentially held that sex with one’s wife is rape if she is less than 18 years old, this innovation forms the basis of judicial intervention which dilutes the marital rape exception enshrined in criminal law in India. [....]

That said, there are those who would suffer if Section 377 were completely struck down. It would therefore probably be prudent to read the provision down so that only those who voluntarily engage in “unnatural” acts without the consent of their partners can be targetted by it.

Having sexual offence law adequately recognise individual rights regardless of gender would require significant legal amendments, which are unlikely to see the light of day within the lifetime of most adults now alive. In the meantime, the least we should aim to do is ensure that tinkering with the law causes as little harm and as much good as is possible.

(Read the entire piece at Scroll: Rape laws: Why the Supreme Court must read down Section 377 – but not strike it down in its entirety )

Domestic Violence, Améry, and Tagore

2018-05-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts upon re-reading Améry

In At the Mind's Limits, Jean Améry begins by investigating the point of the intellect and the experience of the intellectual in harsh circumstances. He then moves on to torture, homelessness, and resentment. He's snarky, aggressive, and invariably spot on. Much of what Améry says mirrors the experience of domestic violence, I suspect, although I doubt that that ever crossed Améry's mind : it was the Holocaust that he was writing of.

A passage in which he admits to not knowing what dignity is particularly struck me:

"I must confess that I don't know exactly what that is: human dignity. One person thinks he loses it when he finds himself in circumstances that make it impossible for him to take a daily bath. Another believes he loses it when he must speak to an official in something other than his native language. In one instance human dignity is bound to a certain physical convenience, in the other to the right of free speech, in still another perhaps to..."

I don't know what having dignity is but I'm quite certain that being dignified in most circumstances means ensuring that others are not made to feel uncomfortable by one's forcing them to contend with how far from the ideal they are especially when one faces injustice oneself and they are complicit in the infliction of violence through their silence. (So much for the wonders of dignity!)

A daughter recently had a beautiful essay published in tribute to her mother who had once been married to a prominent Indian lawyer who had abused her. It spoke of a time before cell phones but it made me think of how the essay entirely aside, even today, being well-placed doesn't necessarily ensure that a woman facing domestic abuse won't bleed to death on her living room floor. It reminded me that the tale of the "rich" abused woman who's up against a richer man finding herself without aid worth mentioning is nowhere near new. And it made me think of dignity and beauty.

Tagore had once examined beauty through the lens of Romantic poetry — Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth — and Advaita Hindu philosophy. The latter, he had apparently explained in a letter to a European person saying: “The first stage towards freedom is the Shantam, the true peace, which can be attained by subduing self; the next stage is the Shivam, the true goodness, which is the activity of the Soul when the self is subdued. And then the Advaitam, the love, the oneness with all and with god.” And, in the essay (entitled The Poet's Religion), he highlighted that life must be 'a continual process of synthesis, and not of additions' if our activities are to avoid 'the insane aspect of the eternally unfinished'.

"What is the truth of this world?" Tagore asked, answering his own question stating:

"It is not in the masses of substance, not in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither can be counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. [....] What is constantly before us, claiming our attention, is not the kitchen, but the feast; not the anatomy of the world, but its countenance. There is the dancing ring of seasons; the elusive play of lights and shadows, of wind and water; the many-coloured wings of erratic life flitting between birth and death. The importance of these does not lie in their existence as mere facts, but in their language of harmony, the mother-tongue of our own soul, through which they are communicated to us.
[....]
[I]f beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things, then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts. Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and loss. This is the poet's religion.
[….]
This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the infinite — where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life, and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the triumph of life in a new birth across death,— has its call for us. The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence."

What that means isn't always entirely clear in terms of what it takes to make the world a better place. There was a time when I'd thought that it was no bad thing that most men can be bribed to do what is right with the promise or hope of career enhancement or some other inducement. Because doing what is right counts whatever the circumstances, I'd imagined. But I'm increasingly beginning to think doing what it right is not enough unless one's personal life mirrors one's public politics. The lawyer who supports women's education but leaves his wife at risk of death or the lawyer who, half a century later and half a world away, advocates anti-violence legislation only to be violent at home is replaceable. The cost of supporting a person who has no legitimate claim to anyone's support simply because one celebrates their politics is both high and unnecessary.

Améry had pointed out that as humans, when we are in trouble, we are conditioned to expect help and we usually receive it though, of course, not when one is in the clutches of the state and the state is malignant. There is no help for an abused woman either when she are in the clutches of a man who has the power of the state over her supported by a patriarchal society, his own aura of reasonableness, and his claim to power within the state. To her, he is the state and he is malignant.

[Link] Rape and the Death Penalty

2018-04-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

Over at Scroll, I argue that advocating the death penalty is not an appropriate response to rape, and it completely ignores our own role in facilitating not only rape but also other forms of abuse, all of which exist on a continuum. Although it's easily implementable, there's no convincing evidence that the death penalty will stem rape. It stinks of retribution, is always susceptible to irreversible error, disproportionately targets those without privilege, violates decency, and is expensive.

Rape is itself largely a manifestation of toxic masculinity. [....] Putting rapists to death, [the possibility of which may not deter them from committing rape], reeks of machismo and patriarchy. In a society that routinely creates the impression that women are destroyed by rape, death for rape simply realises the old norm of an eye for an eye. It is a form of retributive justice in an age when justice is meant to be reformative. [....] If we are to address rape, we need to develop legal processes to report and prosecute rape that are easy to navigate and which would increase the likelihood of rapists being held to account. We also need to interrogate social processes and challenge defences of abuse across the spectrum particularly within our own social circles. What we require is an alternative paradigm that is independent of toxic masculinity. We need to hold not just abusers to account but also those who support them and thereby facilitate abuse. That process, more often than not, will require us to begin by taking a long, hard look in the mirror.

Read the whole piece here.

(This note contains edited tweets and jumbled up extracts from the post at Scroll.)

On Holding Abusers and Their Enablers to Account

2018-04-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

09 March 2018

If we are to act against abuse (including SH), perhaps we should focus not on abusers but on those who create environments in which they thrive, the mechanisms they employ, & how they can be leashed. Abusers generally do not abuse others because they must but because they can.

Quite apart from holding abusers accountable, we also need to hold abuse-enablers to account. And recognise that access to law & access to justice are not synonymous esp when "law" is determined by abusers and their supporters, & its processes ― due process ― controlled by them.

Worth asking why responses to abuse are structured the way the are, whose story is (not) told, & who benefits. Confidentiality of findings? The truly victimised, the falsely accused don't benefit; perhaps institutional/family reputation can? What priories underlie responses?

Who determines which channels through which to complain of abuse are legitimate? Who controls proceedings through supposedly-legitimate channels? The same people in both cases? How do you avoid a conflict of interest & ensure fairness?

Through history, some of the worst abuses of humans have consistently been deemed entirely legal by the persons in power who both committed them & determined what was lawful. (Think slavery, eg) Due process & uncritically accepting law as an anti-abuse tool will not stem abuse.

The law matters. Due process, too. They create formal structures to assign responsibility. But, to be meaningful & fair, they must be constantly interrogated. That's partly why the media & extra-legal channels of complaint can't be dismissed; they're critical to interrogate law.

There's also the slight problem that, even at its best, the law may not provide the outcomes a victim wants, not least coz the state which nominally deploys it is almost always carceral. It's, rightly, a tool to counter abuse. We need to stop being told it's the best/only tool.

19 March 2018

Perhaps it's wise not to post in anger though it's sometimes hard to avoid it.

It isn't easy to avoid noticing that the calls against a person found to have committed abuse can be muted in comparison to those against a person merely accused of it.

The spectacle merits, I suspect, questions about what drives those supposedly enthusiastic about human rights. It explains how progressive legal change has largely been developed in the wake of non-influential abusive men being targeted. It reveals the difference between the advocacy of human rights as a career choice and as a lifestyle choice. And it is always a choice: whom we choose to pillory, whom we excuse. And the mechanisms we employ in both cases.

Ostensible progressivness and feminism isn't enough. The structures which protect a certain class of abusers, usually rich and apparently 'woke', deserve to be dismantled. Those who support such structures deserve to be challenged. They may do much good but if what they achieve is largely limited to the policy level which only occasionally calls themselves to account (almost by accident), the manifestation of their version of progressivness is inadequate.

Desegregation once changed the daily lives of poor white people but left power concentrated in the hands of rich white people who still wield it almost exclusively. Who's paying for our supposed commitment to gender equity today by actually having to practise it? And, more importantly, who isn't?

Addendum: This isn't just about sexual harassment but also other forms of abuse. Consider, for example, the gaslighting, often in the language of social justice, or the tomb-like silence which too often follows complaints of DV or rape depending on who's accused.

[Link] Cornelia Sorabji

2017-11-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

A light read by me about the person who became India's first woman lawyer over at dailyo.in:

Cornelia Sorabji is, of course, best-known as India’s first woman lawyer, after having been the first woman graduate of Bombay University and the first woman to study law at Oxford University. It is easy to co-opt her into the role of a committed feminist who changed women’s lives but to do so would likely be to essentialise her life, flatten the many layers of her personality, and possibly to impose on her philosophies which she would not immediately have claimed as her own.

Read more.

2017 tweets:

India's first woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabji, born #otd 1866, didn't have an easy start despite being privileged but that didn't stop her.

She managed to begin practising not as a lawyer permitted to but as a "person for the defence", thus exploiting a legal loophole. pic.twitter.com/iSQ6S61Zdf
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) November 15, 2017

Unsurprisingly, Cornelia Sorabji didn't always rely on either the law or on anecdotes to say what she had to say.

She turned to literature. Her stories highlighted how the combined forces of law & societal contempt for women not backed by men circumscribed women's lives. pic.twitter.com/G81EZmroD1
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) November 15, 2017

Cornelia Sorabji belonged to a class which wasn't always antagonistic to the British; she herself was a conservative social reformer without strong nationalistic aspirations.

She left for London after she retired and died there. Her family home in Pune, India, is now a hotel. pic.twitter.com/daAvNGcBGY
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) November 15, 2017

[Links] The Judicial Understanding of Consent

2017-10-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

What I understood of the Court's discussion of consent in its acquittal of Mahmood Farooqui for rape made me very uncomfortable.

I've talked about why that was the case in two pieces, links to which I've shared here:

Asia Times: Mahmood Farooqui : HC's Troubling Interpretation of Consent &

Scroll: No may not mean no: Order acquitting Peepli Live co-director of rape opens terrifying possibilities

Concerns: The Expansion of Abortion Rights

2016-09-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

The decision of the Bombay High Court in the case of High Court On Its Own Motion vs The State Of Maharashtra decided on 19 September, 2016, has been widely spoken of as a progressive decision, and in many ways it is although it does also leave some questions unanswered.

Para14. reads: "A woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy is not a frivolous one. Abortion is often the only way out of a very difficult situation for a woman. An abortion is a carefully considered decision taken by a woman who fears that the welfare of the child she already has, and of other members of the household that [sic] she is obliged to care for with limited financial and other resources, may be compromised by the birth of another child. These are decisions taken by responsible women who have few other options. They are women who would ideally have preferred to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, but were unable to do so. If a woman does not want to continue with the pregnancy, then forcing her to do so represents a violation of the woman's bodily integrity and aggravates her mental trauma which would be deleterious to her mental health."

The recognition of a woman's right to make decisions about her own body and whether or not to have a child is, of course, progressive. What isn't entirely clear is why, despite this recognition, the Court itself seems to have effectively differentiated between women. It states, in Paras. 12 and 13: "As per Explanation 2, if the pregnancy is accidental on account of failure of device or method used by married woman or her husband for the purpose of limiting the number of children, then the said pregnancy if unwanted, it may be presumed to constitute grave injury to mental health of the pregnant woman. [....] We need to interpret Explanation 2 which is restricted only to a married couple. However, today a man and a woman who are in live-in-relationship, cannot be covered under Explanation 2 whereas Explanation 2 should be read to mean any couple living together like a married couple."

The Court has clearly read "married women" in Explanation 2 to include women who are in live-in relationships. Perhaps the wording of the law prevented an even more expansive reading in the Court's eyes but this hasn't been made clear in the decision, and the question of whether the Court's expansive interpretation of who would fall under the provision related to "married women" remains although it appears that the expansive interpretation adopted by the Court is limited to women in live-in relationships even though the Court, immediately after articulating its reading states: "A woman irrespective of her marital status can be pregnant either by choice or it can be an unwanted pregnancy."

As such, the expansive reading by the Court sets up two categories of unmarried women on the basis of their domestic arrangements: those in live-in relationships on one hand, and, on the other hand, those who are not in live-in relationships whether or not they are in relationships at all. It isn't entirely clear why this has been done, and whether the differentiation between various kinds of unmarried women based on their domestic arrangements can be considered to be fair and constitutional especially given that it potentially accords diminished access to abortion to unmarried women who are not in live-in relationships.

Strangely, the decision clearly intends to accord the same abortion rights to all women but still differentiates between women itself. It states, in Para. 16: "Women in different situations have to go for termination of pregnancy. She may be a working woman or homemaker or she may be a prisoner, however, they all form one common category that they are pregnant women. They all have the same rights in relation to termination of pregnancy."

What is troubling is that the decision of the Court appears to hinge on the rights which should be granted to women viewed through, one might suspect, a patriarchal lens. There appears to be no conception of women who may become pregnant without being in a committed relationship and without being raped, and the Court voices an age-old conception of the devastating effect of rape stating, without explaining what the basis of the statement is, in Para. 12: "If pregnancy is due to rape, then there is bound to be complete mental break down of a victim." What a woman could be subject to by law on account of a 'complete mental break down' which is simply assumed to exist by the Court, if the assumption were to be carried over to other contexts such as to determine a woman's competence to contract, doesn't bear thinking. Further, it is also unclear if reading marital relationships to include live-in relationships is an interpretation susceptible to being applied in other contexts (potentially generally making, for example, the rape of one's live-in partner non-criminal through a similar expansive reading being made applicable to the marital rape exemption in the Penal Code).

As such, the decision of the High Court takes abortion law several steps forward when it is considered in broad strokes. However, the devil, as they say, is in the details, and it appears that the decision has the potential to have unpleasant and unintended consequences for some women, and possibly not just women in prison in relation to whom the decision has been drafted.

What Indian Criminal Law Says of Marital Rape

2015-05-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

The law does recognise marital rape. The concern is that the law does not adequately recognise marital rape as a crime. Under civil law, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, recognises sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence and, consequently, it recognises marital rape as a legal wrong, Under criminal law, the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (last amended in 2013), recognises the possibility of a man raping his wife only to promptly clarify that such rape within a marriage would not generally be considered to be rape for the purposes of Section 375 of the IPC which defines the offence of rape.

‘Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape’ reads the second exception to Section 375 of the IPC. In essence, a wife who is not under 15 cannot be raped as far as this Section is concerned. If the IPC Section were to be read in conjunction with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, (or POCSO as it is called), it is possible that the law could be interpreted to make the rape of a wife between the ages of 15 and 18 a criminal offence through Section 42A of POCSO. However, there is at least one occasion on which a Delhi Court appears to have refrained from interpreting the law in that manner. (See State v Suman Dass, Patiala House on August 17, 2013.)

The relevant Sections of POCSO, which deal with the precedence of laws are:

42. Where an act or omission constitutes an offence punishable under this Act and also under sections 166A, 354A, 354B, 354C, 3540,370, 370A, 375, 376, 376A, 376C, 3760, 376E or section 509 of the Indian Penal Code, then, notwithstanding 45 of 1860, anything contained in any law for the time being in force, the offender found guilty of such offence shall be liable to punishment under this Act or under the Indian Penal Code as provides for punishment which is greater in degree.

42A. The provisions of this Act shall be in addition to and not in derogation of the provisions of any other law for the time being in force and, in case of any inconsistency, the provisions of this Act shall have overriding effect on the provisions of any such law to the extent of the inconsistency.

The law is not, however, completely unconcerned about the possibility of a man raping his wife. A separate offence is contained in Section 376B of the Indian Penal Code which deals with the marital rape of a wife who is separated from her husband.

376B. Whoever has sexual intercourse with his own wife, who is living separately, whether under a decree of separation or otherwise, without her consent, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than two years but which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine. Explanation.-ln this section, "sexual intercourse" shall mean any of the acts mentioned in clauses (a) to (d) of section 375.

Invoking Section 376B of the IPC is no easy matter though: the Section is buttressed by Section 198B of the Criminal Procedure Code which unequivocally states in relevant part: 'No Court shall take cognizance of an offence punishable under section 376B of the Indian Penal Code where the persons are in a marital relationship, except upon prima facie satisfaction of the facts which constitute the offence upon a complaint having been filed or made by the wife against the husband,'

There is a Section in the Evidence Act, Section 114A, which states that in certain prosecutions for rape, 'where sexual intercourse by the accused is proved and the question is whether it was without the consent of the woman alleged to have been raped and such woman states in her evidence before the court that she did not consent, the court shall presume that she did not consent'. This presumption applies only in very specific cases of aggravated rape (listed in Section 376(2) of the IPC such as rape by a police officer in a police station to which he is appointed) and does not apply either to rape generally or to any of the offences defined in Sections 376A to 376E including the marital rape of a separated wife. In short: with reference to marital rape, there is currently no presumption which favours women.

As such, as far as marital rape in criminal law is concerned, in effect, except in the case of the separated wife, only the marital rape of a wife under the age of 15 is explicitly a crime. The marital rape of a wife between the ages of 15 and 18 may be criminal depending on how POCSO is interpreted. And the marital rape of an unseparated wife over the age of 18 is not recognised as a crime in and of itself. It may be considered to be assault but, then again, assault is not rape.

Further, although Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code does deal with cruelty against a wife, 'cruelty' (the 498A understanding of it, anyway) is not guaranteed to consider allegations of marital rape. For example, although the factual matrix isn't crystal clear from the decision, in Crl.M.C No.1628 of 2013, the Kerala High Court stated:

"[....] Initially the Prosecution registered a case against the petitioner/accused alleging offences under Sections 376, 342 and 506(2) I.P.C. Later, when it was established that the petitioner/accused had married the defacto complainant, the offences of rape and wrongful confinement were deleted. Now, what is remaining is only an offence under Section 498A I.P.C. [....] I have carefully gone through the materials in the records which show that the predominant allegation raised by the defacto complainant against the petitioner is that he has deserted her and failed to provide maintenance to her. Absolutely no allegation of physical or mental cruelty meted out to her is mentioned in the statements. Therefore, learned counsel for the petitioner contended that the prosecution is an abuse of the process of the court. Going by the allegations raised by the defacto complainant, it can be seen at the most that she is entitled to seek relief for maintenance. However, the prosecution under Section 498A I.P.C is without any legal justification."

Marital rape may be recognised under Section 377 of the IPC as it was in the case of State v. Vinod Saini decided on March 3, 2014 by Dr. Kamini Lau in Delhi's Rohini Courts. However, Section 377 which deals with 'unnatural offences', as the statute calls them, does not contain a marital rape exception comparable to that in Section 375 of the IPC. As such, while it may be possible for a court to recognise some forms of marital rape as criminal offences if they fall within the scope of Section 377, as a general rule, statutory constraints would prevent a court from recognising marital rape per se directly.

If at all a court were to recognise the marital rape of an unseparated wife over the age of 18 under current law, it would have to do obliquely via Sections dealing with such things as cruelty, although there is no guarantee that any court would in fact do so.

(Most of the Sections mentioned in this blogpost are contained in the 2013 amendments to criminal law.)

On Making 498A IPC Compoundable and the Stats supporting the Proposal

2015-04-19T02:23:00.000-07:00

Just how are the stats specifying the percentage of alleged misuse of 498A, IPC, being derived?!

In support of proposals to amend Section 498A, there seem to be stats doing the rounds of the number and percentage of supposedly false cases. Some time ago, ToI published a table in an article claiming that 10% of dowry cases are false. The table was attributed to NCRB, and the same figures seem to have appeared in another piece, this time attributed to a 'senior official'.

The Asian Age, too, published a piece against the proposed amendment of 'dowry law', stating that the Union Minister of State for home Haribhai Chaudhary had cited the same figures in the Lok Sabha although this statement doesn't appear to find mention in the uncorrected Lok Sabha debates of the day. The piece in the Asian Age pointed out that there's no mention of what the stats are based on; if they're based on acquittals, they mistakenly equate an acquittal with proof of the relevant case having been false.

Source: ToI, March 22, 2015

Source: ToI, April 19, 2015

Source: Asian Age, April 9, 2015

From published NCRB stats, it's unclear how it's possible to come up with any figures at all to determine the percentage of false cases assuming a 'false case' is defined as a 'case filed sans any basis'. Apart from concerns about methodology: NCRB stats only list the most serious offence where more than one offence is involved, the stats also seem to do such things as list mistake of fact or law together, as well as discharge and acquittal, making it impossible to determine what the percentage of of false cases actually is.

Sources: Table 4.3 and Table 4.9

Background note:

The desire to have 498A be compoundable is not new.

The SC though does seem to have made 498A compoundable in Jitendra Raghuvanshi & Ors. v. Babita Raghuvanshi & Anr. on 15 March, 2013 although the value of the judgment as a precedent is unclear.

"11) The inherent powers of the High Court under Section 482 of the Code are wide and unfettered. In B.S. Joshi (supra), this Court has upheld the powers of the High Court under Section 482 to quash criminal proceedings where dispute is of a private nature and a compromise is entered into between the parties who are willing to settle their differences amicably. We are satisfied that the said decision is directly applicable to the case on hand and the High Court ought to have quashed the criminal proceedings by accepting the settlement arrived at.
12) In our view, it is the duty of the courts to encourage genuine settlements of matrimonial disputes, particularly, when the same are on considerable increase. Even if the offences are non-compoundable, if they relate to matrimonial disputes and the court is satisfied that the parties have settled the same amicably and without any pressure, we hold that for the purpose of securing ends of justice, Section 320 of the Code would not be a bar to the exercise of power of quashing of FIR, complaint or the subsequent criminal proceedings."

This judgment came a year after the Law Commission report on 498A which also suggested the section be made compoundable:

2. The Commission has reiterated the recommendation made in the 237th Report that the offence should be made compoundable with the permission of the Court. There is overwhelming view in favour of making it compoundable. Certain precautions to be taken before granting permission are suggested. However, the Commission has recommended that it should remain non-bailable. The misuse (the extent of which is not established by empirical data) by itself shall not be a ground to denude the provision of its efficacy, keeping in view the larger societal interest.

What I've Learnt from Violence

2014-10-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

On facing abuse

This post is personal in nature, it focuses on domestic violence although it is not limited to domestic violence, and it describes what I've learnt of violence (mainly in relation to myself with reference to my class). It is by no means intended to speak for every woman, neither am I anywhere near certain that I've got it right. I've used the term 'abusive situation' as opposed to 'abusive relationship' simply because public discourse (in India) relating to domestic violence is largely limited to domestic violence perpetrated against wives by husbands and in-laws, almost completely ignoring other forms of domestic violence (including that perpetrated by natal families).

I've also written of episodes of domestic violence earlier (here) in a post which isn't an accurate depiction of events.

I

I woke up from dream feeling happier than I had for a long time. I’d dreamt of a rape. Not mine. A rapist who was caught — I shot a gun at the wall behind him; I don’t know what I was doing there. Part of the wall disintegrated and shards went flying (like in The Matrix). The rapist transformed into a lizard, transported to gaol in a Styrofoam mug. In pieces. The rapist-lizard was in pieces, that is, but alive. The man from law enforcement in charge of the mug put it under the transportation jeep’s seat; the lizard escaped. And, after that, police files of the investigation began to go missing.

I woke up at that point, feeling happy. I’d shot in the general direction of the rapist. And a wall broke.

II

I believe that violence travels through generations, with each generation becoming trained to accept some degree of abuse (both domestic and otherwise) — when there are (or appear to be) no options available, abuse becomes the norm. I know that I don’t believe in the possibility of living life entirely free of abuse; I never have done so except over the last year or so, and I have no expectation of not having to deal with abuse in the years to come. The odds are simply not in my favour considering crime rates and anecdotal evidence.

Popular myth says that women who do not belong to ‘the lower classes’ escape abuse. In all probability, the myth achieves nothing apart from making it that much harder for testimonies of abuse (which do not fit into acceptable stereotype) to be considered credible. Abuse (especially within domestic and intimate relationships) amongst the so-called upper classes is rarely spoken of. The only people who have a voice are the privileged, and (unless it is perpetrated by someone of a ‘lower class’), for the most part, the privileged do not speak of abuse faced by their own — some are, of course, perpetrators of abuse themselves. Others largely choose to ignore that they know anyone who is abusive. The standard response to hearing of abuse within one’s own circle has always often been, ‘That’s not the man I know.’ And, of course, if no one acknowledges knowing anyone who is abusive within their own circle, the abuse itself becomes invisible.

III

Abusive relationships do not generally begin as abusive relationships. And sometimes, once abuse begins, it simply doesn’t follow patterns which resemble the generally accepted ‘cycle of violence’ (that roughly goes from a honeymoon period to a tension-building stage followed by an abusive episode and back again). Amongst the wealthy, in particular, the honeymoon period may simply be absent, the violence entirely unrelenting. The words ‘amongst the wealthy’ are misleading though; they should be ‘amongst the seemingly wealthy’ — within an abusive situation, the existence of money can be meaningless as far as a woman subjected to abuse is concerned; the image of her being wealthy can easily be ludicrous in comparison to the possible reality of her having access to no money at all, which is not to say that a lack of access to money is inevitable or that money is all that matters. (Even if a woman subjected to abuse does have access to money, considerations such as the lack of a support structure, custody issues, societal pressures and religious beliefs, among many other factors, can tie a woman to an abusive situation just as surely as the possibility of bankruptcy.)

I know that in abusive situations, I have never once seen a cycle involving a honeymoon period. And that, despite persistently feeling unsafe, I have never made the attempt to leave an abusive situation quite simply because it never occurred to me that leaving was an option even though there have been times when, by any ‘objective’ standard, I’ve had the resources to be able do so. And I probably would have if I hadn’t lost myself.

That’s something which isn’t often clear to people who are not in an abusive situation: it isn’t entirely about abusive episodes alone, relentless or not. It can also be about having your identity chipped away at till you no longer know who you are, till you can see nothing good in yourself (assuming you can see yourself at all), and till your entire being is consumed with nothing beyond doing whatever it takes not to ‘provoke’ (so it seems to you) more abuse — which, as it turns out, is invariably impossible because the bar is always set higher and higher, setting you up to fail, eroding a little bit more of yourself each time you ‘invite’ more abuse by failing. It may seem as though the only person who can make you feel better is the abuser, and you could easily become more and more desperate for validation from, ironically, the one person who’s left you in pieces and who is supremely unlikely to ever give you any validation. Except that you may not see that, and the thought leaving may not occur to you. It may not even occur to you to define abuse as abuse at the time.

This is obviously not the only reason why women remain in abusive situations; there are other stories too, and the list of obstacles women face when it comes to leaving abusive situations is seemingly endless.

IV

What I’ve learnt though is asking ‘Why didn’t she leave?’ is one of the most unproductive questions it is possible to ask, not to mention one of the most intrusive. The fact of the matter is that women who are abused do not generally choose to be in or stay in abusive situations because they have any particular desire to do so or be abused. If there are questions which need to be asked, they are questions which address why an abuser was abusive, how an abuser can be stopped from being abusive, and what society (and State) could do to attempt to keep from failing to provide women who have been abused the infrastructure and support required to be able to safely exit abusive situations.

Abuse is not a relationship problem; it is a legal offence if not a crime. To place the onus entirely on a woman who has been abused to leave an abusive situation is ridiculous. If not anything else, in the case of abusive relationships, the time when a woman leaves and immediately after is likely to be the most unsafe time for her. And leaving aside considerations of physical safety and societal support, even if one has the best of intentions, and is attempting to respect the autonomy of a woman who has been subjected to abuse (by suggesting that she handle it and by leaving the choice of whether or not to leave to her), as Autumn Whitefield-Madrano has explained, unless that respect is coupled with an understanding of abuse it 'can too easily lapse into a hands-off approach'.

The degree of autonomy and capability which women in abusive situations have is questionable, to say the least. And, although women may be obliged to participate in abuse against themselves by their abusers, contrary to popular belief, women do not teach abusive men how to treat them. As has been argued: ‘To say that we are treated the way we teach others to treat us [makes women responsible for male violence against themselves, and] is to speak from a dominant point of view, dismissing the reality of females completely, not to mention the reality of all dominated races & classes’.

V

Autonomy, sadly, doesn’t magically reappear in full force upon no longer being in an abusive situation. It isn’t necessarily about just about the ‘big’ things; it’s also about the ‘small’ stuff. Getting up in the morning and deciding whether to fry an egg or boil it could seem like a daunting decision to have to make — when your sense of self is eroded, having to make even the most insignificant decisions can potentially feel like having to face a series of insurmountable obstacles.

Being in an abusive situation feels a little like being imprisoned. You take each day as it comes, and focus on surviving that day without considering anything but the present. It’s only later, when you’re no longer in an abusive situation, that it’s possible to truly make sense of the past, to connect seemingly independent events so as to view the past as a coherent whole (in all its wretchedness) — something it may have been impossible to do whilst still in an abusive situation simply because of having had to focus on getting through each day independently. And, for exactly the same reason, constructing a vision of the future could seem every bit as difficult as making sense of the past.

It may feel as though there is no future when one is in an abusive situation; there may just be the present. Once one is no longer in an abusive situation, accepting the past and integrating one’s knowledge of it with what one imagines of the future isn’t easy. It’s a long, often arduous, journey which (even if one is lucky enough to have support) is not made any easier by the seeming omnipresence of triggers that have the potential to remind one of abuse.

Knowing that there may not have been much you could have done to change the course of events in the past detracts from the 'kindergarten spirituality' (to borrow a term Mark Doty used in Heaven's Coast in another context) which enables all of us to believe that each one of us alone charts the course of our own life. And knowing that violence has an awful tendency to travel through generations is anything but reassuring.

nb: The line of thought which says that abused persons should file cases against their abusers often completely ignores both the dynamics of abusive relationships and ground realities. If not anything else, invoking and 'working' the legal system requires more attentiveness than most of us have on our best days; to expect an abused person to be able to leverage the legal system to address abuse is optimistic (to say the least).

The Appropriation of the Image of the Marginalised Indian Woman

2014-10-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

(I began writing this post thinking of the portrayals of NE women by others... its scope unsurprisingly expanded in minutes.)

Take racial insensitivity. Add to it the entitlement of the upper class and, treatment in real life aside, you have all the makings of the image of the Hottentot Venus of contemporary times in far too many portrayals of the figure of the marginalised woman.

The Hottentot Venus was a person transformed into an object; she was born in South Africa in 1789, brought to England in 1810, and then exhibited on stage and in cages till her death in 1815. We know what she was turned into but we have no idea who she was. We often call her, when we deign to accord her any humanity, ‘Sarah Baartman’; of her given name, we can only guess. We believe ‘Ssehura’ may have been closest to it but can’t be sure. ‘Baartman’ or some variant may have been imposed on her upon being baptised in England in 1811. The appellation ‘Venus’ has never indicated anything but distorted nineteenth-century ideas of Black sexuality, and she is no longer believed to be a Hottentot by many. In fact, the word ‘Hottentot’ itself is now recognised as being deeply racist.

Turning women into objects of curiosity and entertainment is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. We see it, in India too, especially in the case of women who are poor, who are disadvantaged by caste, who belong to racial and religious minorities. They often have little control over their own stories which are appropriated (and distorted) more frequently than one would like to believe by the comparatively privileged to meet their own ends: to tell stories of supposed racial and caste integration (or friction) in ‘modern’ India, to bemoan violence amongst ‘the poor’ (or against marginalised women) primarily in rural India, blithely ignoring, for the most part, that caste and class are so closely related to each other that they can, for most practical purposes, almost be used interchangeably.

Of course, there can be no argument there is little violence worth mentioning in ‘upper’ caste India. Upper class women, who complain of domestic, violence and, God forbid, invoke laws against it lie abundantly. That is, lie, until they turn up dead at which point their corpses tell stories of violence which we’d much rather ignore and usually manage to. How many articles have been printed comparing the perception of cases under Sections 498A and 304B of the Indian Penal Code, the former of which applies when wives who claim to have been abused are still alive and the latter of which applies only when wives die? And how often do we see analyses of stilted sex ratios by class? Or of rape statistics, even allowing for the fact that there exists precious little reliable data?

But then again, studies of VAW and sexism amongst the ‘upper’ caste are hardly analyses which we need see: the only time when women of the urban upper class deal with VAW, it would seem, is when they deal with street harassment perpetrated by lower class men. That such street harassment sometimes escalates into rape is another issue. And talking about issues like the pay gap only reveals that one suffers from a post-colonial complex and is importing Western feminism. Because, of course, it is the stated aim of the working Indian woman to earn a fraction of what her male counterpart earns. And economic equity is entirely independent of violence.

What is left to the upper class, then, is the image of the marginalised woman, who rarely has the privilege of voice, and whose image is available for it to enact its desire to play saviour despite often suffering from abject cluelessness. And that’s on a good day when the upper class actually has or claims to have the desire to do right by the woman. Never mind that it may fail miserably in doing so, in extreme cases possibly by (illegally) circulating the images of the poor raped woman ‘for publicity to bring pressure for justice’. Never mind that such images may demonstrate what the term ‘the pornography of rape’ means. Never mind also that such images are forgotten as soon as the next sensation takes over. They arguably serve their purpose as props, for all of five minutes, to prove credentials against VAW. (Asking upper class women if they’d like having pictures of themselves in disarray upon having been raped be circulated to further justice is unacceptable, incidentally.)

It is only the image of the marginalised woman which is up for indiscriminate use. If it isn’t ostensibly for her own good, it’s in the furtherance of liberal values such as free speech. That there is no conclusive data on what the effects of pornography are is only half the story, for example. Discussions on pornography in India have consistently focussed on the free speech right (largely of men to consume pornography) and of the likelihood of pornography causing men to rape. The right to perform in porn hasn’t come up — after all, choosing to perform in porn isn’t at issue, it’s just what some people do, especially those marginalised. And as for porn being every bit as much a labour rights issue as being a free speech issue: perish the thought. They idea that porn could easily be filmed rape is somehow irrelevant, and mentioning it taints one as being against free speech itself.

The images appropriated and exploited by the upper class are rarely, if ever, those of urban ‘upper’ caste Hindu women: they are of poor women, of ethnically marginalised women, of rural women, of ‘lower’ caste women, of women belonging to minority communities — none of whom have control over their own stories as a matter of course. And as for the urban ‘upper’ caste Hindu woman: her complicity in such exploitation aside, her own story too is rarely hers to tell — the only VAW she faces is inflicted by men who are not ‘upper’ caste Hindus, urban or otherwise. And, oh, entrenched patriarchy and structural sexism, other than that which exists across class lines, are little more than figments of the imagination.

Reading and Fear

2014-07-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

There’s something about the blank page, and the written word on it. Develop a fetish for notebooks simply because you think of them as waiting to be filled with hopes, and dreams, and tales. Or simply to be filled with insipid grocery lists and accounts: the minutiae of everyday life which, added up, often really are the sum total of our lives. It doesn’t always matter what language the text is in: it’s sometimes the beauty of the script alone that leaves you marvelling.

Of text you can decipher, read relentlessly. Fail to remember what it is that you’ve read. Pick up a book firmly believing that you’ve never laid eyes on it before only to have a stray turn of phrase, so innocuous that it seemingly doesn’t bear remembrance, remind you that the book isn’t new to you after all.

Go back to books you know you’ve read but can barely remember; find in them stories you hadn’t noticed earlier. Realise that if a book is any good at all, it bears re-reading. Only once you’ve traced the words and know what’s next can you truly savour the text. Though perhaps that’s not always what you want to do.

Read incessantly, intensely to escape the present, perhaps, or, maybe, to understand it. Realise that sometimes there isn’t too much of a difference between the two. If nothing else, the distance a book can give you from your own reality may enable you to create the space to understand it. And that’s not even counting the books which specifically focus on your circumstances.

But at the end of the day, recognise that you have no idea of what you’ve read. Lose the ability to place a single source. Know that everything you’ve ever read is an amorphous mass to you. Have your greatest fear, not entirely logically, rear its head, if only in paranoia: aphasia.

Verbal Abuse, Upper Class Women, and Domestic Violence

2014-06-24T02:37:00.000-07:00

unedited

Abuse is never an easy subject to speak of whether because one has experienced it and finds it difficult to speak of, or because it can be an extremely complex subject, or both. And the rationale underlying one’s own opinions can be extremely difficult to grasp.

There is, of course, always the temptation, often subconscious, to assume that one can draw universal conclusions from one’s own experiences. There is also the desire to believe that specific ways of being or doing might enable one to escape abuse; an understandable desire that except for the fact that it can easily lead to drawing conclusions about how women who are abused ‘brought it on themselves’ by being different or doing things differently.

Amongst the clearest indications of this are myths which surround domestic violence, particularly in the case of upper class women — the most popular image of domestic violence appears to be that of a drunken slob who comes home late, slaps his wife, and then promptly (and conveniently!) passes out. Although the image certainly isn’t beyond the realm of the possible, not one part of it isn’t deeply problematic.

To begin with, domestic violence isn’t limited to relationship violence whether or not marital. Although Indian law and public discourse focus on abuse by husbands, in-laws, and (more recently) partners, the fact of the matter is that there is much violence which occurs within women’s natal homes. Some of this is recognised in terms of female infanticide but much of it (including infanticide) simply does not find its way into a larger discussion of domestic violence, particularly in the case of non-violent abuse such as the withholding of adequate food or education. Child abuse is often domestic abuse but the recognition that being the case is often non-existent, as is the abuse of, for example, unmarried women within their natal homes.

Where violence is recognised, it is rarely as ‘clean’ as the man who slaps his wife, does no exceptional damage to her body, and then disappears from the scene (for the time being). Violence is often exceptionally ugly and long drawn out. It isn’t necessarily a ‘30 second – no harm done/grievous injury caused’ episode, or even a series of such episodes, even if it isn’t described at any length. The term ‘violence’ or even ‘torture’ in themselves cover up all manner of acts, and can easily leave one with absolutely no understanding of what is involved.

Descriptions of domestic violence do often invoke the image of the man who was drunk or under the influence of drugs though. And, in some cases, abusers are drunk or drugged or both, but they may not be either. There is no shortage of testimonies from women who have been consistently abused by men who are ‘upstanding pillars of the community’ and ‘highly respected’. These are not necessarily the kind of men who are routinely drunken slobs, certainly not in public. In fact, they can be exactly the opposite: men who calculatedly use violence to control the women whom they abuse. Men who excel at projecting the image of not being amongst those who perpetrate violence. Men who just might, in some cases, be less dangerous if they were to drink and do drugs considering that substance abuse would likely dampen their cognitive abilities.

Abusers come in all forms. They may abuse substances or not. They may engage in physical violence or not. They may be visibly abusive or not.

That said, what is almost certain in the case of the upper class abuser is that he is likely to be able to easily isolate those whom he abuses. He doesn’t necessarily fit into the mould of the abuser in popular imagery. He is likely to have a coterie of sycophants desperate to exonerate him. And he will likely have the education and the ability to play to an audience, or a range of audiences, saying exactly what they need to hear — whether it’s ‘She didn’t cook’ or ‘She had an affair’ or ‘She insults my parents’ or, simply, ‘She’s crazy’ — to enable them to rationalise his abuse, if at all they believe in its existence. And the society of an upper class man generally has no reason to choose to believe that one of their own is abusive — they are likely to have less to lose by believing an abuser than the person he has abused. If nothing else, the good graces of the abuser especially if he is better placed than the abused woman.

That is probably what lies at the crux of abuse within the upper class; the woman abused could easily be educated and wealthy in her own right but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the imbalance of power between her and her abuser, and the fact that if he is better placed than her as an individual (which is often the case, especially since notions of family ‘honour’ could come in leaving her without support), it could quite simply wipe out any benefits she has such as those of education or her own money. (And that doesn't even factor in the enhanced desire some abusers may have to control seemingly independent women.)

When it comes to education, it is unlikely that there would be a way in which a degree would help a victim during an actual episode of violence. And as for money, apart from the fact that it can become inconsequential if the abuser has more, there’s also the question of whether an abused woman has beneficial access to her money — without beneficial access, all the ostensible wealth in the world (even if it were in her name) would be entirely worthless.

The most often ignored aspect of domestic violence though isn’t physical or sexual or financial violence in itself but emotional abuse which exists both by itself (most easily expressed through verbal abuse) and as a component of other forms of violence. It can destroy an abused woman’s sense of self, and her ability to act as an autonomous being. And, ultimately, that is what abuse is about: crushing the spirit of another, destroying their voice. The various forms of abuse are often little more than the means to an end.

Nonetheless, verbal and emotional abuse is often viewed as not being that big a deal. And, perhaps, if restricted to the linguistically lazy spouting the occasional expletive, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Verbal abuse though is very rarely restricted to nothing but the occasional expletive in complete isolation; it is invariably a structure of manipulation intended to break a person.

As a general rule, verbal abuse tends to ‘escalate’ into other forms of abuse which are less socially acceptable — a man losing his temper and shouting, or simply saying unkind things, is so much more ‘excusable’ than a man breaking a woman’s arm. That said, verbal abuse too, like other forms of abuse, is a means to an end. And it is possible to argue that different forms of violence are merely different roads intended to reach the same destination at which the person being abused is broken in spirit (and possibly, if verbal abuse alone doesn’t ‘work’, in body), and under the control of the abuser.

In this construction, there is no type of abuse whose infliction is worse than the other (although the experience of various forms of abuse could easily differ from woman to woman, with each woman seeing one form as being worse than the other). As far as infliction is concerned though, the various forms of abuse are not a hierarchy but a series of alternatives for abusers who typically simply begin by employing the one which would have ‘society’ judge them the least: verbal abuse. And there really are no prizes for guessing which abusers are likely to be most adept at appearing at their best: it is upper class abusers. Men of the world. Educated. Respected, of course. Used to telling their story, and even more used to being heard.

When it comes to domestic violence, it is upper class women who are most likely to be abused by upper class men. Being upper class themselves does not necessarily protect them from being abused or enable them to escape abuse without support. What it does do is enable ‘society’ to blame abused upper class women for staying in abusive situations and, sometimes, for being abused because of their supposedly having ‘chosen’ to stay. And, of course, even the fault-finding and victim blaming is only in those cases where ‘society’ deigns to accept the occurrence of abuse at all.

[Link] Against ‘Death for Rape’

2014-04-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

An article published at Legally India:

Why is death for rape even on the table? Lawyer Nandita Saikia discusses how the recent criminal law recent reforms, imposing the death penalty for rape, are a symptom of the problem but not a solution.
"The notion that rape is death is precisely what the patriarchal understanding of rape is, and seen from this perspective, whilst bearing in mind that Indian society is deeply patriarchal, it isn’t difficult to understand why death being brought to the table in some cases of rape is seen as a good thing: a society that doesn't value women who have been raped or their lives is liable to cheer death-for-rape, and to assume that in doing so it is acting in the interest of those who have been raped."

[Read the rest of this piece at LegallyIndia.com.]

On Men Getting Women to Shut Up

2014-03-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

Unproofed, unedited.

I just began reading Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya which he begins with a reference to ancient Greek philosophers knowing myth as mythos. Unsurprisingly, Pattanaik makes no reference to mythos also involving getting women to shut the hell up, as Homer has narrated of Penelope.

Disconcerting as it is that one of the first records of Western literature involves men getting women to shut up, and that there are virtually no records of women writers since then till recent centuries —discounting anomalies to the rule such as Roswitha who, for all practical purposes, was not viewed as a sexual woman— what is perhaps even more disconcerting is that voice (especially for women) is still 'a mark of privilege' as someone put it.

A mark of privilege on one hand, and a necessity on the other hand: for credibility, for enabling one to fight for what one claims as rights, for being able to narrate one’s own story, for being able to go about living one’s life in a manner one might wish to be able to. A necessity which is routinely denied to women, by men who have no qualms about attempting to get women to shut up especially when they don’t like hearing what women have to say. By men, who for some (presumably cultural) reason, seem to delude themselves into thinking that women should speak in a manner which they approve of. By men who think that their distaste for what a woman may have to say actually matters (or should actually matter) to anyone but themselves.

There is, of course, no shortage of material which has been written about men silencing women, or attempting to silence women, especially on social media, with everything from insults to rape and bomb threats. They are often by men whom one —I write, of course, from my own perspective— would not pay the slightest attention to offline; from men whom one would likely not know offline, and who manage to appear on one’s radar only because of the democratising ‘power’, such as it is, of social media where a message from one’s best friend is just as certain to reach one as a reply from a nondescript thug.

There are, of course, solutions when it comes to strangers who would have one shut up: ignore creeps, block creeps. The problem with both those solutions is that they don’t keep one from encountering creeps in the first place; one can only ignore or block what one has already come across. Also, these solutions don't address the question of what creates creeps who would seek to get one not to speak and who think that their opinion about what another should say (assuming that other’s speech is legal) should have any relevance to anyone but themselves.

Few (if any) women who speak of subjects that don’t qualify as bland (or approved... perhaps cooking and childcare, in acceptable terms!) would likely be able to say that they don’t face a barrage of creeps who would have them shut up. (I’m sure that there are good sociological reasons to be more understanding and not use the word ‘creeps’ but they are not reasons I can emotionally relate to.) Unfortunately, the choices one has in terms of ways in which to respond to such creeps are limited.

There is, of course, ignoring and blocking. And there is —as I’ve once done particularly emphatically re. stranger creepiness— being rude to the stranger in question; a response which I see as being entirely justified, although, of course, such creeps who begin by being rude themselves invariably sulk upon having their own rudeness being met with rudeness. Proponents of the art of being able to dish it out but not being able to take it, it would seem.

Apart from these three solutions (and I use the word 'solutions' loosely), there is also the dismissal of creeps; an approach which I’ve often favoured although it is almost guaranteed to have creeps complain about one’s arrogance and rudeness — never mind the dismissal has invariably been invited (if not begged for) by their own conduct.

What is inescapable though is that none of these approaches address (much less answer the question of) why many men would want to get women to shut up in the first place, why they may imagine that their opinion of a woman’s speech has any value at all, and why they often seem to feel so mightily insulted if their attempts to get women to shut up are challenged in any way whatsoever. And when it comes to non-strangers who would have one shut up, the question only becomes more urgent.

Clearly, there are no easy answers although the question seems indicative of the fact that (many) boys are brought up to have an extraordinary, unearned sense of entitlement coupled with delusions about the value of their own opinions. Perhaps, if there’s any desire not to have men attempt to shut women up, the solutions lie in bringing up boys to respect the right of women to speak in a manner analogous to that in which they take their own right to speak for granted.

For my own part, I'm tired and have no particular desire to speak to anyone.

FoE, VAW, and Book Withdrawals

2014-02-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

The real villain of the piece (Re books being withdrawn or self-censored) is content law which hasn't been amended even though it's been becoming increasingly clear as time goes by that Indian content law needs amendment. (Tweets on the subject below, unfortunately complete with their typos.)

Sans any comment on the Doniger book—perhaps before going off the deep end Re others not standing up for FoE, put yourselves on their shoes.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

IMO, it's unfair to be unreservedly critical of people for 'not standing up for FoE'. For one thing, it's rarely ever that black and white.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

Many content laws are criminal. Having money to hire good lawyers is not guaranteed to keep you out of jail for a content law violation.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

The worst case scenario Re content law violations is jail not monetary damages. Given that, how enthu would you be to 'stand up for FoE'?
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

The problem Re alleged content law violations is not so much people not standing up for FoE but that the law is awful & needs urgent reform.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

People who invoke content laws to stifle free speech bear responsibility for their actions. I've seen no one comment on 'misuse' of law.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

I'm mentally comparing invocation of content law & VAW law and find the lack of commentary about supposed misuse interesting Re the former.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

Clearly, different standards operate Re perceptions of content & VAW law. Re the latter, any unpopular invocation is often called misuse.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

To clarify, I don't think invoking law —bad or not— to address issues it's intended to deal with is misuse. But may highlight need to amend.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

Reiterating : my tweets over the last ½ hour or so are not commentary about Doniger's book — they are about the issues of FoE and VAW.
— Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014

2013: The Year of Outrage about VAW in India

2013-12-29T07:37:00.000-08:00

Random Rant about the discourse on women's 'rights'

Because, of course, there's no shortage of people who will tell you that 2013 was the year in which women began raising their voices in India. When women's rights began to be considered seriously. When feminism became the in thing (though not always necessarily a good thing).

And, yes, there certainly have been many, many, many column inches devoted to violence against women in India’s newspapers and magazines this year. And there have been more than a few journalists who’ve written gut-wrenching pieces about violence against women in India for media outlets abroad.

That said, it isn’t at all clear (to me) that there has been any substantive change in attitudes towards violence against women in India: it’s undeniable that more people talk about the subject but it’s worth listening to what they’re saying before beginning to celebrate about seeing the subject having become talked about.

The fact of the matter is that many conversations supposedly about ‘women’s rights in India’ are conversations about violence against women. They are not conversations about women’s rights and the freedom which women should enjoy – they’re, far too often, conversations about protecting (some) women (who are usually upper class) from (some) men (who are usually ‘lower’ class).

For one thing, the discourse of protection has a tendency to manifest itself in a series of diatribes about how women should be careful, and how women’s freedom should be circumcised so that they are not exposed to danger(ous men). Just for example, it’s about ‘(Women) not drinking as they’re supposedly more likely to be raped if they’re drunk,’ than it is about ‘(Men) not drinking if they’re more likely to rape when they’re drunk’.

For another, the focus of conversations in India hasn’t so much been on women being raped or otherwise abused by men whom they know, from their own class, within their own circles. The pushback against the criminalisation of marital rape was, for example, extraordinary. And, where women are of similar social standing as those who’ve (allegedly) abused them, conversations are invariably DoA.

There have, of course, been some exceptions: the Tejpal case, for example, where outrage unlimited was seen. And then, of course, there were the allegations of sexual harassment by retired Supreme Court judge A K Ganguly. Even in those cases, however, there was a power differential between the alleged abusers and the women who made allegations against them.

And both women, it’s worth noting, were from the upper middle class. A class which a woman must belong to for abuse against her to be taken ‘seriously’ – provided, of course, it’s convenient for other people in the upper middle class to express outrage against their alleged abusers, and provided the women appear not to have behaved in socially unacceptable ways, and provided their abusers aren’t of the same standing as them.

There have been any number of women from other classes, particularly ‘lower’ classes who have been abused horrifically throughout the year, and there has been absolutely no public outcry against their having been abused comparable to the outcry against abuse faced by a few select women of the upper middle class.

For the most part unless one belongs to the right class, and fits a number of other criteria, the violence one may, as a woman, face is still a non-issue. Notwithstanding the fact that a few select – ? lucky – women seem to ignite the sympathy and outrage of the so-called public (restricted to the upper classes who have a voice), violence against women is still usually ignored if not justified.

The upper class people who occasionally express outrage about select episodes don't really appear to give a damn about VAW beyond the episodes they aggressively express outrage about; they will outrage about one (or two) alleged abusers, congratulate themselves, and go back to living life in a manner which tends to breed more abusers.

At a structural level, there seem to have been no changes worth speaking of. The law relating to sexual assault was amended this year. In the case of marital rape, the law was (arguably) made worse. In many other cases, it was ostensibly strengthened, although it does not have clear gradations between sexual assault and rape, and the result is that it could easily be considered an extraordinarily non-nuanced law.

In other areas, a new Act supposedly protecting women from harassment at the workplace was passed, with its own flaws. At first glance, it appears to substitute the role of ‘family elders’ in domestic disputes with ‘committees’ in workplace harassment episodes, with both aiming at ‘conciliation’. There is a ‘misuse clause’ which could be invoked in the case of women bringing false complaints or using false evidence – men, however, are exempt from the false evidence clause of the law.

Of course, that women ‘misuse’ laws is a standard public perception, and misuse clauses have been ardently supported by some with reference to a range of anti-VAW laws, despite the existence of several provisions in the Indian Penal Code which deal with perjury. It isn’t clear either why specific misuse clauses are required (except to encourage women to be quiet about abuse), or why existing IPC provisions against perjury are not actually invoked routinely where the law is clearly misused.

Perhaps because having existing laws implemented is much harder than simply asking that new ones against misuse of the law be passed. And if there’s one thing we do marvellously… it’s talk, and feel outraged. Regardless of whether or not we know what we’re talking about. Regardless of whether or not we’ve spent 15 minutes running a search on Google Scholar or the like before opining. Regardless of how much harm we could potentially do in the process. And regardless of whether or not what we’re outraging about actually merits any outrage.

Because, of course, articulating outrage is what we do best. Only second to implementing cosmetic changes which, really, make no difference. What we need, after all, is a bank just for women; a few headlines if not a parallel banking system. Not to forget CCTV cameras. Everywhere. Or talk of CCTVs everywhere. Functioning ones, that is.

Voila! Outrage, cosmetic changes, and CCTV cameras… We can now claim to be well on the way to becoming a truly egalitarian society. Why on Earth would we even need to consider changing the socialisation of gender, addressing the cultural factors which lead to abuse and discrimination, or reforming the police and criminal justice system, amongst other things?

We have outrage. And column inches about VAW in India. Or some instances of VAW. But who cares about nuance? We are talking about VAW. And that's marvellous. It's also all we need.

'Anti-Rape' Apps

2013-11-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

I find the manner in which 'anti-rape' apps are being promoted bizarre. I don’t think that apps which allow women (or anyone else, really) to contact persons in case of an emergency are a bad idea at all. I do wish those marketing them were a little more realistic about what the apps are capable of achieving; it’s hard to believe that they’re anything along the lines of 'the best anti-rape weapons' around. Not when a stranger is the least likely person a woman is likely to be raped by. Not when the apps do nothing whatsoever to actually prevent rape.

Also, I find it telling that these apps don’t seem to connect directly to the police — they assume a woman has her own network to reach out and ‘protect’ her. Which, of course, may not always be the case.

It seems difficult to see how these apps help beyond alerting one's circle that there's a potential problem. Perhaps, once an alert is sent, they could also begin automatically recording whatever is going on to create a record?