Healing begins at home

THIS is the story of a mother who sent her 14-year-old son out to buy groceries. He never returned. For many days, she went to the police and begged them to locate him. But there was no answer. The boy had disappeared. One day, the police came to her house and said her son had been found. They gave her the address where she would find him. Full of hope and expectation, the woman made her way there. Only when she got there did she realise where she was heading - to a mortuary.

Her son lay dead, his head an open wound, bullet wounds in his back and cigarette burn marks all over his body. What was his crime, or hers, that he had had to die like this? She asked these questions at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) initiated by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. This was just one of the many heart-rending stories that emerged from the dark night of apartheid in South Africa.

Significantly, this story was narrated by a White South African, Professor Piet Meiring, who was asked by Bishop Tutu to help in the TRC. Speaking at the launch of the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation in Mumbai, Prof. Meiring said that, when this woman told her story at the TRC, most people wept, even Bishop Tutu. Yet, when asked whether it was worthwhile coming to the commission and narrating her experience, she gave an unqualified "yes" and said that, for the first time in 16 years, she might be able to sleep.

The reason I narrate this story is for two reasons. One, the coincidence of Prof. Meiring speaking of truth and reconciliation within a couple of days of our Prime Minister reopening old wounds. For Mr. Vajpayee to have made the statement about building the Ram temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid on the eighth anniversary of its demolition and at a time when the wounds of the riots and killing that followed have far from healed, when justice has not been done to the victims and when the perpetrators of the crime hold high office, suggests an unconscionable degree of insensitivity. And it certainly does not contribute towards reconciliation in a nation that is now deeply divided on communal lines, thanks to the Sangh Parivar and its divisive identity and religious politics.

Second, the story of the South African mother is a reminder of the many mothers who still mourn the sons and husbands they lost in the dark days after December 6, 1992, of the men and women, especially women, who live every day with memories of violence and with a daily dose of violence within their homes. And of women for whom reconciliation or even healing is a distant dream. The most quoted fact from the recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) is the incidence of domestic violence and women's acceptance of it. Although no direct link has been established, the survey reveals the extent to which women lack autonomy, even as more than 50 per cent justify, or accept, violence within the home. For instance, 68 per cent needed to get permission to go to the market and 76 per cent had to ask their husbands before they could visit friends or relatives. Only 60 per cent could use money as they wished.

Seen against this reality, the data on domestic violence does not come as a surprise. Three out of every five women (56 per cent) said that they believed wife-beating was justified on at least one of six grounds - neglecting the house or the children, going out without telling the husband, showing disrespect to the in- laws, not cooking food properly, if he suspects her of unfaithfulness and if she does not bring enough money or goods home.

There is more. One in every five women had experienced domestic violence from the age of 15. One of nine women interviewed had experienced it in the 12 months preceding the survey. And the majority of women had been beaten by their husbands, although others like fathers-in-law and even sons sometimes participated. The NFHS-2 states rather baldly in conclusion that "these results should be treated as setting only a lower boundary for the proportion of ever-married women who have experienced any domestic violence" because of the tendency to under-report.

Of course, the report only documents physical violence. Yet many married women will admit to verbal and psychological violence that they must bear on a daily basis when there is verbal abuse, attempts to undermine confidence in themselves, belittling and humiliation in front of others, actions that whittle away what little self-esteem women might have. Ultimately, this too is another form of apartheid - where you are discriminated against because you are a woman. The wounds of this kind of violence run as deep as the physical scars of other forms of violence.

How big and how extensive is the problem? What can we do about it? The important link that we tend to forget is that such violence within the home is as important as the one outside. Women have to bear the consequences of both. It is not possible to speak of healing wounds in society if one half of the population is being wounded almost daily by the people who are supposed to care for them. Truth and reconciliation must begin at home.

KALPANA SHARMA

E-mail the writer at ksharma@vsnl.com

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Not a bovine idea
Next     : The Arun Shourie of the left