Dying a little everyday

VIJAYALAKSHMI, a central government employee at Chennai, married for barely a year, wrote in her diary: "It is better to die in one go than a little everyday." She jumped from her fourth floor office 22 years ago. Violence is probably the most written and talked about issue concerning women today, but not in Vijayalakshmi's time.

The main reason for this was the social concept of the family, held sacrosanct worldwide, which frowned upon public complaints by women of male violence bringing dishonour to the victim and her family; never to the perpetrator. It was in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1993 that violence was first seriously recognised as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life." Three different sites of violence - the Family, the Community and the State - were identified.

The 1980s in India witnessed mass mobilisations of women around issues aimed at ensuring that dowry harassment, death and rape got punished as acts of violence. These led to the Criminal Amendment Acts of the mid-1980s, among which, the much used 498A of the IPC prescribed a three year jail term for a man and his relatives who subjected his wife to cruelties. Importantly, the definition of cruelty was stretched to include psychological cruelty as well.

It is in this context that the significance of a recent seminar presentation at Chennai by the Magalir Satta Udavi Mandram (MSUM) secretary, D. Saraswathy has to be understood. MSUMis the legal aid cell affiliated to the All India Democratic Women's Association, Tamil Nadu and has handled 2090 cases in the last 10 years, of which 223 were deaths of young wives under suspicious circumstances and 150 were rape incidents. Among women who had died of violence, a ghastly proportion of 69 per cent were below the age of 25. Many of them had been persuaded by their natal families to bear with the situation till their siblings got married, but the wait proved a little too long for these bearers of the "family honour". Seven per cent of those who died were illiterate, while graduates and post-graduates constituted nearly a quarter. College degrees seem to provide no protection from marital harassment, including death. It does not fully guarantee the right to survive the first three years of marriage, an agni pariksha of sorts in her life; nearly two -thirds of all marital deaths had not crossed this hurdle. The study shows that the women who fell prey to the greed of the marital home were mostly from the working class - 63 per cent - the middle and upper classes accounting for 31 per cent. Death by fire seems to be the method most sought.Victims of rape of age 10 and below were 22 per cent of the total. Gang rape incidents in which 13 victims were killed were 42 per cent of the total rapes. Even one's own house was not a safe place. Rape at worksite and while grazing cattle accounted for 30 per cent. Other sites of rape were schoolrooms, hostels, homes for the mentally retarded, hospitals and even the house of a judge.

How responsive was the legal system to the affected families in their quest for justice? A telling indicator is that many are completely at sea about the present stage of the complaints preferred by them, having given up chasing the police and the courts for years. Charge sheets were filed in 32.5 per cent of cases - some taking five years or more to reach this stage - and eight per cent of the cases had been taken cognizance of by the courts. In a time span of 10 years, verdict has been delivered in 2.5 per cent of the cases, with appeals pending in higher courts in many of them. The glaring insensitivity of the police force in dealing with these families could be gauged from the poignant responses that the MSUM's inquiries on the progress of the cases elicited from the concerned families. One response was:"We cannot believe that anyone is interested in our getting justice. Your concern makes all the difference to us."

The MSUMseminar also honoured a few courageous and tenacious victims and a person who fought for justice for his sister Nagamma, a college lecturer in Thiruppur, who had died in 1982. Her husband was sentenced to death in 1985, following intervention by women's organisations. But the High Court overturned the sentence and acquitted the husband in 1991. The Supreme Court finally confirmed the life sentence in 1997. In these 15 years, the brother monitored the investigation and trials closely and liaised with the administration and women's organisations with commendable determination. He even moved an appeal to the Supreme Court when the State Government failed to do so. It is a moot point what the outcome of the case would have been but for his perseverence. He stands vindicated now, after paying heavy price in terms of his family finances.

What will infuse a sense of urgency, earnestness and thoroughness in police investigative efforts and in the judicial process that could serve as a deterrent to violence against women? It is obvious that improvements in conviction rates would go a long way. As a first step, corruption eating into the vitals of these institutions needs to be rooted out. Sensitisation of law enforcement personnel on gender and human rights issues - not as a token gesture, but as a massive and continuous exercise - would help. Most of all, gender sensitisation of education from the earliest stages is a must; only this can develop a social consciousness in civil society against patriarchal norms that devalue and marginalise women to the point of social tolerance of gender violence as a normal way of life.

The writer is the working president of the State branch of the All-India Democratic Women's Association.

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