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GENDER:
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE BILL
The
Battered Half
A proposed
law promises to widen the options before victims. But it faces criticism
from some sections.
By Shuchi
Sinha
Kamlaben
Johnbhai Christi knows what plenty is. Plenty of work-in her husband's
farm and around the house, tending the buffaloes, cooking for the labourers.
Plenty of children — seven of them — to take care of. And if
she slips up somewhere, plenty of blows from her husband. Once he pushed
a pregnant Kamlaben on to some thorny bushes. Mostly, a good old-fashioned
battering is her punishment.
 The
Christis are not a poverty-stricken, uneducated family. Johnbhai makes
a decent income selling milk and growing cash crops like tobacco and chicory.
Nor do they live in a land far removed from civilisation. Located close
to Anand, the hub of the "white revolution" in Kheda district
of Gujarat, their village, Kaloli, is supposed to be a model of progress.
It is electrified, most households have drinking water supply, some even
own a television.
But beneath
this veneer of advancement lurks a primitive attitude. A recent survey
on domestic violence, conducted by the Ahmedabad-based Gujarat Institute
of Development Research in five villages of the oasis of development that
is the Kheda district, has revealed some disturbing facts. Two out of
every five women surveyed were beaten at home. One of every five was not
beaten but harassed — either their husbands used foul language or
accused them of "having a bad character".
The women
of Kheda are not alone. Their ordeal is mirrored in this year's report
of the United Nations Population Fund. The report, which is based on studies
in six states across India, says that 40 per cent of the women surveyed
were frequently assaulted by their male partners. Another study conducted
on behalf of the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) in
February this year in seven districts across the country endorses the
extent of the problem. Nearly half the women surveyed in Bhopal, Delhi,
Chennai, Lucknow, Nagpur, Thiruvananthapuram and Vellore were physically
abused by their husbands.
In adopting
a proposed bill, the Domestic Violence Against Women (Prevention) Bill,
the Department of Woman and Child Development (WCD) has recognised that
the violence is real and cuts across caste, creed and class. Its incidence
is higher in rural areas (49 per cent of rural women reported domestic
violence as opposed to 45 per cent in urban areas) and among lower classes
(45 per cent of women beaten in slums while only 35 per cent in non-slums
are physically abused). And the level of education had nothing to do with
the violence. In the fully literate and matriarchal state of Kerala, 30
per cent women complained of physical abuse and an astounding 69 per cent
suffered psychological harassment.
The violence
is not confined to the lower or middle classes. Dr Meenakshi Ahuja, a
gynaecologist at South Point Hospital in Delhi's Greater Kailash area,
often has patients from "respectable" upper and middle-class
families coming to her with mysterious injuries. "Most of the women
are unwilling to reveal how they were injured, but there are tell-tale
signs to suggest that they're beaten up. Our fears are confirmed if they
lapse into a frozen silence in the presence of their husbands."
Pg. 2
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