"For the average Indian man, masculinity is about acting tough, freely exercising his privilege to lay down the rules in personal relationships, and, above all, controlling women"... It was part of a discussion about a middle aged lady I knew, a high school teacher by profession, who fell victim to marital rape, and after I made this statement, a highly literate(not educated) male acquaintance(i hate to call him a friend anymore) disregarded and tagged me as "Feminist saale"! While most cases of marital rape in India fail to get registered, or even recognized as a crime being difficult to prove it as forced sex against the consent of a woman, or as a natural occurrence in the institution of marriage, it can't get worse when even the educated strata of our society become victim to such a shameless act, and even worse that lot of men are not even acquainted with the fact that sex without the consent of their wife, who is also made of flesh, blood and a mind like men, is morally unethical, and that she has all the right to tell NO to it. Let me get it straight. Marriage for such depraved men is not a license to rape because of the 'implied consent' which comes with wedlock. Is it patriarchy that is to be blamed? Indians like us, who consider marriage a pious institution, and make every effort to make it work at the cost of giving in to the 'needs' of the man of the house even if we don't 'want' it, however educated we are, are doing it wrong. What compels Indian women to stay with such sex-maniacs in the name of husbands?... husbands who are entitled to protect their wives, but end up committing such atrocities and even getting away with it !
Educating the rural lot might help lessening the gender imbalance. But what about the mind sets of already educated people, who don't leave out on a single chance to oppress the wife. Is wife all about body parts? Ms.Banerjee(ex Mrs.Mukherjee) who spent a year's salary to celebrate her wedding with a civil engineer guy, almost burnt herself locking herself up in the kitchen, when few neighbors came to her rescue, to give her a new life free from all oppression and life with a demon. But, in how many cases it becomes easy to walk out of marriage in our country? Are’nt women supposed to adjust and keep shut about the distress because no one will acknowledge marital rape as a crime? The idea that it is betrayal of marriage to the core, and trying to save the same marriage for the sake of social pressure, religious reasons or what so ever, is nothing but giving consent to be brutally ill treated repeatedly, needs to be inculcated in women. If a man subjects his wife to physical pain, the wife should subject him to the rigors of the criminal justice system. And if a section of the society has to call it as a feminist tool to criminalize marriage, so be it. Something more than sensitizing the judiciary towards marital rape, is needed. The society needs to acknowledge criminalizing marital rape, and challenge the myth that rape by one’s spouse is inconsequential.
