Normalisation of sexual violence in India

Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Has the normalisation of gender stereotypes and power dynamics led to a sexual violence epidemic against women in India?

Fig 1: Challenges that are faced by every woman in India Source: https://www.isrgrajan.com/ challenges-that-are-faced-by-every-women-in-india.html

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Contents Introduction Cultural violence - identifying the roots Structural Violence - a clash with culture Symbolic violence - normalisation of domination Conclusion Image list Bibliography

Fig 2: A young child protests after the brutal gang rape of an adolescent in Gujurat, India, 2018.

Source: BBC 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-43782471

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Introduction

“Women are more precious...than a diamond. It is up to you, how you want to keep that diamond in your hand. If you put your diamond on the street, certainly the dog will take it out. You can't stop it” ~ M.L Sharma, Defence Lawyer for Nirbhaya Gang Rapists 2012 [India's Daughter, 2015]

In 2012, a young woman was brutally gang raped and murdered by six men while returning home from an evening movie with a male friend in Delhi, India’s capital. This tragic event exposed the severity of sexual violence in India and prompted new conversations, and conflict, around the potential root causes related to patriarchal notions of domination (India’s Daughter, 2015). But why did it take a murder to bring these issues to the forefront, particularly when a rape is reported every 15 minutes in India (Reuters, 2020)?

This essay critiques the notion of sexual violence and reveals its hidden motivations that persistently condition unequal gender roles in India.

As a second generation British Indian woman, I have experienced these gender roles on a diluted level within my extended family dynamics. Girls are expected to help in the kitchen, our clothing choices are scrutinised and premarital relationships are discouraged.

My aunts devote themselves to domestic duties and their ‘pati parmeshwars’ (husbands akin to god), despite being highly educated doctors in their own right. Contrastingly, boys have more freedom to do as they please.

This report explores how these habitual beliefs, when exacerbated by a lack of education surrounding sexuality, can be as harrowing as physical violence because they attack a woman’s locus of control and limit her choices. Although issues of gender based violence prevail around the world, such as the USA where there are higher reported cases of rape (India’s Daughter, 2015), this essay focuses on how normalisation of violence in India is heavily informed by its culture, ideologies, and customs.

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Cultural violence - identifying the root causes To understand how entrenched the roots of this epidemic are, we must start at the prenatal stage where, theoretically, a gender distinction beyond biological differences, should not exist. However, India has one of the lowest sex ratio differentials in the world [Fig.1] with around 35 million women ‘missing’ from the demographics [Sinha et al. 2017]. This alarming statistic is primarily a result of pre-natal sex selection and foeticide, and postnatal infanticide, caused by the strong preference for boys ingrained in the Indian sociocultural context. Boys are seen as both auspicious, tied to religious ideas of divinity and guardianship, and as the ones who carry forward familial lineages (Nanda et al. 2014).

Contrastingly, girls are typically viewed as “socio-economic burdens” (ibid., 2) because of the historical remnants of dowry customs as well as the notion that they are only linked to their natal family till marriage. Thus, from the onset, girls are seen as inferior to boys.

Figure 3: India is consistently in the top percentiles for sex ratio differentials, particularly between birth and adolescence. (Source: List of countries by sex ratio, Statistica, 2021)

These early forms of discrimination that occur as a result of intrinsic cultural biases can be identified as cultural violence, which manifests in both the physical harm caused by sex-selection practices and neglect and in the legitimization of gender inequity from the beginning of a child’s life. Another symptom of this violence is the misdirected masculinity that occurs through the conditioning of men by society’s patriarchal views of male superiority.

This entitlement can lead to direct violence being perceived as an accepted way for men to resolve conflict with their ‘inferior’ female counterparts (ibid.), reflected in Fig.2 showing household cruelty as the most common crime against Indian women (statistica, 2020).

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Figure 4: Graph showing domestic violence by husband or relatives as the most commonly reported crime against women in India (Source: Number of reported crimes against women across India by type of crime, Statistica, 2020)

Structural Violence - a clash with culture Although domestic violence is unlawful, marital rape is still legal (Makkar, 2021) indicating that a husband’s ownership of his wife’s body for sexual pleasure is still condoned, thereby maintaining the gendered power dynamics. This highlights another layer, structural violence, which relates to the structures and laws in place (or lack thereof) that facilitate physical, psychological or social harm by limiting access to basic needs [Galtung, 1969).

While on the surface, anti-rape and violence laws have become harsher, in a country where religion, culture and politics are often closely interrelated, the presence of these laws aren’t as successful in reducing the acts because punishing the perpetrators does not address the ingrained root causes. This is visible when noting that the rate of rape in India has not decreased since the introduction of the death penalty for the act in 2013, because it fails to “limit the violent patriarchies that cause rape in the first place” (Gowen, 2018).

Furthermore, the strong culture of shame and victim blaming that exists around rape has

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

seen politicians openly endorsing death as an appropriate solution for victims who would otherwise “just be... walking corpse[s]” (India’s Daughter, 2015), which legitimizes and enables future reoccurences of the violence. Thus cultural and structural violence in India are inextricably linked.

This is reiterated by how structural violence perpetuates the masculinity factor through the absence of sex education in schools. Culturally, the subject of sex is seen as a taboo particularly amongst women, as a result of misconceptions around the subject. Sex education plays an integral part in reducing gender-based violence through teaching students from a young age about reproductive health, medical contraceptives and sexually-transmitted diseases as well as the importance of consent, gender identity, equality and empowerment (Pandey, 2019). In the absence of this, children often turn to recreational modes of learning such as porn and media which can lead to a perverted and misrecognized view of masculinity (Kumari et al. 2016) and therefore a heightened risk of violence.

Nevertheless, a positive institutional change in recent years in India has been an increase in female literacy rates. As a result, more women are entering the workforce, participating in politics and reporting violence more often (Chandra, 2019). However, this evolution of the empowered role of women in society has led to conservative backlash, seen by some as a threat against the traditional culture of India. Educated women are viewed as ‘Westernised’, “doing wrong things [and] wearing wrong clothes” (India’s Daughter, 2015) which has led to increased gang rapes in cities. Though these crimes are largely described as sexual violence by media and politicians, evidence from the 2012 Delhi rape case suggests that they have little to do with sexual desire and more to do with maintaining domination - a way for the perpetrators to “teach them a lesson” for breaching the boundaries of power (ibid.).

Symbolic violence - normalisation of domination A more sinister form of violence that underpins the everyday habitus of Indian life is the justification of male domination through symbolic violence. This form of violence, in India specifically, is a by-product of cultural violence and through the subtle process of socialisation over time, “prevents domination from being recognized as such and, therefore, as misrecognized domination, [becomes] socially recognized” (Krais, 1992 cited in Bhattacharya, 2018:24). This is evident in the attitudes towards wife beating where 41% of girls and 39% of boys aged 15-19 consider it acceptable for a husband to hit or beat his wife (UNICEF, 2021). The data is concerning for two reasons. Firstly, the age range of 15-19 shows that these patriarchal ideas have been imposed from a young age, which has inevitably led to the normalisation of power imbalances, in the absence of alternative experiences to challenge it. Secondly, more girls deem it acceptable than boys which indicates an internalisation of their subservient social value, again as a result of the patriarchal notions that shape their “formative experiences of earliest infancy” (Bhattacharya, 2018:26). Young girls are taught that it is their duty to uphold the honour of their natal family before marriage and their husband’s family after marriage which limits their freedom of movement by consistently linking their identities to the ideologies of a patriarchal figurehead.

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

These figures of authority, which can include older females, constantly warn of the direct violence that girls may face as a consequence of dishonour, and impose spatial and situational restrictions on them without giving guidance on how to deal with these consequences themselves. Thus, fear, subservience and dependency becomes a normalised mental state (Bhattacharya, 2018). Furthermore, the disapproval of divorce within a predominantly patrilocal social system, in which women reside with or near their husband’s family, limits their locus of control whereby they do not feel that they are able to report or escape abuse for fear of being outcast (ibid.). Internalisation thus becomes a coping mechanism which, over time, normalises the violence.

Conclusion The findings of this essay show that gang rapes and other direct forms of violence in India are less about sexual desires and more “a demonstration of male power juxtaposed with the lower status of women” (Nanda et al. 2014). This begins with gender preferences at birth and manifests throughout a child’s life until it becomes normalised and is subsequently passed onto the next generation, creating a perpetual cycle of harm. Direct violence should therefore not be seen as an isolated incident but one which slowly festers in the socialisation of gender dynamics for years before it physically manifests. It should be noted here that the prevalence of honour killings, child marriage and sexual abuse that occur as a result of symbolic and cultural violence within the wider Indian diaspora (Karma Nirvana UK, 2021), indicate that the fundamental causes are deeply rooted in culture, rather than a result of geographical or even economic differences.

Additionally, most laws introduced to combat the violence simply negotiate negative peace by incarcerating obvious offenders of the symptoms but fail to target ingrained root causes. This is, however, the aim of many emerging NGOs who are successfully empowering women and educating men on the importance of gender equality from adolescence; The Bindi Project uses storytelling to educate prospective parents on the importance of daughters (TheBindiProject) and ‘Men Against Violence and Abuse’(MAVAIndia) uses cultural advocacy to challenge misdirected masculinity in young boys.

Fig 5: Children of The Bindi Project. Source: https://www.bindiproject.org/

Fig 6: Teenage boys advocating alongside founder of MAVA India. Source: http://www.mavaindia.org/

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Student number: 19172452

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Image list • • • • • • •

Fig.1- Team ISRG KB. Available at: https://www.isrgrajan.com/challenges-that-are-faced-byevery-women-in-india.html Fig. 2 - BBC (2018) Reuters Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asiaindia-43782471 [Accessed 15th Nov. 2021] Fig. 3 - Statistica (2021) Available at: https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/countries-bysex-ratio.php [Accessed 11th Nov. 2021] Fig. 4 - Statistica (2020) Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/633038/reported-crimes-against-women-by-type-india/ [Accessed 11th Nov. 2021] Fig. 5 - The Bindi Project (2021) Available at: https://www.bindiproject.org/ [Accessed 17th Nov. 2021] Fig. 6 - WAVAIndia (2021) Available at: http://www.mavaindia.org/gallery.html [Accessed 17th

Bibliography • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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Bhattacharyya, R. (2019) ‘Symbolic Violence and Misrecognition: Scripting Gender among Middle-class Women, India’, Society and Culture in South Asia, 5(1), pp. 19–46. doi: 10.1177/2393861718787870.

Chandra T (2019), “Literacy in India: The Gender and Age Dimension”, ORF Issue Brief, 322, Observer Research Foundation.

Desai M (2019) ‘Gendered violence in India’, Talking Research [podcast] ‘India’s Daughter’, (2015) [documentary] Directed by L. Udwin. BBC, Available at: Netflix (Accessed: 30 October 2021) Galtung, J. (1969). ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), pp. 167–191. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/422690 Gowen A (2018), ‘India institutes death penalty for child rape in wake of 8-year-old’s brutal death’, Washington Post [online article] Jain A (2015), ‘Rape in india - A visual exploration of systemic rape culture’, Available at: https://adityajain15.github.io/Rape_In_India/ ‘Karma Nirvana UK’ (2021), NGO [website] Available at: https://karmanirvana.org.uk/ Kumari. P (1999), ‘Gender Analysis of Indian Penal Code’, Engendering Law: Essays in Honour of Lotika Sakar, pp.139-160 Makkar S (2021), ‘Marital Rape - A non-criminalised crime in India’, Harvard human Rights Journal, 34(1) ‘Men Against Violence & Abuse’ (2021), NGO [website] Available at: http://www.mavaindia. org/ Nanda P, Gautam A, Verma R, Khanna A, Khan N, Brahme Di, Boyle S and Kumar S (2014).

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Student number: 19172452

• • • • • • • •

DEVP7002 - Conflict, violence and humanitarianism

Assignment 1: 1500 words

Roychowdhury P (2016), ‘Desire, Rights, Entitlements: Organizational Strategies in the War on Violence’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 41(4), doi: 10.1086/685116 Sinha P, Gupta U, Singh J. and Srivastava A. (2017) Structural violence on women: An impediment to women empowerment. Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 42(3) pp. 134137. doi:10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_276_15 Statistica (2020), ‘Number of reported crimes against women across India in 2020, by type of crime’, Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/633038/reported-crimes-againstwomen-by-type-india/ [Accessed 11th Nov. 2021] Thapar-Björkert S, Samelius L and Sanghera G (2016) ‘Exploring symbolic violence in the everyday’, Feminist Review, 112(1), pp. 144–162. doi: 10.1057/fr.2015.53.

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