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Society
Victimized Wives on Center Court
by Sakuntala Narasimhan
 In a faraway country
called Ethiopia in Africa, every young woman was given a 'cike'
(pronounced sik-ki) - a wooden staff with bells, at the time of her
marriage by her family. The 'cike' was left in a corner of her
marital home. The cike played a very important role - if a wife
was abused by her husband, she picked it up and walked out to the
village common. That was the signal for other women to pick up their 'cikes'
and join her, leaving all the housework, cooking, cleaning, milking of
cows, and other chores undone. The men in the village, hungry and forced
to take note, would then put collective pressure on the abusive husband
to apologize so that life could return to normal in every household. The
man had no option but to ask his wife's forgiveness and promise good
behavior.
The Indian Court of Women held in Bangalore on July 28, 2009, as part of
a global series of unique 'courts', or public hearings, on violence
against women, initiated by the Asian Women's Human Rights Council
across the world, began with an arresting enactment of this tradition of
the 'cike', with renowned dancer-activist Mallika Sarabhai
following it up with another enactment of an Indian story. She presented
the true but tragic tale of four sisters, aged between 17 and 26 years,
who 20 years ago in the state of Kerala - a state enjoying high literacy
and a matriarchal tradition - hanged themselves as their poor parents
could not find them grooms because they could not afford the dowry
entailed. Unable to bear the humiliation of being 'shown' repeatedly to
prospective husbands, more interested in the enticement package, the
sisters took their lives.
Two decades on, despite changes in the law and rise in incomes and
literacy levels among women, the menace of dowry is claiming more lives
than ever before. Where once the annual figures were 400 'dowry deaths'
during the 1980s, today official figures put the number at around 7,800,
even though women's groups estimate that the real figure is closer to
25,000 per year. In Bangalore, Karnataka, on an average, three women die
unnatural deaths, each day, mostly in the burns wards. Most of them are
dowry-related fatalities.
In keeping with the global tradition of focusing on issues specific to
each country, the Bangalore session of the Indian Court of Women, called
Daughters of Fire, concentrated on dowry-related violence - bride
burnings; harassment for dowry; and the related epidemic of female
feticide. Activist Sabu George, who participated in the Bangalore
'court' hearings, estimates that more girls have been eliminated before
birth in India in the last seven years, than those killed in the
Holocaust. This is a chilling revelation. Albeit illegal, sex
determination tests continue with the connivance of the medical
profession and have become a Rs 1,000-crore business, with ultrasound
technology now available even in rural areas.
While farmers' suicides have merited frequent media coverage, the court
decided to focus on the gender dimension of this horror in the
prosperous states of Punjab and Haryana, where prosperity itself can
kill under the current pattern of globalised and 'market-driven'
development. Mechanization in the name of progress has meant that the
productive inputs that the women traditionally supplied are now no
longer required. As a result, Jat women - barred by social norms and
traditions from seeking paid employment - find themselves marginalized
as 'worthless' dependents. Ironically, prosperity perpetuates the social
menace, with grooms hiking their demands for larger dowries beyond the
reach of most families. It is against such a scenario that the tragedy
of marriage debts, suicides when these debts become insurmountable and
female feticide plays out.
With fewer brides available for marriage, families in many northern
states are 'buying' wives from southern regions. Alternatively, several
brothers can even share a woman if they cannot afford to pay for wives.
This commodifies women and results in trauma for the brides, living
isolated lives in distant regions amidst an alien culture. They have
nowhere to turn to for succor when they find themselves exploited.
Lax enforcement means that existing legislation does not address this
continuum of violence. Twenty-five women testified at Bangalore,
describing how a daughter's death by burning (or being driven to suicide
through unbearable torture for dowry) got recorded by the police as
"accidental death" because there were no witnesses.
Siddamma, Sharifunissa, Malathi, Binapani - whether they were from the
north, south, east or west of India, whether they spoke in Hindi, Tamil,
Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam (the court offered simultaneous
translations to the audience), whether they were educated or illiterate
- all had similar tales of losing a daughter or sister to dowry, with
the perpetrator invariably going unpunished because there was no
"evidence".
This silence, this failure to speak up collectively as a community and
nation against brutal murders of women in our midst, is what this
'court' process seeks to fight. It brought private testimonies into the
public sphere, in the presence of experts (judges, activists, academics
and bureaucrats) who served as the 'jury' and offered suggestions for
alternative mechanisms that could impart more dignity to women's lives.
One of the testimonies was from a qualified medical practitioner from
Delhi, Dr Mithu Khurana. Assaulted, starved and tortured because she
refused to abort her female fetuses, Dr Mithu wrote to the prime
minister and sent e-mails to high-placed officials, only to be faced
with dire threats if she did not withdraw her complaints. This is the
reality that cuts across lines of class, caste, religion and economic
background.
Six round-table groups, organized by Vimochana, an activists' group of
Bangalore along with 40 other NGOs, discussed different aspects of dowry
and related violence at a day-long pre-court sitting on July 27, and
offered suggestions for action at the personal and community levels.
Among the suggestions made were the need to teach sons to respect
sisters and wives, promote networking among women to garner group
strength (such as the 'cike'-tradition), use new community
initiatives like 'nari adalats' (women's courts at the local
level) to promote gender justice, and boycott weddings where dowries
were paid.
Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, nonagenarian activist and former Supreme
Court judge, went to the extent of suggesting that July 28 should be
declared a "national day of the death sentence on dowry", while a number
of young men stood up to promise that they would not take a dowry or
attend marriages where dowry was demanded. But as the jury pointed out,
dowry is but a symbol of a larger malaise, a pattern of marriage where
the woman's contribution to the family and society is seen as so
worthless that the men have to be "compensated" for marrying them.
The testimonies included accounts by some gutsy young women in their
twenties and thirties, who described how they resisted and survived
dowry harassment and made new lives for themselves. These examples could
encourage other young women to stand up against practices that demean
them as human beings or measure them in terms of cars, scooters,
refrigerators, TV sets, or hard cash.
August 9, 2009
Image of Ethiopian Woman under license
with Gettyimages.com
By arrangement with
WFS
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