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Student Research submissions 2013 (2013 research options) Research Post 2 |
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Jenna Zucha
Violence
against Women in India
One of the most
shocking and disturbing scenes in Bharati Mukherjee’s novel
Jasmine
is Jyoti’s sisters description of her birth, and the surprising implication that
her mother tried to end her life before it could even begin: “When the midwife
carried me out, my sisters tell me, I had a ruby-red choker of bruise around my
throat and sapphire fingerprints on my collarbone…My mother was a sniper. She
wanted to spare me the pain of a dowryless bride. My mother wanted a happy life
for me” (40). This account seems horrific, anti-nurturing and unjustifiable, but
in comparison to the brutality faced by young women in India, the choice made by
her mother becomes more difficult to condemn:
“God is cruel, my mother complained, to waste
brains on a girl” (40). Mukherjee’s commentary on the patriarchal culture Jyoti
and all India women combat on a daily basis sparked my desire to learn more
about the nature of the violent crimes against women reported every day in
India. I also wanted to understand where this rage and violence comes from in
this highly gendered culture, and possibly what is being done to eradicate the
violence.
On December 16,
2012, a 23 year old woman was gang raped and brutalized by six men on a bus in
India’s capital, New Delhi. This monstrous act of violence is recounted in Neha
Thirani Bagri’s article for
The New York Times,
“Where is India’s Feminist Movement Headed?” Bagri writes: “India reeled in
horror and masses of protesters took to the streets. It might have been because
she embodied in so many ways the aspirations of the new India, or because of the
gruesome nature of the act, or because it happened in an urban metropolis, not
in the remote hinterland, or because it was one assault too many.” India’s
history has had a long-standing relationship with female directed violence, and
many different factors are charged with being the catalyst behind this violence.
It seems that the recent attacks have pushed the public over the edge, and many
prominent authorities are desperate for change in both the public and political
spheres. Felicity Le Quensne states in her article, “Violence against women in
India: Culture, Institutions, and Inequality,” that “the tens of thousands of
protesters who marched in several cities and signed online petitions were acting
not just in response to this incident but also to express anger at the way women
in India are treated more generally, criticizing in particular state apathy in
the face of rape, and the severe deficiencies in law and order.”
As
the economic status of India continues to change, so too will the nature of the
violence towards women in this society. The very fact that the violence is
morphing rather then depleting points to a serious problem that is rooted in the
culture and religion, and it is continuously immolated by popular culture and
the media.
Sunny Hundal
provides insight into this issue in his book
India Dishonored:
Behind a Nation’s War on Women (2013). Hundal
explains that in order “to understand the origins of most cultural practices in
India requires a return to centuries-old religious mythology. The
Ramayana,
a key text in the Hindu religious canon, is an epic tale of kings and queens,
family duty and promises, love and war, tradition, and honor. Taught to almost
every Indian child from a young age, it puts forward some of the earliest ideals
surrounding male and female gender roles” (197). Stories like the
Ramayana
and the
Mahabharata are
woven so tightly into “India’s social fabric”
that it is nearly impossible to separate religion and tradition from everyday
life. In the popular epic tale,
Ramayana, the Lord Ram
demands in front of his court that his wife, Sita, prove her purity to the
kingdom because she has lived under the roof of another man; “O Sita, you are
the embodiment of tolerance and forbearance. Moreover, you represent purity at
its highest. But you have lived under the shelter of Ravana. I know the fire of
your chastity has prevented Ravana from even touching your nail. But I have my
own limitations. As a king I am answerable to my people, and therefore, I would
like you to prove your purity in front of all so that in future people on this
earth would not cast doubt—dare not put any blame—of infidelity on your noble
character” (qtd in Hundal 195). She is then required to walk through fire and if
she is truly pure and chase the flames will not be able to harm her. Hundal
explains that the “fate of Sita is important not just because the
Ramayana
is so highly regarded—it also illustrates the huge cultural significance of a
woman’s honor” (197). This excerpt alone explains so much in regards to the
forms in which women are brutalized and attacked in India through dowry death,
and sati. Sati is when a widow throws herself onto the funeral pyre of her dead
husband. Sati and dowries are illegal in India; however, their presence as a
cultural expectation places women in the lower class and privileged class in a
dangerous predicament. Jennifer Johnson elaborates on this tradition in her
essay “The Oppression of Women in India.” Johnson explains “on becoming a widow,
a woman may be subjected to another form of fatal violence, sati. Although
illegal and rarely practiced in modern India, the ritual of sati takes place
when a woman is burnt alive with her late husband’s corpse or with his personal
belongings” (1060). This tradition is evident in Mukherjee’s novel when Jasmine
plans to carry her dead husband’s suit all the way to America in order to kill
herself by laying down on the flames; “I would land, find Tampah, walking there
if necessary, find the college grounds…under the very tree where two Chinese
girls were pictured, smiling, I had dreamed of arranging the suit and twigs.
The vision of lying serenely on a bed of fire under palm trees” (120). For most
women in India there is no economic alternative to marriage, and once they are
married their options become even more limited. If their husband dies or is
abusive towards them it is impossible to return to their homes because they will
be a financial burden on their family and remarrying is out of the question.
“Social
mores, rather than subscribing to western principles of feminist equality, see
Indian women set apart, idealized, Ascribed a special—separate—place to men in
society, they are placed up high on a pedestal. Yet this symbolism that puts
women on a pedestal is in fact the problem” (Hundal 198). Similar to the
Victorian prison created by the “cult of domesticity” in 18th century England,
this convention of elevating women is dangerous because this pedestal comes with
a high price of obedience and servitude; “conventions requires that girls be
brought up to be good daughters and later obedient wives, not independent women
encouraged to do what they wish…by putting them on a pedestal, they are placed
in a trap where they have to constantly live up to the expectations of others”
(Hundal 199). As a woman, this is an infuriating concept because the very
institutions that have built this high pedestal of honor and respect provide no
protection or justice or choice for these women who are being attacked and
ostracized from their communities.
As seen with the multitude of protesters after the
brutal attack on December 16, 2012, it is clear that the majority of the younger
generations in India are fed up with the way women are treated, but little
progress has been made in the way of liberating and protecting them. This
horrible reality is sustained by several different factors that compound on one
another in creating a constant war against women in India.
Reasons for the
Perpetuated Violence towards Women:
·
Men outnumber women: The
staggering difference in numbers between women and men has been connected with
the dowry system because so much pressure is placed on the families of young
girls to provide monetary means to gain a husband for their daughters. The “2011
census found that there are 940 women for every 1000 men, and this national
figure hides significant regional discrepancies” (Le Quesne3). Because this
economic pressure falls on the household of girls their births are rarely
celebrated, and if they are not the first born or the prettiest they are usually
neglected or killed.
·
The Dowry System: One of
the primary reasons marital abuse goes unreported or tolerated in many cases is
because these women have very little support outside of their home. “If a woman
does marry and finds herself in an abusive situation, she probably will not
return to her parents’ home or divorce her husband because she and her family
will be ostracized from their community (Johnson 1055).
·
The Patriarchal Ideal:
“Examples that demonstrate that India is a society governed by a system where
males hold the power include feticide, the disproportionate gender ration, the
fact that most women are not allowed to be employed, the belief that from birth
until death a woman’s role is to serve men” (Johnson 1053).
·
Unresponsive Judicial
System: Though the New Delhi gang rape has brought renewed attention to sex
crimes, prosecutions of those cases still move at a glacier pace. “India’s law
minister, Ashwani Kumar, said there are currently 24,000cases related to rape
and sexual harassment pending in India’s Supreme Court and various high courts”
(Bagri 3). Another major problem in the court system is the deep seeded
patriarchal ideal that is upheld by some judges; “India’s first female Assistant
Solicitor General, Indira Jaising, recently wrote the country’s Chief Justice to
protest against remarks made by High Court Justice N Kirubakaran regarding the
Delhi gang-rape case, which, according to Jaising, were ‘to the effect that
women are responsible for crimes against them’” (LeQuense 5).
·
Mixed Messages: Similar to
the United States, young men and women are being fed images in movies,
advertisements, and television shows that contradict the strict and high moral
standards set by their traditions and religions. On one hand they are taught
that women should be chaste, modest, and respected by men. While on the other
hand, they are bombarded with messages of sexual freedom and promiscuity.
“Social norms that ascribe a particular role for women, emphasizing duty and
submission, are reinforced across various dimensions of Indian culture from
mythological Hindu epics to Bollywood cinema. Sex, in particular, is a topic
whose cultural presence is marked by disturbing contradictions. Rashmee Rosshan
Lall writes, ‘Sex is on display everywhere from Bollywood films and TV
advertisements to seedy roadside graffiti,” yet, at the same time, “a powerful
conservative morality limits acknowledgment to innuendo and suggestive word
pictures created by Hindi film songs’” (Le Quesne 5).
Cultural and social
contradictions hold the key to change:
Many strong women role
models subsist both in the literature and historical platforms within India’s
vast culture, and it greatly contradicts the way in which women are treated in
India. Sunny Hundal goes on to explain in his book that other versions of Sita’s
fate in the
Ramayana exist to counteract the status quo. He
brings in the account of author Samhita Arni who wrote
Sita’s Ramayana,
a graphic novel, in 2011 “to highlight alternative interpretations to the story”
(228). She wanted to create a textual version of the story that fit more
accurately the woman’s point of view; “she says ‘many of the oral
traditions—sung by women, who pass these songs from generation to
generation—present a woman’s point of view and voice…Sita, in the versions that
had been told to me as a child—was a quiet, submissive woman-but here, in other
traditions-there’s a warrior princess, a Sita who is strong and wise, a Sita who
is compassionate, a Sita who raises her children as a single mother in the
forest. These different Sitas intrigued me’” (Hundal 228). Other examples that
illustrate the presence of strong women in the Indian culture come from the
Hindu religion. In Hinduism there is the “goddess of war,
Durga,
who is considered invincible and celebrated annually at festivals.
Durga
is accompanied by other prominent female goddesses:
Lakshmi
(for prosperity),
Saraswati (knowledge),
and Kali
(power)” (Hundal 228). The goddess
Kali
is present in the novel
Jasmine
when she violently reacts to her rape on her first night in America by slicing
her tongue in two, and cutting the throat of her attacker; “No one to call to,
no one to disturb us. Just me and the man who had raped me, the man I had
murdered. The room looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood had congealed on my
hands, my chin, my breasts. What a monstrous thing, what an infinitesimal thing,
is the taking of a human life. I was walking death. Death incarnate” (Mukherjee
119). Jasmine uses aspects of her religion and deeply entwined culture to absorb
the impact of her trauma. She embodies the goddess Kali for a short while to
regain some of the power that is stripped from her. In Mukherjee’s novel,
Jasmine is unable to escape the violent war waged against her even when she
comes to America, so she must fall back on aspects of her religion to justify
the constant mistreatment. In an attempt to comfort her self, Jasmine says “[m]y
body was merely the shell, soon to be discarded. Then I could be reborn, debts
and sins all paid for” (121).
It is also
noteworthy to point out that women have held significant positions in the
political and educational systems which can add hope to the eradication of this
war on women in India. “India’s third prime minister after independence in 1947,
Indira Gandhi, dominated Indian politics for the second half of the 20th
century…she was voted the greatest Indian prime minister by readers of the
popular magazine,
India Today in 2011. Her
daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi, has loomed large over Indian politics over the
last decade and is the longest-serving president of the ruling Congress Party”
(Hundal 200). Congress woman, Sonia Gandhi, stated in a speech made August 29 of
this year, “what is needed is a social revolution for empowering women which
must seek to reform the mind-set and old thoughts of our society” (qtd in Le
Quesne 5). This type of social revolution will only come once the rigid
conceptions of masculinity and femininity are diluted and an emphasis on the
self and universal respect for others is instilled into the minds of younger
generations. Many people like Sunny Hundal and Felicity Le Quense are hopeful
that this change is possible because “despite these deep-rooted structures of
patriarchy, there is plenty within the rich and historical culture of India that
not only affirms the value and dignity of women but portrays them as leaders and
warriors” (Le Quesne 5).
Works Cited
Bagri, Neha T. "Where Is India's
Feminist Movement Headed?" India Ink.
The New York Times, 8 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
Hundal, Sunny.
India Dishonored: Behind a Nation's War on Women.
N.p.: Guardian Shorts, 2013. EBook.
Johnson, P. S., and J. A. Johnson. "The
Oppression of Women in India." Violence Against
Women 7.9 (2001): 1051-068. Print.
Le Quensne, Felicity. "Violence Against
Women in India: Culture, Institutions and Inequality."
The International. N.p., 29
Sept. 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
Mukherjee, Bharati.
Jasmine. New York: Grove,
1989. Print.
