Sexual Violence, Masculinities and Spaces in India: Narratives in Public Consciousness Sneha Annavarapu

If it werent for the resounding media attention that the Delhi Gang Rape and Mumbai Gang Rape as is now being popularly referred to was witness to, I would have a bone to pick with a part of the title of this discussion, that is, in the center of public consciousness. It is a very dangerous phrase to use in a country like ours with its stratifications being social, spatial, political and economic. Whether a public sphere in India is truly representative of the multitude of voices is one debate that there is a whole mute world, a whole subaltern within the subaltern, whose experiences and voices are perhaps going unrecorded by the minute, is another. I would be a bit cautious in portraying a singular public consciousness. However, like I said before, this is a stand I would have taken a year ago. The Delhi Gang Rape to use an oft repeated phrase sent shivers down the backbone of India as a nation: that in the upcoming superpower in the world, a young girl could be so brutally violated against, jolted the country into being self-reflective. What happened in December was not something unheard of but somewhere along the lines, the nation got tired of waiting for a semblance of justice. One could, in fact, call it a landmark case in Indian history. I do not mean to sound callous, but that it took place in an urban setting, that the victim was an educated young middle-class girl and that she succumbed to the injuries of rape all made a difference to the way this case caught the attention of the entire nation. This is not to take away from the seriousness of the case, but to point to the shaping of public consciousness in India. Either way, for once, I can safely say that the entire nation was affected because following that, one could see the gaze of the media shift towards covering more ground when it came to rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, battery and other forms of physical and sexual violence both in urban and rural areas. The case ushered in a critical engagement in the popular media with the condition of women today. Debates surrounding bodily integrity, sexual autonomy, safety and security of women, institutional failure, legal failure, socio-cultural influences, etc have been doing the rounds ever since. The discussion was different in urban areas, in rural areas, across caste, class and religion but there was and still is a very heated discussion. A recent UN report on sexual violence in Asia reported that almost 1 out of every 4 men surveyed have raped a woman at least once in their lifetime and that 72-97% of these men have faced no legal consequences. In the same report, the reasons for raping a woman predominantly were recreation or frustration. Whatever the reason may be, the fact of the matter is that some statistics quote that on an average, in every sixty minutes, two Indian women are subject to some form of sexual violence or the other. Another betrayal here: I am using the term violence, not crime. Crime is a subset of violence. Crime is a form of violence that is legally recognized and is therefore, subject to punishment
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under law. Violence, on the other hand, can be symbolic, surreptitious, unrecorded and sometimes even a fact of everyday life. In a class on data collection, one of our professors told us how in rural areas data on domestic violence is hard to rely on because the respondents do not understand what the term violence means since wife-beating, verbal abuse, child abuse none of them are categorically understood as violence forget crime! They are facts of everyday life and are naturalized with narratives that surround the natural inclination of a woman to be submissive and an equally natural inclination of a man to be aggressive and superior. This brings to light the notion of masculinities. Patriarchy is as much about relationship between man and man as it is about relationship between men and women. In the narratives on sexual violence in India, the notion of masculinity has multiple ramifications. On the one hand, you have research that shows how unemployed men or casual labourers in North India resort to aggression and sexual harassment as a means of coping with emasculation owing to the dearth of employment and, therefore, respect in their communities. This can be attributed to the feminization of agriculture which has led to a lot of male unemployment in these areas. Furthermore, the dynamic of peer pressure amongst these men is stark. If you do not sexually harass a woman, you are emasculated. This is in congruence to what I had said earlier about naturalized tendencies that define gender. While aggression on a man is considered natural, care and tenderness would be considered deviance. This is one extreme reading of masculinity. There are other theories in sociology, like the Power Dynamic Theory, that explain the violence of men against women in terms of reinforcing social control over women by engaging in violence that subjugates and keeps the woman in check. There are also analyses that point to how in an income-unequal country like ours, an economically independent woman poses a threat of emasculation to an economically disempowered man. A crisis of masculinity in a society that has gotten used to the superiority of men in all spheres of activity especially the ones outside the home. On the other hand, you have a different narrative of masculinity that portrays the man as the protector of women. The State, more often than not, tends to take this patronizing stand. For instance, when RR Patil said that a woman photojournalist ought to take police protection with her when going into deserted areas in the city, he was resorting to this kind of an understanding of masculinity. One where, the man is not the aggressor but the protector. Now, you might ask: what is wrong with men protecting their women? The problem, in terms of policy, is that if you take a protectionist standpoint and argue out a case for gender equality there is an inherent problem in shifting the onus of caution onto women. The mobility and movement of women, then, becomes hindered since the State is not acting against the perpetrators of the crime but is saying that the victims need to be protected. For all you know, this might culminate into a suggestion of locking up all women after hours to keep them safe from crime and danger. Seldom do you see the corollary lock up all the men who commit these crimes? The insinuation is that if you walk on the streets after-hours and in deserted areas, it is your problem.
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Sure, we will protect you, but that is a privilege and not a right. The video Its Your Fault that has gone viral on the internet aptly captures this sentiment. Volenti Non Fit Injuria. Talking of deserted areas, brings to mind Gill Valentines expression that there is indeed a spatial expression of patriarchy. The gendering of space is something that is tangibly seen in our everyday experiences. As a woman, you are often told not to wander off into certain shady areas. What constitutes their shadiness is the presence of too many males and the absence of adequate exits or, at the other extreme, open empty spaces in the outskirts of the city where there are few people predominantly men. It would be of more solace to me if men felt equally inhibited in womens spaces but there is a big distinction between feeling vaguely disconcerted and feeling downright petrified. You might see men being awkward in spaces that are predominantly women but the quantity of women can hardly be threatening to a man today. Whereas, even if ten women were walking down a lonely street in the middle of the night and there were just two men around the intimidation faced by the woman is far more intense and threatening. The passivity of violence is always in the air. At the end of the day, space is not equitable in terms of gender. Mumbai is generally considered to be a very safe city for women. The sheer density of population puts in place an automatic surveillance on the streets, and in the trains circumventing a possibility of sexual violence in public. You will be, then, surprised to know that the number of cases of sexual harassment in Mumbai had gone up by 45% in 2012, compared to 2011 and that there were 232 recorded cases of rape in Mumbai second only to Delhis horrifying number of 585 recorded cases of rape. This usage of public and recorded is being done knowingly. The violence meted out to women on a daily bases behind closed doors at home is not negligible in a country like ours. Domestic violence, wife-beating, verbal abuse and harassment are literally a fact of everyday life for a lot of women in India. In this regard, I would like to discuss the kind of narratives that came about in the recent campaign against violence in the Abused Goddesses ads. So, this ad agency brought out three posters under the title Abused Goddesses which portrayed Lakshmi, Durga and Saraswati as being battered with bruises and cuts on their faces. The point of this campaign was to sensitize the public with the idea that in a country where women are worshipped as Goddesses, there are also women who are being beaten up at home. This ushered in a lot of praise initially because it was considered hard hitting but then critical reviews made their way to the attention of the discerning reader. One, does a woman have to be a goddess to be excused from domestic violence? Two, are only goddesses worthy of respect? Three, isnt this a very Hindu-centric insinuation does it excuse domestic violence in other religions? Four, what about the interpretation that if a goddess can be hit, so can my wife? And finally, what is with this manly Indian perspective that can see a woman either as a goddess or a slut? That a goddess or a chaste Indian woman does not deserve to be subject to domestic violence but that whore down my road with her unchaste ways and bad habits has no rights against violence? The role of the institutional mechanisms in addressing these concerns are, obviously, limited. While it is a failure of governance that these crimes against women continue to take place the
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socio-cultural context and the psychological factors that are exacerbated by related factors of poverty, income inequality, unemployment, etc cannot be ignored. It is the responsibility of the State not to merely protect women but to create conditions of equitable access to public spaces and to create conditions of exit in uninhabitable private spaces. The fallback option for women to refuse violence has to be strong. The presence of the State in both the public and private sphere has to be less imposing and more approachable. Protection is a short-term solution; prevention is escapism resolution is what needs to be aimed for. Death Penalty might act as a deterrent but there is no such groundbreaking causality that has been found in research across the world. Exemplary punishment, definitely but education and sensitization right from childhood is what needs more focus. Resolving the tensions of culturally rooted patriarchy in a globalizing India needs an effective State as much as it needs a willing and participatory society today. Education, not just literacy, should figure on the agenda. We need a mammoth social project one that focuses on realigning socially and culturally rooted notions of gender roles in society. Gendered identities need to be made more fluid and less fixed. In nutshell, dont just teach boys how to behave but teach them that this supposed masculinity is just a construct and that love, kindness, tenderness, care and non-violence are not female or feminine traits but are values that are pivotal to the shaping of a sensitive public consciousness in India. We need a value system that reinforces the truth that love and non-violence are not gendered commodities and that women do not need patronizing protection as much as they need their space and freedom. After all, freedom is not gendered.