Month: November 2020

The solution is not to ban interfaith marriage, as this ordinance effectively does, but to make it easier for citizens to exercise their autonomy, regardless of parental approval

At the heart of the issue is a fight for our rights as women to lead independent lives with dignity(Shutterstock)

Twenty years ago, Asif Iqbal wanted to marry the love of his life, Ranu Kulsheshtra. Neither wanted to convert and, so, the Special Marriage Act (SMA) enacted in 1954 for interfaith couples — and those who wanted a secular marriage — was the obvious, and only, option.

But the marriage officer at Noida wasn’t ready to risk what he called a potential law and order situation, recalls Iqbal. So, Ranu moved to Delhi, took up residence in a women’s hostel and then gave 30-day notice as required by the SMA. They finally married on January 10, 2000.

Those were simpler times. The term “love jihad” was not yet in currency. Now, after a sustained whisper-campaign about a conspiracy to entrap Hindu girls into marriage for the purposes of conversion, Uttar Pradesh (UP) has passed a draft ordinance to prevent “interfaith marriages with the sole intention of changing a girl’s religion”, an offence that carries a 10-year jail term.

We already have laws against forced religious conversion. What we don’t have is evidence of this conspiracy. In February, junior home minister G Kishan Reddy said no case of “love jihad” had been reported by any agency in Kerala. Yet, not just UP, but three other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled governments too want to bring in laws.

“It’s a dog whistle that cannot withstand legal scrutiny,” says senior counsel Saurabh Kirpal. “It goes against the Constitution.”

The “love jihad” narrative focuses on Muslim men and Hindu women, never the other way around. It fuels two ideas: The place of Muslims in India. And the place of women in a Hindutva worldview.

In a country where 93% of all marriages continue to be arranged to ensure caste endogamy, there is no idea more frightening than the autonomy of women.

With over half of rape complaints filed by parents of underage girls who are in consensual relationships, there is every possibility that a proposed “love jihad” law will be used by irate parents backed by social, legal and, sadly, even mob sanction.

So far, the Supreme Court has upheld an individual’s right to choose a partner. This week, two high courts, Allahabad High Court and Delhi High Court, affirmed a woman’s right to choose her partner. But courts are not immune to patriarchy.

After all, 24-year-old Hadiya was deemed by the Kerala High Court as too “weak” to take her own decisions.

Do some men lie during courtship? Undeniably. But, also undeniably, notes a 2018 Law Commission report, for some interfaith couples, conversion is the fastest route to marriage since it bypasses the 30-day public notice required by the SMA.

The solution is not to ban interfaith marriage, as this ordinance effectively does, but to make it easier for citizens to exercise their autonomy, regardless of parental approval.

At the heart of the issue is a fight for our rights as women to lead independent lives with dignity. Anyone who believes women are equal citizens has an obligation to speak up — or watch yet another right slip away.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal

Online child sexual abuse is worse than the pandemic that has resulted in its horrific rise. Increasing economic vulnerability and kids out of school have contributed to a 400% increase in the sexual exploitation of children in videos in 2020

On November 14, news of a raid in 76 cities by the CBI led to 83 arrests for making “obscene videos of children” (AFP)

She was barely 14. He was six years older and promised his undying love. Then he raped her, filmed the act, and coerced her into having sex with other men. That video remained in circulation. Finally, she told a family friend and the police was informed. She is now at a childcare institution, being counselled for trauma.

India is reporting an exponential rise in online child sexual abuse. On November 14, news of a raid in 76 cities by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) led to 83 arrests for making “obscene videos of children”.

Online child sexual abuse is worse than the pandemic that has resulted in its horrific rise. Increasing economic vulnerability and kids out of school have contributed to a 400% increase in the sexual exploitation of children in videos in 2020 over the previous year, estimates the National Crime Records Bureau. In just two days after 2020’s lockdown on March 24, Pornhub saw a traffic bump of 95% — not all was child pornography but search terms like ‘sexy child’ surged and the demand for violent sexual content involving children was up by 200%, finds an April 2020 report by the India Child Protection Fund.

Even before the pandemic, technology had made it easier and cheaper than ever before in history to generate, circulate and sell online content. A decade ago when Priti Patkar of Prerana, a non-profit that works on preventing inter-generational trafficking, spoke to rescued minor girls, nobody spoke about being filmed. In the last six weeks, two of the three girls she has met say they were. “It’s become a way of generating material for online public consumption,” she said.

In 2015, news that some 90 gangrape videos were being sold online led to outrage and a Supreme Court order to deal with the perpetrators with an “iron hand”.

But the filming of criminal activity, including that involving children, continues. The en masse shift to the online world where pop-up ads push pornographic content has made its consumption equally easy. “There’s a menu of options and the offer of closed room activity, which then is secretly filmed by the service provider, generating more content,” said Rakesh Senger, executive director, Kailash Satyarthi Foundation. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, help paedophiles dodge scrutiny.

I am not advocating for a ban on the lines of the government crackdown on 857 porn sites in 2015. But equally, the proliferation of online child sexual abuse is alarming and law enforcement must scale up the technology and Artificial Intelligence tools to take down its producers and consumers.

“We have strict laws,” said Patkar. What is needed are measures including sensitisation of law enforcement and the education of children on spotting and reporting such crime. Social media platforms that host such content must report and remove it, or face legal action. The CBI raid is only a beginning. As a deterrent, there must be unambiguous legal action against those arrested.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal

It’s the job of institutions and government to provide infrastructure. We need a coherent policy tailored to specific regions and needs that will look at the complexities of online learning.

It’s the job of institutions and government to provide infrastructure. We need a coherent policy tailored to specific regions and needs that will look at the complexities of online learning.

In Kerala, a 14-year-old girl set herself ablaze in June because she could not attend online classes since she didn’t have a smartphone. Kerala is one of the few states that offers classes on TV, but the set at home had stopped working a long time ago. In West Bengal, a 16-year-old girl hanged herself after her brother accidentally damaged the smartphone they shared.

A second-year scholarship student in Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, the daughter of a mechanic and a tailor, returned to Telangana following the closure of the college hostel. In her dying note, she said she did not want to financially burden her parents and asked that the scholarship money due to her should be paid to them.

Some fledgling efforts have been launched. Alumni of colleges and schools have stepped up to raise funds for devices for students in need. St. Stephen’s alumni have raised ₹200,000 so far. That’s a tiny drop in Delhi University, where 42% of students say they lack devices, connectivity or finances for data packs. What about rural India where only 15% of households have internet? Such a gaping gap needs institutional aid or corporate social responsibility funding. In a Delhi slum, a schoolgirl I had interviewed told me that she and her sister shared a single smartphone between them and took turns to attend classes. Half classes were better than no classes, she figured. If classes have gone online due to the pandemic, you have to ask who is benefitting from them. Unless every student can access this learning, you are only serving to exacerbate existing socio-economic and gender gaps.

Anurag Behar, CEO, Azim Premji Foundation, advocates community-based classes for school children: Get the teachers to go to the mohallas where the children live; collect five to 15 of them, whoever lives in that mohalla and is anyway interacting closely; and conduct classes in a community space. In places where Covid-19 numbers are rising sharply, keep classes shut. “If it’s a trade-off between the lives of people and six months of academic loss, which will you choose? At the same time why should we keep schools shut where the risk is minimal or can be managed?” he asks. Where numbers are flattening, classes can go on, but the risk can be minimised — schools can run on alternative days for half the students, for instance.

It’s the job of institutions and government to provide infrastructure. We need a coherent policy tailored to specific regions and needs that will look at the complexities of online learning.

Education, particularly the education of girls and the near-universal enrolment in primary and secondary education, has been India’s success story thanks to imaginative schemes such as mid-day meals and free bicycles.

Education during Covid-19 conditions needs a similar ability to reimagine learning coupled with a big dose of empathy, lest we lose the gains made in recent years.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal