Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week.
‘Honour’ killings, where the families of daughters who exercise agency in their choice of marriage partners and so incur their family’s wrath for bringing disgrace, are India’s enduring shame (AFP)
THE BIG STORY
She was making a cup of tea for her mother and brother who had come to visit; her husband was ill and lying in an adjoining room. “Come home and visit,” the mother said, apparently trying to make up for the months of silence since June when the daughter had eloped and got married. Then, the 17-year-old brother crept up behind his pregnant sister and chopped off her head with a sickle.
The mother and son are reported to have taken the head, posed for a selfie, and paraded it outside for the neighbors to see.
Even by the depraved standards of so-called honor killings, this one on December 5 was particularly heinous.
Although the man belonged to the same caste, the family is said to have been angry that it was a ‘love’ marriage.
Enduring shame:
‘Honour’ killings, where the families of daughters who exercise agency in their choice of marriage partners and so incur their family’s wrath for bringing disgrace, are India’s enduring shame.
Often it’s not even marriage but just the fact of an affair. In 2011, a woman with the help of her mother killed her 17-year-old daughter for having an affair with a man from a lower caste.
This year on December 3, police in Fatehabad, Haryana interrupted the cremation of a young Rajput woman who had married a man from the Bishnoi community. After their marriage the previous year, the couple had been living in Chandigarh but returned to the village after the woman’s family assured them that they had accepted the marriage.
A month earlier in November, in Ratibad near Bhopal, a 55-year-old man not only strangled his daughter for marrying a man from another caste against his wishes but raped her before killing her. The woman’s 25-year-old brother kept watch, according to the police complaint.
Even during the lockdown, there were reports of an ‘honour’ killing in Tamil Nadu when 24-year-old M. Sudhakar returned to his village and was murdered by his wife’s father and another relative. Sudhakar had got married six months ago but was forcibly separated from his wife by the local panchayat.
The numbers:
A 2018 survey of 160,000 households found that 93% of Indians had had marriages arranged by their parents. Among young couples in their 20s, 90% said they had arranged marriages. Another survey in 2014 found 90% of urban Indians had married within their caste.
Data on ‘honour’ killings are hard to come by. In 2018, the National Crime Record Bureau reported just one instance.
From 2016 to 2020, the Tamil Nadu state crime records bureau claimed there were four such killings in the state, said Vincent Kathir of Evidence, a Tamil Nadu-based NGO. But, he added, his own field investigations found evidence of 195 such killings in the state, 55 of these due to caste. Nearly 70% of the victims were women, he said.
‘Honour’ killings fall under the broader legal sections on murder and homicide but are notoriously hard to try. Many killings are passed off as suicides, very often there is the involvement of the larger community or panchayat, and eye-witnesses including family members are reluctant to testify in court.
“There is a political economy attached to the issue,” Jagmati Sangwan of the All India Democratic Women’s Association said in a discussion on December 10 organized by the NGO Prajnya. “It is crucial for social structures to control women’s sexuality. If a woman exercises her choice in marriage, then the seed of egalitarian society is being sown,” she said. This, she added, is the crux of ‘honour’ killings: If a daughter starts by choosing her partner, then tomorrow she could ask for inheritance or land rights as well.
Elusive justice:
In 2015, 18-year-old Kausalya, a var, an intermediate caste with political clout, married 20-year-old Udumalai Shankar, a Dalit. In March 2016, while at a crowded market, the couple was attacked with knives by killers hired by Kausalya’s father. Shankar was hacked to death but Kausalya survived and testified against both parents and family leading to their conviction by a trial court that awarded the death sentence to the father and five others. (Read Dhrubo Jyoti’s story of Kausalya’s courage here). In June 2020, the Madras High Court acquitted both parents and commuted the death sentence to life for the others.
Shankar was hacked to death but Kausalya survived and testified against both parents and family leading to their conviction by a trial court that awarded the death sentence to the father and five others (HT PHOTO)
In March 2018, the Supreme Court ordered state governments to identify areas where ‘honour’ killings had taken place and take steps to stop these crimes. “Class honour, howsoever perceived, cannot smother the choice of an individual which he or she is entitled to enjoy under the compassionate Constitution,” noted Dipak Misra, then the chief justice of India.
A 2012 Law Commission report recommended bringing these barbaric killings under a separate purview of the law. Three years later, the Lok Sabha introduced the Freedom of Matrimonial Alliances Bill that criminalized the unlawful assembly of people for the purposes of condemning a marriage and criminal intimidation of a couple. The bill lapsed when no member of Parliament brought it up.
In 2019, Rajasthan became the first state to pass a bill that mandated life imprisonment or even capital punishment for murdering couples in the name of family honour.
NEWSMAKER
Sruthy Sithara became the first Indian to win the Miss Trans Global title held virtually on December 1. Chosen from 16 candidates, Sruthy, who was identified as male at birth, said she had “wanted to be a beauty queen since childhood.” After transitioning as female, “I could realize my dream but it took determination and courage.” Sruthy is a professional freelance model who lives in Kerala.
Sruthy is a professional freelance model who lives in Kerala. (Sruthy Sithara)
GENDER TRACKER
100,000 women left in the workforce since 2016.
Only 2% rejoined it.
— Study by management consultancy Zinnov that surveyed 40 multinationals and Indian organizations on their ‘returnship’ programmes. Read more here.
QUOTE/UNQUOTE
I SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A JUDGE ON THAT BENCH.
Rajya Sabha MP and former chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi was accused by a junior staff member of sexual harassment in 2019. He admitted that he should not have headed the bench that heard the case that eventually exonerated him.
Rajya Sabha MP and former chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi was accused by a junior staff member of sexual harassment in 2019. He admitted that he should not have headed the bench that heard the case that eventually exonerated him.
Read his interview with Utkarsh Anand here.
WATCH
“Women journalists are at the epicenter of risk,” journalist Maria Ressa said while accepting her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10, “The pandemic of misogyny and hatred needs to be tackled now.”
Co-founder of news website Rappler, Ressa also attacked social media as “toxic sludge” and targeted tech companies for allowing a “virus of lies to infect each of us.”
The 58-year-old shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Dmitry Muratov, editor of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Watch the video of her acceptance speech here.
STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Teachers as predators: On November 18, 17 class 10 schoolgirls at a private school in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh were asked to spend the night in the school premises on the pretext of taking two back-to-back practical exams. There they were served khichdi, apparently laced with sedatives. Then they were sexually assaulted.
The incident might never have come to light – the girls come from marginalized backgrounds – but for the head of Khamera village where they live. On December 4, he sent a message to the SSP Abhishek Yadav who then deputed police officers to verify the charges. A station house officer has been transferred for failing to initiate action after two sets of parents complained and a case was registered against two school owners. Both have been arrested. More here.
In an unrelated development, the entire staff of a government school in Rajasthan’s Alwar district has been booked under POCSO after three minor girls made accusations of gang rape. A special investigation team will probe the matter, though reports suggest that the case appears to be an act of ‘revenge’ against the teachers by a former colleague who was arrested last year on charges of molesting a minor, reports Sachin Saini.
The entire staff of a government school in Rajasthan’s Alwar district has been booked under POCSO after three minor girls made accusations of gang rape (Shutterstock)
TMC’s largesse in Goa: After Arvind Kejriwal’s promise of ₹1,000 to every woman if the Aam Aadmi Party is voted to power in Punjab, TMC’s Mamata Banerjee has promised a stipend of ₹5,000 to every woman in Goa if voted to power in the assembly elections scheduled for February in Goa. Read more here.
Less than equal: The World Inequality Report 2022 finds that women in India received just 18.3% of the labor income in 2020. This is barely half the share of women in Brazil (38.5%) and China (33.4%) and even the global average of 34.7%. Read Abhishek Jha’s analysis here.
FIELD NOTES:
Women’s income and violence:
Are married women who have a paid income less or more likely to face domestic violence? The answer might surprise you. A paper by Sowmya Dhanaraj and Vidya Mahambare published in Feminist Economics finds that women who earn outside the house are more likely to be exposed to intimate partner violence at home as well as be subject to controlling behavior by husbands.
Doing paid work does not lower domestic violence. Male backlash results in employed women facing significantly higher levels of intimate partner violence. Moreover, women in paid work tend to justify violence against them by partners more than those not in paid work – a phenomenon the authors call the ‘female guilt channel’.
Intimate partner violence is higher among women who earn more than their husbands (or those whose husbands are unemployed).
There is a caveat. Women and men with higher educational attainment are more likely to overcome gendered notions of work. But the depressing news from this paper is that raising women’s economic opportunities alone may not lead to better outcomes for them inside the house.
Read the paper’s abstract here.
AROUND THE WORLD
Gender-equal cabinet: Incoming German chancellor Olaf Scholz has kept his election promise to appoint as many women as possible to his government and Germany now has its first gender-equal cabinet with women heading crucial ministries from foreign affairs to home. “Women and men account for half the population each, so women should also get half the power,” Scholz said.
“Women and men account for half the population each, so women should also get half the power,” Scholz said. (REUTERS)
BBC’s 100 Women: Half of BBC’s annual list of inspiring and influential women of 2021 have been drawn from Afghanistan, some of whom appear under pseudonyms and without photos for their safety. The list is an acknowledgment of how the resurgence of the Taliban in August 2021 changed the lives of millions of Afghans. Girls have been banned from secondary education, the ministry of Women’s Affairs has been disbanded and many women have been told not to return to work. The list, which includes poets, social activists, actresses, and entrepreneurs, “recognizes the scope of their bravery and their achievements as they are forced to reset their lives.”
The list is an acknowledgment of how the resurgence of the Taliban in August 2021 changed the lives of millions of Afghans (AFP)
See the complete list here.
Marriage equality now in 31 countries: Lawmakers in Chile have approved a bill that recognizes same-sex marriage. The law extends full parental rights to same-sex couples and extends spousal benefits and adoption rights to them too.
That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com.
Namita Bhandare writes and reports on gender
The views expressed are personal
Marika Gabriel contributed to the making of this page.