By Gertrude Lamare
It is no secret that violence against women, sexual or otherwise, in the state of Meghalaya is alarmingly rampant. Most of us remember this fact only when we see newspaper reports of rape and murder cases and then we go back to sipping our comforting cups of tea in our homes and work spaces. We simply rationalize our understanding of the phenomenon seeing it as a symptom of the “bad and sinful” present as opposed to the “pure and peaceful” past. It is really this warped idea that the past is representative of a more just society (in terms of gender, class, etc) that numbs us from imagining, demanding and working towards a better reality for everyone. We need to accept that our respective communities in Meghalaya have always had undemocratic and oppressive elements in structures of the public and the private; that some sections of society were always victimized by the others who were in more powerful positions. Of course we take pride in the Khasi and Garo matrilineal system but this does not and never has ensured complete equality and freedom for women. Entitlements and privileges are all well and good but how could we conceptualize gender justice in this context when women do not have political power (exclusion from Dorbars) and when men and women are still expected to abide by various gender roles? But let me not digress, let me get back to what I had the intention of writing.
I want to talk about the recent incident of rape and murder of a nineteen year old girl from Upper Shillong. It is great that many have condemned it, including the current Chairperson of the Meghalaya State Women’s Commission. It is amazing that a mother of one of the accused has turned him in to the police. However, I cannot help but worry that this case like many others, would just slip away deep into our collective memory and be forgotten; that we, as a society would look at this matter as something to be resolved only by the courts, when the accused are finally given the hand of justice and put into jail after a fair trial. That would be a cathartic moment for all of us, won’t it? But is it enough? The issue is actually not about this crime in isolation but about how a crime of this sort has emerged in our context.
I don’t want to be didactic and prescribe concrete reasons but I do want to urge you to think- think about how women, girls, cross-dressers, transgenders and homosexuals are understood and looked at in our society; think about why people who in their own ways reject rigid gender norms (in terms of behaviour, appearance and action) trigger annoyance, anger, and disgust in many; think about why there is a huge percentage of domestic violence in a matrilineal society and one which the literacy and employment rate between men and women is almost at par; think about why for many people who are reading this, their mothers labour at home and the workplace. Do we really understand as a society that patriarchy is very central to the structure of our ways of thinking and being? Gender oppression and discrimination is part of our everyday lives when we expect our sisters to serve us food, when we think that it is our girlfriends and wives’ duty to have sex with us whenever we want to, when we tell our sons to not do “womanly things”, when we expect sexual favours from women at work and when we tell our daughters to achieve everything in the world, keeping in mind that they should marry whether or not they want to.
Rape and let alone murder of the kind I mentioned are extreme expressions of all of these things. They are reflections of our ordinary ideas that women who speak are “oversmart”, women who dress the way they want to are inviting trouble, men who do not exert power and show affection are weak, boys who like doing housework are exploited etc. Let me break it down for you: Rape is an act of violence fuelled by a situation of power where the rapist at that moment monopolizes on power while the victim is denied it completely, where the rapist does not care about the consent of the person involved. In most cases, where men are the rapists, this potential for violence is one legitimized by the way we conceive manhood, which drives us to expect out of men a display of strength, to the point of violence at times and our assumption and acceptance that men are animals whose sole interest is sex. Rape does not exist in a vacuum. It is a manifestation of our biased thoughts about and provisions for men and women, which ultimately translates into action. And need I remind you that we live in a country where rape means a different thing in the bedrooms of husbands and wives, where sexual violence there, cannot be identified as crime? Do we dare ask married women whether all the sex that they have has been consensual or forced? Rape is thus an extension of society’ willingness to see women as voiceless and submissive and men as symbolic of command and strength.
I was particularly uncomfortable to see that apart from condemning the rape and murder of the victim in the case mentioned before, the Chairperson of the Meghalaya State Women’s Commission “advised” parents and guardians to be more vigilant of their daughters’ movements and activities. What does this imply? This kind of advice only further perpetuates the idea that women are fit to be locked up and monitored. Instead of tackling the issue at the core, which is the patriarchal logic that governs our institutions, families and even churches, the Chairperson’s idea of removing gender violence is by limiting women’s freedom and independence.
At this juncture, we as a society should dare to think beyond incidents and be conscious of the fact that violence and discrimination are part and parcel of the flesh of our society; they exist because society allows them to, because women are at the end of the day are understood as objects of sex and reproduction, because men, even in a matrilineal community, are accepted as the custodians of power in politics, homes and churches. Gender sensitization (of the feminist kind) should be launched at the local level, in families and educational institutions and this should be an important concern of the State Women’s Commission, not the increase of surveillance on women and girls. The legal instrument that the Commission provides is crucial but this is not about a particular case; it is about the larger structural discrepancies that despite the small difference in the male-female ratio in Meghalaya, women are still peripheralized and undermined in both public and private domains. Treat the problem where it originates and sexual violence does stem from a patriarchal mindset existing in both men and women. The discourse of rape and violence should be glanced through our own context which legitimises the hierarchy between men and women and other sexual minorities.
(The author is Research Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)