Why The Issue Of Marital Rape Is So Serious And Sensitive
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
13 December
2023
"Biwi Apne Shauhar Ki Shahwat-Parasti Ka
Saamaan Nahin Hai Ke Us Ka Khasam Use Kumhaar Ki Mitti Ki Maanind Raunde."
(Wife is not someone whom her man will knead
like a potter's earth for his lasciviousness)
Late Fahmida Riaz, Pakistan Poet, Writer And Human
Rights Activist
"Wife's relegation to a mere sex object is
a universal phenomenon prevalent in all societies and communities all over the
world."
Asma Jahangir In Conversation With Germaine
Greer, Melbourne, 1999
"Mard Ne Aurat Ke Vajood Ko Rasoi Se
Bistar Tak Mahdood Kar Ke Rakh Diya...."
(Man limited a woman's role from kitchen to
bed).
A Female Character In A Story Written By Ismat
Chughtai
'Rape has many a hue and shade
One also finds it on a marital bed'
Anon
Observing
that marital rape cannot be considered an offence if the wife is above 18 years
of age, the Allahabad high court acquitted a person accused of committing an
"unnatural offence" against his wife. "Protection of a person
from marital rape continues in cases where his wife is of 18 years of age or more
than that," the court said, adding that marital rape has not been
criminalised in the country as yet.
It sounds
oxymoronic because within the purview of marriage, even the thought of rape
doesn't arise because it's taken for granted that one's wife is an eternal sex
slave. If the English philosopher and Nobel laureate in literature Bertrand
Russell termed marriage as a 'legalised prostitution', he wasn't wide off the
mark or exaggerating.
Marital
rape is an issue that has never been given that much importance and weightage.
But that doesn't mean that it never existed in the human psyche.
Vatsyayan,
the high priest of sex, wrote in Kamsutra: 'Ritumati Bharya Chaiv
Kadapi Na Maithunaam Asti. Iti Sambhogam Dhrashnaam Parihante' (Husband
should never try to have sex with his menstruating wife. And if he does, it's
tantamount to ravaging her). The guru of sex further says in the chapter 'Praak-Kreeda,'
VII, that 'There're days when a woman (read wife) doesn't feel like indulging
in love-making and having intercourse. Husband must refrain from having sex
with her because such sex is 'forceful union'.' In other words or modern
parlance, it's rape.
A few years
ago, a newspaper from Punjab reported that a bride left her husband in a huff
when he tried to have unnatural sex with her on the very first night of
conjugal intimacy. She luckily got divorce because she had the gumption to
leave a rapist husband, but there're many wives who have to suffer silently and
kow-tow to their husbands' never ending desires for sex at any time and
occasion.
IPC
empowers women to file a case against husbands, who rape them or demand
unnatural sex, e.g. sodomy, bondage or blind sex, from them. But hardly any
woman files a case. It's time women protested and dragged such Satyr husbands
to courts and taught them a lesson. Here, one social aspect does arise.
In India,
women are taught to be submissive to their husbands and it's hammered into
their consciousness that whatever husbands do cannot be questioned. He's not
just a 'Pati' (husband) but also 'Parmeshwar' (god). Wife's not
supposed to question her husband's unreasonable demands for sex. She's required
to be at his beck and call all the time.
The problem
is that this servile mentality is perpetuated by women themselves. Long ago,
when Anil Dharker was the editor of Debonair, there was an account of an
educated Gujarati girl, who wrote that when she told her mother that her
husband wanted sex every night and she was unwilling to satisfy him at the drop
of a hat, her mother told her with a sense of resignation and helplessness that
it was 'Patni-Dharm' (duty of wife) because she too had to resign to her
fate because her husband, the girl's father, would have sex with her whenever
he wanted.
Calcutta
University's ' Dastidar survey,' 1998 categorically states that many men egg
their wives on to have menage-a'trois (troilism or threesome), group sex and
orgies. Isn't this debauchery a kind of marital rape because contrary to the
general tenor, many a time, women aren't willing to experiment with other men
other than their husbands? But they've to do it because it's what their kinky
husbands want. And the very same husbands later resent when wives start taking
interest in other partner/s! It's a veritable Catch-22 situation for women,
who've to tolerate their husbands' sexual vagaries and whims.
Mind you,
these things often go unnoticed. As I've stated in the beginning, the sexual
psyche of ancient India wasn't that skewed or lopsided as we find it today.
Sage Yagyavalkaya sheltered the queen of Avantipur, when she left the palace
because of her 'rapist husband'.
Pre-Buddhist
Ashok's first wife Nishidha left him because the emperor Ashok was an erotomaniac
(refer to Dr Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's 'Sanskriti Ke Chaar Adhyay').
The late
Professor and scholar of ancient History Dr Muhammad Amin conceded in one of
his lectures that Muslim and English presence on the sub-continent for over a
millennium, changed the sexual perceptions and undermined women of the
sub-continent.
In Islam,
wife's a sex slave and she has to obey in bed what her husband orders. In other
words, husband is the master in bedroom.
A Pakistani
Muslim woman wrote a few years ago, "Muslim wives are seen as sex objects
to the extent that if their husbands want sex when the woman is busy looking
after her child or cooking a meal for him, she has to drop everything and make
herself available.
There’re so
many scholars saying how Islam came to liberate women and humanize them and
give them high status, but not in a martial relationship. And if the wife
refuses because her child is crying or the food could be burnt to ashes, the
angels will curse her and the husband can threaten to divorce and marry another
woman if he is not satisfied at that very moment."
With this
attitude came Victorian morality, that demanded that women ought not to have a
say in bed. The Indian collective psyche was destroyed by the Muslims and
English (I mean, English race). The erstwhile courageous women, who resisted
their husbands' (violent) amorous advances became meek and timid and began to
'take their husbands' blows lying down' (literally, metaphorically and
euphemistically).
So, the
immediate need is criminalization of marital rape under the Indian Penal Code.
Mere declaration of a conduct as an offence is not enough. The real objective
of criminalizing marital rape can only be achieved if the society challenges
the prevailing myth that rape by spouse is not significant. Something more is
required to be done for sensitizing the judiciary and police. Marital rape has
to be regarded as sexual assault and Indian society cannot continue to tread on
women in the guise of promoting social cohesion and protecting the sanctity of
marriage (Courtesy, Criminalization of Marital Rape in India by Sumati
Dhingra).
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/marital-rape-sensitive/d/131305