As an Indian, it is time that you know about marital rape. Feminists are now trying hard to remove the exception in IPC 375 criminalizing marital rape in India. On the face of it, common Indians will not find anything wrong in that unless they know that marital rape is already a crime under IPC 498a, DV Act and IPC 354. But when this already exists as a criminal offense why are feminists trying to bring it under the purview of IPC 375 and remove the exception therein to criminalize the same. Let’s understand the feminist perspective first by watching the NDTV debate “We The People” –

Barkha Dutt trying to be the feminist messiah here brings two victims of marital rape on the show with covered faces and trying to show a horrific picture of rape that happens in marital relation. She paints a grim image of a love marriage where the bride claims to have undergone horrific torture for one year before filling cases or separating herself. The horror that she has described on the show with tears cannot be ignored by any human. But, the point is all of that are still not proved in any court of law and we were not told the other side of the story, because if it was so horrible then why she didn’t tell those things to her parents in detail, or why she had to cope with the torture for one long year?

What the alleged victim described is definitely a crime if true but since the cases are under trial we can’t decide whether their account is true because the channel did not provide the other side of the stories. This is the same way one or two dowry death cases were projected in 1983 to bring IPC 498A. In 2004-5 some domestic violence cases were projected to bring DV Act that gave enormous benefits to wives based on a few examples that could have been made up. Today, every year thousands of families are thrown out of their own house based on false DV complaints. Even adulterous wives are given interim maintenance and residence rights in the properties they had no contribution to.

At the start of the above debate, we see Barkha giving some statistics to show the domestic violence situation. What she conveniently ignored was the fact that in all such studies UN and all global bodies used gender biased definition of domestic violence that pre-concluded that a husband is guilty of domestic violence and the wife is not. If you are moved by the statement that even husbands agreed that they had committed domestic violence to their wives when wives didn’t perceive violence you need to know the same questions were not asked the wives in those surveys. The definition of domestic violence never asked the husbands if they were abused by their wives. It is the same in all surveys including the latest UNFPA survey. Barkha while conducting the discussion had conveniently ignored that.

Read – UNFPA survey of domestic violence

However, we see that in this discussion Barkha tried to shut everyone else to put across her points. For example, when BJP MP advocate Mr. Aman Sinha was speaking Barkha tried to shut him up for speaking what half knowledge she had about the law. That clearly showed that she wanted to show the one-sided picture to her audience. Aman however clearly stated the sections under which the acts described in Barkha’s show are a criminal offence under existing sections. Also, the unnatural sex described by one of the victims is a crime under IPC 377.

One more point to note in the debate is that when the man (Manuj Gupta) who won a false marital rape allegation by his wife was not given a chance to speak and was abruptly cut off while the women victims’ allegation was shown at length. We notice that the audience poll was taken immediately after one-sided account of the women victims whose cases were still running and not closed.

In this whole discussion, Barkha tried to show as if all women at some point in their marital life undergoes this kind of rape. Her statement almost 90% of women suffered domestic violence actually tried to corroborate that. By saying that she, in fact, tried to show almost all Indian men as an abuser. So her statement that it is not men vs women is only fake.

If you have carefully noted that Barkha spoke about law commission’s recommendation in 2000 and Verma Committee recommendation in 2013 was not yet considered by the govt. However, she again didn’t mention how many such recommendations of law commission, Supreme Court and special committees like Justice Mallinath Committee about 498a misuse was ignored so far. She actually showed the truth that the feminists can go to any extent to create a false sense of urgency.

Feminists have always been projecting some cases in a grim way to get their demand fulfilled. I remember, in 2014 in INK conference in Mumbai where the SatyaMev Jayate team showed one such grim video showing a mother who was forced to kill her baby girl’s fetus until their lies were caught by here –

Read – SatyaMev Jayate lies exposed in INK Conference

One more point to note is that. Barkha in order to show that SC has rejected the individual plea and wanted a PIL for marital rape as great injustice had said that when there is no law to report a crime how can anyone realize the real magnitude of the issue. In fact, this is what is men’s rights groups have been demanding for ages for giving marital rape of men a criminal offence under IPC.

The argument of men’s rights groups have been when there is no section to report crimes against men and when those crimes are not even reported how can feminists talk only about same crimes against women and demand that is for equality in-spite of already having legal recourse for that? This is the point that was brought by Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj on the show which was edited by the NDTV team. This way one more time Barkha and NDTV has exposed themselves as male hating channel.

Question is, why was NDTV afraid to show that an unwilling man too can be forced for sex by his wife and that happens in marriages too. So if marital rape needs to be a crime in a separate section then it needs to be considered in a gender-neutral manner. In reply to this point (that was not aired by the channel) raised by Deepika someone read out the definition of rape as per the rape law (IPC 375). However, what she didn’t realize that the same definition can be gender neutral as the same crime is happening against men too and are not reported..

Read – Can we have a gender-neutral rape law in India?

By not showing what women like Deepika think about this issue the channel that claims to be a feminist channel has shown they don’t like women who express an opinion contrary to that of the channel’s. Good enough example to show that they are in fact hypocrites who has some hidden agenda behind promoting marital rape all of a sudden.

To understand why the sudden hype around marital rape we need to go back to the debate and what Barkha stresses so much in the discussion. She pointed out to the fact that parliamentary committee headed by Venkaiah Naidu didn’t think India was ready to accept marital rape as a criminal provision in-spite of Verma Committee recommendation.

Now if you remember that Verma Committee was formed after the Delhi Gang rape in Dec 2012 and it prepared a massive report of 637 pages within one month time to recommend ways to tackle crime against women. The issue is after Delhi rape the media that showed our streets as unsafe for women and showed how they were harassed on streets to bring cruel laws against men and termed some cities as unsafe, is now showing a different picture that our homes are in fact not safe and husbands are the rapists and abusers.  This clearly shows how media like NDTV creates a biased view of their yellow journalism. Barkha who conveniently showed our city streets as unsafe for women is now showing the husbands in bedrooms as rapists.

Point is why is this focus on marital rape today. After Arnesh Kumar judgement by SC, police arrests in matrimonial disputes have been restricted. Now simply on 498a accusation innocent husbands and their family members can’t be arrested. This is set to restrict the feminist business of legal terrorism to a large extent. This is the reason marital rape needed to be a separate section so that such terrorism can continue. Feminists are not willing to use the existing provisions because rape includes severe shame to the accused’ family the way once dowry accusation used to be. Unless this severe shame is brought back in matrimonial disputes no family will shell out bigger amounts to these terrorists. Today it is dowry case that is a norm in every divorce, tomorrow it will be rape. Now imagine anyone falsely accused by these laws, how difficult his life will be.

We also see some men talking about 3000 years of patriarchy but they couldn’t response properly to the fact why make suicide have always been much higher to that of women’s? When we speak about patriarchy we see completely opposite things happening in a show hosted by a woman where the men’s side of the story is not shown with importance and certain portions were also edited. This is what the real myth about patriarchy is.

Someone in the audience also commented that we marry the one we love but it is important to live the one we marry. Very touching statement no doubt, but what he didn’t realize is even then he as a man can be advised of rape always, he as a man can be accused of abuse always no matter how much he loved his wife.

This is the feeling conveyed in the discussion as well when Barkha in her show tried to show the plight of one girl as the plight of every other Indian woman. When Deepika Bhardwaj showed that wife’s denial of sex can create havoc in husband’s mind Barkha stressed that husband can go for divorce but she completely ignored that in India husbands are not given divorce easily. In all such cases, the husband still needs to pay alimony to his wife and proving cruelty might take years for him and he may lose his precious youth. Also, the same logic is applicable to the wife who might have faced sexual overdose from the husband. If a husband needs to be happy with divorce after being raped (remember sex without consent is rape) or for having no sex for months then why shouldn’t the wife? Feminists, however, still wants the same to have one more specific criminal section only for women ignoring the male victims.

One argument given by feminists in all such cases is how cases of such male abuse do you see to even have a section for men? Reiterating Barkha my reply goes to them when there is no section to report such crimes against men then how do you conclude that men do NOT need any section to report violence?

As an Indian, it is time for you to understand this criminal mindset of the feminists like Barkha or her channel. The male hating attitude will continue unless we have a ministry for men to address men’s issues and create balance in the judiciary that punishes criminal women. This is the only way to ensure justice for men and save innocents from criminal feminists. This will also ensure justice for real women victims as the cases will be judged based on their merits and NOT on the gender of the applicant.

Barkha in this debate showed that 75% of housewives in India are raped at some point in their marital life. I feel pity for all those husbands who have so far supported feminists. Today the same feminists make them rapists. Probably they don’t deserve any better treatment to the feminists.

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Feminist advocacy of marital rape- a hollow promise of Women empowerment