Marital Rape Ruling
Highlights India’s Problem With Consent
A Delhi court’s ruling that forced marital intercourse is
not considered rape spotlights India’s many blind spots when it comes to
consent.
The most common form of rape in India bears little
resemblance to the Delhi gang-rape of 2012, which has become a symbol of
violence against the country’s women. The 23-year-old student, who was brutally
attacked in a bus by six men wielding iron rods, and who later died as a result
of horrific internal injuries, was attacked by strangers outside of the home.
Most rapes, however, are perpetrated by acquiantances—often husbands—and take
place within the confines of the home.
Despite this, in March Indian parliamentarians rejected
proposals to criminalize marital rape. The proposals were initially made by the
Verma Committee, a three-member panel appointed in the aftermath of the Delhi
gang-rape to propose stronger laws to punish heinous acts of sexual violence. In
a report delivered to the parliament in March, a panel of lawmakers said the
proposed marital rape law “has the potential of destroying the institution of
marriage,” adding that “if marital rape is brought under the law, the entire
family system will be under great stress.” The protection granted to sexually
violent husbands was further solidified this month when a Delhi court ruled
that intercourse between a husband and wife “even if forcible, is not rape.”
This gives a carte-blanche to one of India’s largest
category of rapists. Two-thirds of married Indian women surveyed by the United
Nations Population Fund claimed to have been forced into sex by their husbands.
One in five Indian men surveyed by the International Center for Research on
Women admitted to forcing their wives into sex.
Worryingly, marital rape is just one of India’s many legal
blind-spots, and contradictions, when it comes to consent.
There is, however, a troubling exception to the age of
consent: child marriage.
Last year, as part of a series of anti-rape laws that were
passed after the Delhi gang-rape, India raised the age of consent from 16 to
18. By doing so, it criminalized consenting sex between teenagers in a country
where an increasing number of young people are choosing to have sex before 18.
One Delhi judge expressed concern that this would "open the floodgates for
the prosecution of boys for offences of rape on the basis of complaints by
girls' parents [even if] the girl was a consenting party.”
There is, however, a troubling exception to the age of
consent: child marriage. Consent is automatically assumed in this case,
provided that the wife is 15 years or older. This leaves child brides, already
vulnerable, open to sanctioned marital rape. Meanwhile, innocent, unmarried
teenage boys who do seek consent can be penalized irregardless. “All these
so-called traditional-value people have no problem when children are forced
into marriage by their parents,” Nandita Rao, an attorney, told the Los Angeles Times
last year. “But they want to criminalize consensual sex. It’s hypocritical.”
It is not only the consent given by teenagers that falls on
deaf ears. The will of adult gay men is similarly ignored. In January, consenting sex between gay men was
re-criminalized (it was temporarily allowed), following a
controversial Supreme Court ruling that reinstated a colonial era law. Trying
to take advantage of the legal loopholes surrounding consent and rape, one
judge recently used the anti-sodomy bill—used to target homosexuals—to penalize
a husband who had raped his wife anally. Had he only raped her
vaginally, however, he would have walked scot-free.
The use of the controversial sodomy law to secure justice
for victims of marital rape has caused concern among some. As one commentator
put it in FirstPost.com: “the problem of heterosexual
marital rape in our culture cannot be dealt with using an archaic law, used
mainly against homosexuals.”
In the strange world of consent in India, perhaps the
greatest legal oddity is found in cases where women consented to sex on the
promise of marriage. If the women were duped, that consent can retroactively be
denied. Just a few days ago, a man in Nagpur was arrested
“under rape charges” after he “cheated a 30-year-old woman by having physical
relationship with her on assurance of marriage.”
In a similar case last year, the Delhi High Court ruled that
“If the consent was obtained on a false assurance or promise of marriage, the consent
cannot be considered to be full and free and it would be a case of rape.”
What all these examples reveal is that, all too often, the
Indian courts are willing to rob consent when it was clearly given and endow it
when it was woefully absent. Until the notion of consent is updated, innocents
will be charged of rape and the guilty will not receive the punishment they
deserve.
Comment:
Having gone through the article, however, it is found that the first part of the article that dealt with the Child marriage and increasing the age limit of the Indian minors to give consent meaning fully for sex is simply a shocking case.
This clearly exposes the shortsightedness of the of the law makers and definitely allows to pint fingers towards the law markers to the fact to have created the way to enjoy young girls to sleep with them and enjoy sex.
Otherwise, medical science vehemently suggests early marriage or sex at the law suggested age is very detrimental to health of the girls at that age. How the hell these mother fucker Indian law makers legislate and enacted such law to take effect in the largest rapist country INDIA.
Indian female folks are lucky that GOD has intervened and ousted the Congress government which was in the process of make the country fit for Italian ex-Prime Minister Berclusconi to come to Indian and fuck Indiansl of all age without any hindrance from police, doctors, Justice department, and administrative Department. Because Berlusconi is the country brother of the chairperson of the Congress Party.
With regard to the second part of the article dealing with forcible rape with the wife needs both women law makers, female organization’s members, some affected female members and members from those research organizations that did research on the issue as mentioned above in the article, to deliberate thoroughly on the subject before formulating and legislate the law to discuss in the parliament.
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