From Shraddha, Tunisha to Nikki – discussion on gender relations missing

Nitya Choubey  |  MP  |  7 Mar 2023 |  New Delhi: The country recently witnessed yet another horrific murder of a 22-year-old female, Nikki Yadav, by her live-in partner, Sahil Gahlot. The fridge murder case is one in the chain of crimes against women that have come to the surface in urban spaces, which are said to be synonymous with modernity and freedom. 

According to the NCRB report, crime against women has seen a rise of 15.3 per cent in 2021. The majority of cases fall under the category of ‘Cruelty by husbands or his relatives’. Incidents of women succumbing to brutal murders by their partners or husbands have widened the debate over crime against women. 

However, often the religious identity of the victim or the perpetrator is, takes the central stage. In the Tunisha Sharma suicide case, after the photograph of Tunisha wearing a Hijab hit circulation, the Maharashtra BJP leader Girish Mahajan claimed the incident to be of love jihad. 

Post weeks of silence, Falaq Khan, sister of the accused Sheezan Khan, spoke to the media and said, “Our religion is our personal thing and we don’t have the right to force it on anyone. Nor do we flaunt our religion in public. This is an issue of mental health… from where did the religion angle come?” 

In another suicide case by a married female from Dharavi in January this year, a Muslim man was arrested after the family of the victim claimed it to be a case of ‘love jihad’. 

Dr Rajat Mitra, a clinical psychologist with expertise in gender-based violence said, “Violence against women has less to do with religion and more to do with the ‘explosive personality disorder’ that men are known to suffer. It is partly biological but partly based on how men see women in the society, not as equals.” 

“Often, the violence men perpetrate is sexually very arousing for them. Beating or abusing women provides men with some kind of high. At some critical points in their lives, social environment and biology make them vulnerable to acts of violence to get some ‘high’,”he adds. 

While campaigning for Gujarat Assembly Elections in November 2022, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that the need to elect a strong leader for the country is to curb the rise of monsters like Aftab who become the perpetrators of ‘love jihad’. Political slogans raised in the name of religion or caste have come to affect discussions around women’s safety and individuality. 

This also happens as the political sphere is thickly populated by males. Kavita Krishnan, a women’s rights activist and politician spoke on the matter, “It’s not that this issue should not be politicised, for politics is the way women assert their rights as citizens. 

But, violence inside a relationship or marriage becomes sidelined because it is largely considered a private affair, you know, what the government can do about it, yeh toh hota he hai..” 

She adds further, “Political voices are powerful because these are the voices with people’s support. What is happening is that violence against women is only being looked at with the aim to target a particular community. So there is no good faith attempt to resolve what is wrong with our society. 

Even all our time and energy as feminist politicians go into countering this and not into having an actual debate around women’s safety.” The infamous NCRB Report 2021 only accounts for the number of cases registered, which is significantly less than the actual number of cases occurring. 

Often, police stations become sights of negotiation, with women enjoying very little bargaining power. Women submit to the conditions provided to them in a toxic relationship majorly because of the lack of financial security and independent identity in the community out of the ‘marriage’. 

Often the fear of not being accepted back in the family once the couple has eloped also makes a woman put more effort to survive in strained relations. 

Neha Sharma, an Advocate working with Delhi Commission for Women says, “Majority of cases presented in front of the court pertain to ‘promise of marriage’, where the male perpetrator achieves an intimate relationship with the woman with a future promise to marry her. Women often fight the entire case just to get married to the same man who did wrong to her.” “Men find it excessively offensive if a woman decides to move on during the course of the case. 

Circulation of obscene videos to blackmail, threatening the newborn child, acid attacks, or even murders happen because the man felt dejected,” she told. 

Dr Latika Vashisth, a faculty of Law, Governance and Citizenship at Dr BR Ambedkar University spoke on the feminist understanding of crime against women by their husbands or partners. 

“Violence against women cannot be reduced to men exerting power on women. At the heart of what looks like an act of power (violence) by a man over a woman is the anxiety of the man for not being able to assert his masculine identity. The conversation cannot only be about the rights of women, but rather about gender roles in the society.” 

With more heinous crimes against women continuously surfacing, the conversation cannot shrink to the bizarreness in the occurrence of the crime or the religious, and social identity of the actors involved. 

Discussions on redefining gender roles can be a way to look forward. 

https://www.millenniumpost.in/nation/from-shraddha-tunisha-to-nikki-discussion-on-gender-relations-missing-510986