Stop tolerating marital rape

Union minister for women and child development Smriti Irani may be forced to argue that not all Indian marriages are violent ones and that not every man is a rapist but Indian society and the governments here will not be able to postpone forever a discussion on criminalising marital rape. It is not just that several advanced democracies have made rape in marriage illegal but our legal system also asks for reconciling our own laws.

As CPI member Binoy Viswam pointed out in the Rajya Sabha, there is a contradiction between two laws that criminalise assault on women. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code which defines rape as a sexual act without the woman’s consent, however, exempts sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age. It does not talk of consent of the woman and in a way legalises marital rape. At the same time, Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, lists sexual abuse as an act that can be punished. Further, the act defines sexual abuse as any conduct of a sexual nature that abuses, humiliates, degrades or otherwise violates the dignity of woman.

The two laws together uphold the right of the woman to live with dignity and to give consent for a sexual act. In other words, they treat man and woman equal and refuse marriage as a pretext for the man to lower her dignity. Given that rape has historically been an act perpetrated by men to humiliate women and violate their dignity and that special laws take precedence over generic laws, the government has every reason and legal backing to treat sexual abuse, including rape, in marriage as a crime.

That said, legal dictums alone cannot change societal behaviour; and a move to criminalise marital rape would face stiff opposition from the pathologically patriarchal Indian society. It must, however, at least take up the topic for discussion with women’s rights in focus instead of taking recourse to meaningless generalisations.