“Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.....”
- Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals.
History has many evidences that women have been treated as object of lust and sex since ages. This is the reason why Draupadi has to be Panchali and share bed with five husbands born from the same womb. Did anyone bother about her wish? After so many years, situation has not changed at all. Till today, Kashmiri girls are forced to marry extremists at gun points.
The above quote may sound a bit feministic in tone and a section of people just may just feel disturbed to read this story. But never the less, it is a common story to many women, especially in Indian society. Though marriage is said to be the sacred beginning of a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman, for many people it is just a licence to rape.
Laxmi, a 25 years old housewife, got married last year. Her husband is a reputed lawyer, with handsome looks and established career; he has everything that she wanted in her husband. She came to her husband’s place with her heart filled with hopes of happy conjugal life. But she never knew that her ‘suhag raat’ will be a night of nightmare. She was brutally raped by her husband and from that night onwards, it has become common story in her everyday life. In almost one year of her married life, she may count in her hand how many days her husband talked to her properly. But, there would be hardly any day when her husband had not forced her to intercourse. Her heart breaks everybody. She used to cry with pain of hell but she can’t express to anyone as her husband has got licence to play with her body.
Though marital rape is the most common and disgusting form of masochism in Indian society, it is hidden behind the colourful curtain of marriage. Social practices and legal codes in India mutually enforce the denial of women’s sexual freedom and physical integrity.
Various types of marital rapes:
Battering rape: In “battering rapes”, women experience both physical and sexual violence in the relationship and they experience this violence in various ways. Some are battered during the sexual violence, or the rape may follow a physically violent episode where the husband wants to make up and coerces his wife to have sex against her will. The majority of marital rape victims fall under this category.
Force-only rape: In what is called “force-only” rape, husbands use only the amount of force necessary to coerce their wives; battering may not be characteristic of these relationships. The assaults are typically after the woman has refused sexual intercourse.
Obsessive rape: Other women experience what has been labelled “sadistic” or “obsessive” rape; these assaults involve torture and/or “perverse” sexual acts and are often physically violent.
(Ref: Marital Rape — Myth, Reality and Need for Criminalization by Saurabh Mishra & Sarvesh Singh)
However, there is not enough scope for justice in Indian Criminal Justice System in regard of marital rape. But, law is not enough to ensure justice to women in such crimes unless and until our society undergoes a behavioural change. Many women who are victims of marital rape have great difficulty in defining it as such. The traditional idea that it is impossible for a man to rape his wife and that somehow, in taking marriage vows the couples have abdicated any say over their own body and sexuality, basically denied themselves the right to say 'no', is still prevalent amongst wives as much as amongst their husbands. A wife being raped will often question her right to refuse intercourse with her husband, and while she may realise that legally it now constitutes rape, there are many reasons which may prevent her from perceiving it in such a light.
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