I could begin this piece with a graphic description of the dowry-murder of the woman in Noida, burnt alive in front of her child. When a writer does that, their hope is to scandalise and shock and, in that shock, hope for empathy - look, such a horrible thing has happened, try to imagine this person’s pain.
But I would be missing the point. Because the murder of that woman is mundane and routine. It is not an outlier. Our "society” and “culture” have violence against women as their foundation. The murder of women is restorative, rejuvenating, and constant repair work for this society and culture.
Without it, both would be annihilated. This is not an accusation I am making. Try saying marital rape should be criminalised. After you demolish all the duplicitous objections like “How will we prove” with "Ok, when it is clear and proved, can we then punish the husband for rape?" The true answer comes out. Marriage as an institution will die if this is allowed.
Marriage and even heteronormative relationships are a Scientology-like cult. You join believing the marketing, you discover abuse and torture, but you stay, and even continue to convert others, often believing it’s all for some higher good.
Marriage: A Cult Disguised as Tradition
Every Indian woman knows this. From Gen-Z to Gen whatever, women have figured that the performance of timidity, submissiveness, and subservience are at best seen as the essentials of “love” and “romance”. At worst, they can be life-saving.
In a recent interview, actor Soha Ali Khan says that her mother Sharmila Tagore told her that in a marriage, a woman has to look after a man’s ego, and a man has to look after the woman’s emotions. My nano-second impulse was to feel appalled at men being described as baboons whose fragile ego needs constant reassurance, but the nano-second passed.
There is an obvious question here: what are the consequences if this doesn’t happen? What happens when a woman fails to “look after” a man’s ego?
The statistics cited in this solid report share the consequences. The operation of the machinery is breathtaking in its scale. This particular murder is briefly in the headlines because it happened very close to Delhi, but even then.
The woman was routinely tortured, threatened to not work. Stop short of murder. Would this have made headlines? A woman being beaten up routinely, not with hot knives being stuffed in her mouth, just in “ordinary” ways you know - slapped, punched kicked around. Would it make the news? Let’s say it did. Would it cause scandal? Shock? It will not. Why? The answer tells you everything.
Dowry as Glory
On dowry itself, there is glorification. It’s not dowry, it’s a gift. Gifts are the norm. The amount to be given in the mini envelops is pre-negotiated. The girl’s parents foot the bill of the wedding.
If there is anything that dwarves the scale of this terrorism, it is the cover up. Marry anyone but a Muslim, 99 percent Hindu kids are told in India.
Most people are convinced that the greatest threat to Hindu women is “Love Jihad.” A young Muslim boy is lynched by their Hindu best friends for meeting a Hindu women. Muslims and Dalits trying to consensually legally marry upper caste Hindu women are beaten up, often killed.
But are children being told about these horrors? No. Every single household is an agent of the cover-up which enables the mass violence against, and mass murder of women in India. On Raksha Bandhan every year, men swear to protect women. Protect from whom? Muslim men, of course. They are the enemy. Beti bachaao, sirf doosre dharm, aur doosri jaat ke aadmiyon se. (Save women, but only from men of the other communities or caste)
What happened to that woman in Noida, or in Madhya Pradesh, or indeed all over India, is not an exception. It is a norm. It is pedagogy. It is a reminder: this is what happens when you step out of line.
You already see it on social media. Why did her parents marry her off to such people, some are asking. Some other person commented how it takes two hands to clap.
Sure. But it only takes one hand to slap. One hand to stab, to death.
The cover doesn’t end with pitting Muslims as the enemy. It is a sophisticated operation. Goebbels would die of envy. There is one more enemy. Women. Women file “false” cases. When a woman murders her partner, the space and time it takes in public and journalistic discourse, has far more longevity, despite the fact that all government data, all surveys, all of the evidence actually proves that violence by women is the outlier. It is the exception.
False cases are the exception. Look at the official statistics on dowry data, on dowry deaths, tens of thousands of women being abandoned after marriage, on grounds of inadequate dowry, on rape, on marital rape- and yet, the janta is convinced that women are the malicious actor here.
Masculinity as an Incurable Disease
At the root of all this are three things.
First is something which is often seen as an exaggeration, which is always met with disbelief: Men hate women.
Misogyny is the fancy English word for it. I prefer using hate. At work, in homes, men see women as almost an existential threat. What would happen if women’s minds and bodies became completely autonomous? Who will do the “taking care” of ego.
Men hate women. It needs to be said over and over again. They hate women, and when they see the slightest hint of resistance and autonomy whether in the form of women running businesses, using Instagram, they resort to violence and murder. If they don’t act, they believe they risk being rendered irrelevant.
The second, as I’ve outlined here, is culture. Culture is the murder weapon. A weapon of mass murder. One look at the scale of violence in the name of culture will leave you no doubt. We are, however, repeatedly told that it is the divergence from this culture - live in relationships for example, which are the real evil. This is a clever trick. Hostage is safe with murderer. The attempt to escape is what is endangering her safety.
The third is a plain truth. Heteronormative masculinity is a disease. An incurable disease which needs constant treatment, constant immunisation, social distancing, frequent isolation till fever passes. Yes this writer is a man, and #YesAllMen
Mardaangi ek la-ilaaj bimari hai.
(Masculinity is a disease without a cure)
(The author is a lawyer and research consultant based in Mumbai. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)