When push comes to shove

[MAITRI]

Pamela Philipose, WFS

MUFFLED CRIES Pamela Philipose argues that domestic violence is not a
private and personal issue between individuals, but a matter of
national concern.


India is a signatory to various international laws, which expressly
deem domestic violence a crime. Five years ago, the country had
enacted a national law — the Protection of Women Against Domestic
Violence Act 2005 (PWDVA) — that seeks to protect the rights of women
who face abuse within the home.

But you wouldn’t know any of this if you went by the immediate
response of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to news that one of
its senior diplomats based in the United Kingdom was alleged to have
committed domestic violence. As more details of the story emerged, and
the woman who faced the attack went public, the MEA tried to recover
some lost ground by recalling the envoy to India a full week after the
incident.

The MEA said it was “carefully looking into the incident”, and went on
to submit that these are “sensitive and personal issues” that pertain
to “individuals”. It also said: “It is now expected that this matter
will be resolved between husband and wife to their mutual
satisfaction.”

This brings to mind another sordid incident that happened a decade
ago, involving another Indian diplomat based in Paris. At the centre
of that story was Lalita Oraon, an Indian domestic worker, who was
working for the diplomat’s family and who fled from the home of her
employer alleging gross mistreatment, an accusation that seemed to be
borne out by the wounds on her body.

When the French media had reported this case in September 1999, a
furious Indian embassy refused to even admit to the possibility that
anything was wrong, roundly and immediately stating — without the
benefit of an independent investigation — that the allegations were
“false and strongly denied”.

The case was sought to be seen through the lens of national honour. In
an official release at that point it also made the following
accusation: “The Embassy requests the French media to cease its
campaign of defamation against the diplomat from this Embassy based on
mendacious statements by individuals and organisations who are
themselves responsible for Ms Oraon’s actual plight.” How the French
individuals and organisations that came to Oraon’s aid were
responsible for her plight was never, of course, explained.

The MEA’s reaction had, at that point, attracted a great deal of
opprobrium from various quarters. One of the concerns raised then was
that in defending its diplomat to the hilt, the Indian Embassy was
neglecting its responsibility to Oraon, who was also after all an
Indian citizen and entitled to its concern and protection.

This argument holds true in the London case as well. Chennai-based
commentator, Swarna Rajagopalan, has asked in her blog, “Should
diplomatic immunity extend to those who perpetrate violence against
the vulnerable? Should domestic violence be treated as a private and
lesser issue than the sanctity of diplomatic status? No one should be
pronounced guilty until proven as such, but how can that happen in
this case, where the accused cannot be investigated or tried?”

Domestic violence has a long, if largely unrecorded history —
unrecorded because it was never perceived as the crime since it
occurred within the time-honoured sanctity of the home, and was
invariably perpetrated by those wielding power within it. It was not
until the last quarter of the 20th century that women’s and human
rights activists succeeded in putting domestic violence on the table.
They underlined that such crime was not just a matter between
“individuals” and pointed to the psychological and sociological links
between such abuse and unequal power relations between men and women.
They demanded that the crime be brought out into the open through
society's active intervention, not secreted away as a “personal”
matter.

Today, there is a growing realisation in India, too, that this is the
only way to regard such behaviour. The PWDVA has defined domestic
violence in the broadest possible terms and which includes physical
abuse, sexual abuse, verbal, emotional abuse, as well as economic
abuse, and the Delhi High Court recognised the importance of this when
it commented in a 2010 verdict that often “laws are passed to ensure
normative changes in the society”.

By any reckoning, punishing the perpetrators of domestic violence,
once they are proved to have committed it, is a matter of national
interest.



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