Domestic violence should be of national interest

[MAITRI]

http://nagalandpost.com/ShowStory.aspx?npoststoryiden=UzEwMzY3MDk%3D-3KWxPaGNNdA%3D

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 UK was alleged to have committed
domestic violence.
As more details of the story emerged, and the woman who faced the
attack went public, it was ultimately the MEA that was left appearing
grossly insensitive to women and completely out of sync with the
times. It tried to recover some lost ground by recalling the envoy to
India a full week after the incident.
Revisiting the MEA’s first response to the event is useful because it
reveals its instinctively patriarchal mindset. It professed to be
“carefully looking into the incident”, and went on to submit that
these are “sensitive and personal issues” that pertain to
“individuals”. It also offered a sanguine presumption: “It is now
expected that this matter will be resolved between husband and wife to
their mutual satisfaction.”
The manner in which this development played out is evidence, if such
evidence is needed, that the MEA has not learnt very much from a
sordid incident that dates back to 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 his family and who fled from the home of
her employer alleging gross mistreatment, an accusation that seemed to
be borne out by the ulcers 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 an amazing 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 organizations that came to Oraon’s aid were responsible for her
plight was never, of course, explained.
The MEA’s overblown 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. While the
response from the MEA in the latest instance was a little more
measured when compared to the Parisian imbroglio of 1999, the Ministry
still seemed to be speaking more for the diplomat who had allegedly
attacked his wife, than for his aggrieved wife. In fact, by attempting
to brush the episode aside as a “private” issue, it was betraying the
right to justice of the allegedly abused woman.
The other issue, of course, that emerges in this development is the
misuse of diplomatic immunity. In this case, according to the details
provided by his wife, the diplomat kept citing his diplomatic immunity
to intimidate his wife. This amounts to making a mockery of the
immunity from prosecution granted under the Vienna Convention of
1961.
Chennai-based commentator, Swarna Rajagopalan, rightly 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”.
National interest, which the MEA purports to champion, must come to be
defined in terms of commitment to the highest standards of law and
justice. By any reckoning, punishing the perpetrators of domestic
violence, once they are proved to have committed it, is a matter of
national interest.
It was only after the outrage in India over the London incident broke
out, that the MEA stated that it does not condone domestic violence.
Hindsight is a marvellous educator and here’s hoping some important
corrections in official attitudes will follow.
Pamela Philipose
(Women’s Feature Service)