Author's Diction~Dr. Vipin Behari Goyal: Marital Rape

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Marital Rape

                            The art of wooing is never rusty

dv,rape,marital rape

Those who are in habit to take their wives as granted are offended when they have to cajole and woo them like an infatuated school boy by flowers, cards, dinners and sweet talk to obtain something which once they thought was rightfully theirs.

Look at the whole Animal Kingdom. Do you find any other animal doing heinous crime of rape except man? Every time, every male has to woo the female to obtain a favor.

Marriage is one of the most important institutions created by society which is eroded day by day as human intellect and wisdom is evolving. We are able to perceive and changed the law accordingly. How far we can go socially and legally to control a relationship  between two grown up individuals which begins and ends on the same bed every night.

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.

Any act that affects two individuals physically, mentally or socially and is nonconsensual is an offense.

Colonial countries were governed by laws enacted by their master countries. They framed different laws for each colony depending upon their backwardness. Unfortunately, those  countries are still unable to revise their laws in parity with advance countries. The politicians are publicly giving statements, "It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context."

Now is the time when human civilization must consider to make uniform laws applicable all over the world, irrespective of geographical boundaries, cultural heritage, religion and dogmas.

Any crime is a crime against humanity and human values are same all over the world.
In the US some states have separate and lesser punishment for marital rapes (though thankfully all states have accepted it as a crime), are also examples of  social hypocrisy. If at all different, marital rape is more severe crime than other rapes since it is also breach of trust between two individuals.

The Indian Law is still struggling to define the extent of assault & parts of anatomy of the female organ, while whole civilization has taken a leap and is unanimous about it.
Literature has repeatedly pointed out that marital rape is done by husbands who suffer from some type of deficiency, inferiority or complex that they want to compensate.
Here is famous paragraph:

“He swung her off her feet into his arms and started up the stairs. Her head was crushed against his chest and she heard the hard hammering of his heart beneath her ears. He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs he went in the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death. He was like death, carrying her away in arms that hurt. She screamed, stifled against him and he stopped suddenly on the landing and, turning her swiftly in his arms, bent over and kissed her with a savagery and a completeness that wiped out everything from her mind but the dark into which she was sinking and the lips on hers. He was shaking, as though he stood in a strong wind, and his lips, traveling from her mouth downward to where the wrapper had fallen from her body, fell on her soft flesh….She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. When she awoke the next morning, he was gone.The man who had carried her up the dark stairs was a stranger of whose existence she had not dreamed. He had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it…. Rhett loved her! At least, he said he loved her and how could she doubt it now?”

— Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind(New York: Scribner, 2011): 871.

Ponder over it, till next time you read about "Ten ways to avoid marital rape." Suggestions are welcome !

Read more at Author's Diction

© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India

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