5 min readJan 5, 2024 11:04 PM IST
First published on: Jan 5, 2024 at 07:07 AM IST
From a High Court judge to columnists and opposition parties, hearts have been haemorrhaging for the woman from Vantamuri in Belagavi district, Karnataka, who was stripped, almost strangulated, and tied to a pole by about 13 people from the village who were enraged that her son had eloped with a girl from the same area. Most commentators have reached for the epic reference to Draupadi’s vastraharan, to shame men — whether from the village itself, the police, or even ruling party legislators — into taking responsibility. Why this savage “throwback” in the “progressive” state of Karnataka, the High Court judge asked indignantly, while castigating, variously, the collective chauvinism of local men, and the police for not behaving like Krishnas in the midst of Duryodhanas and Dusshasanas. He called for colonial-era punishments to be imposed on the entire village, except for one mysterious saviour, Jehangir.
Perhaps the good judge’s indignation will be quickly sobered if he learns that Karnataka has “progressed” from being the fourth state in the Indian Union, behind Odisha, UP, and Assam, in cases involving the stripping of women, to claim third place in 2022. The state accounts for 1,328 of 9,101 cases filed under section 354B in 2022, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The Vantamuri incident was no exception. It is an ominous sign of how the bodies of women continue to be the bearers of family and community honour. They are the preferred site of family and community humiliation, even as young people are making defiant choices in choosing life partners.
We had a reminder of how women who chose to attend college wearing hijab or burkha could be denied a right to education. At that time, the aggressors, goaded by a supremacist government then in power, seamlessly adopted the language of “secular uniformity” to “strip” Muslim women. The state and high court too adopted a language hostile to women’s rights to education in the name of “secular uniformity”. It took the exceptional judgment of Supreme Court judge Sudhanshu Dhulia to bring the question squarely back to a woman’s right to education. Meanwhile, in that time of righteous anger from the empowered majority, and defensive self-assertions by the minority, no metaphorical Draupadi was available to bring the community patriarchs of all shades to shame. Were it not for feminist and civil rights activists, the woman student would have stood alone. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s recent announcement of a rollback of the hijab ban has quietly receded under electoral compulsions.
In contrast to what the HC judge has said, might economic “progress” itself have been the root cause of increasing attacks on women (and female foetuses) in Karnataka? The violence at Vantamuri came on the heels of a shocking revelation about the scale of sex-selection — leading to female foeticide — in the (relatively prosperous) districts of Mandya, Hassan, Mysore and in border regions such as Bagalkot and Belagavi. Long undetected, it had led to well over 900 abortions in just three years. Preliminary reports seem to suggest that as agricultural work for women shrinks, particularly in cash crop areas, their worth has declined. The sex ratio in some districts has declined so sharply that an increasing number of men are without eligible brides. A Haryana-like search for brides from “elsewhere” has begun in Hassan and Mandya.
Who would have suspected that an economic powerhouse like Karnataka conceals some of the most egregious forms of discrimination against women? The long-recognised advantages of matrilaterality in much of southern India, which allowed women to be less estranged from their natal families after marriage, seem to be no bulwark against relentless economic pressures.
The crisis of sex ratios, and violence against women generally also occurs amid renewed reports that farmer’s suicides are on the uptick. Scholars have noted the rising tensions posed by rapidly marketised agricultural production, (and increased risk-taking by vulnerable farmers) on the one hand, and a social structure that is strained to retain — indeed create — a family form that is appropriate to these transformations.
The new forms of violence against women are also a backlash against an increasing number of young women and men who are making difficult choices, straining against family, caste or religious ties that bind. They yearn for a new tomorrow. The Chief Minister could well roll back the hijab ban in support of young women’s education, but only the people of Karnataka can take a truly visionary future forward. For now, there are few signs of such systematic reimagining.
The writer is a Bengaluru-based historian
The violence at Vantamuri came on the heels of a shocking revelation about the scale of sex-selection – leading to female foeticide – in the (relatively prosperous) districts of Mandya, Hassan, Mysore and in border regions such as Bagalkot and Belagavi. 
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