In the past month, Karnataka has been the site of grotesque events, which once again bring the question of sex, love, women’s rights and, above all, women’s consent to being “loved”, to the foreground. First, the series of killings by men of women they “claimed” in love and marriage, ranging from stabbings to hackings in public or within homes, including a grisly beheading. Four of these acts have happened in less than a month. Second, the “claim” of Prajwal Revanna — who enjoyed economic, political and inherited social (caste) power — to the bodies of “hundreds” of women of Holenarasipur in Hassan. (To date, the actual number of women allegedly raped, molested, and harassed by Prajwal is unknown, and only four women have come forward to testify). Third, the trafficking in these acts of violence against women through the making and circulation — we now realise for perpetuity — of close to 3,000 videos, by both the perpetrator and those opposed to him.
What has gripped the imaginative fervour of the BJP and its luxuriant undergrowths and counterparts is the single act which involved the killing of Neha Hiremath in Hubballi by a frustrated “lover”, Fayaz. But what of Meena of Kodagu (a minor who was beheaded by Onkarappa, her frustrated “fiancé”); Anusha who was murdered in a park in Bengaluru, by her ex-partner, Suresh; Ruksana, who was killed and burned by Pradeep; or Anjali who was killed by Girish? From its beginnings in the south to its tentacular spread in the north, the thick smoke screen of “love jihad” — by which Muslim men are alleged to have sexual designs on Hindu women — cloaks the real issue that firmly links not only Fayaz, Onkarappa, Suresh, Pradeep and Girish, but Prajwal too. It is the inconvenient question of how, and in whose favour, the governance of sex/“love” occurs in our society, and the place therein of a woman’s consent, especially her right to say “no”. The speed with which the most important and visible perpetrator, Prajwal, was able to escape from the country make the raucous cries for an “encounter” of Fayaz by some BJP leaders outrageous.
Both the perpetrators of these crimes, and the agitated “saviours” of women’s honour appear to share in common an interest in putting women in their place. Was it not Prajwal’s uncle, H D Kumaraswamy who recently remarked that the Congress’s guarantee of free bus travel for women under the Shakti scheme has shaken the core of the family, as women now freely traverse the state, children in tow? It may well be the case that women have challenged generational and gender authority in claiming the freedom to move.
But with political parties turning the series of events into a question of deteriorating “law and order”, a more important issue remains unaddressed. How have gender relations been shaken, if not reset, to produce a deep-seated fear among many sections of Indian men that too many women have taken control of their lives at a much faster pace than expected? All the events show us that Indian patriarchy thrives on the fertile soil of religion, caste, ethnicity and class. What better strategy than to create a fear which will unite a seriously fractured society, and bring it back to its familiar, hierarchical whole?
December 16, 2012 may have ended the silence of women about sexual violence and harassment in schools, colleges, workplaces, roads: Angry, voluble Indian women increasingly showed no reluctance in taking journalists, slum dwellers, uncles, fathers, judges and teachers to the court, or before sexual harassment committees. Yet today, Karnataka’s women have not (yet) risen in rage against both the series of violent attacks on women’s life, bodily integrity, and their right to say “no”. They have not yet demanded accountability from the police, who ignored those women who repeatedly asked for security from threats of stalking by current or ex-lovers and husbands. Instead, the public sphere has been filled, in this election season, by male protestors, who, depending on which side of the political fence they occupy, claim to protect regional, caste, or family honour.
Popular culture has done its bit to promote violence against women in the name of “love”, a unidirectional flow of feeling from man to woman, whose outcomes — eventual female acquiescence — are always predictable. In one Malayalam film, a police officer (played by Mohanlal) shackled the woman he “loved” to a tree and compelled her to say the three little words. Vishnuvardhan, the Kannada actor, playfully whipped his heroines into submission, and on the rare occasion when the filmic narrative called for Rajinikanth to be slapped by a woman (Chandramukhi, 2005), the hero’s honour was recouped on the streets by his angry fans.
Real women are another matter: They are often “loved” to death by men who, once spurned, wield the axe, knife or acid bottle with deadly skill. And the videos now serve to terrorise the victims further, confine them to their homes, with no easy escape.
Large numbers of women have gained a measure of independence, freedom from domestic tyrannies, and have won some economic and legal liberty. This may generate new contradictions: The Shakti scheme has enabled more women to undertake pilgrimages. At least one report has it that the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, which gave Rs 2,000 per month to women-headed households, has been mobilised by local powers (including mathadishas) to fund temple refurbishment and rathotsavas in rural areas.
The backlash that follows every small act of women’s empowerment makes the task ahead a complex one, requiring healing and attitude correction that a police force or a political party alone cannot achieve. All acts of discriminatory speech and actions in the public sphere should be made difficult, if not impossible. A completely new gender- and caste-just civility must be the goal, which will make both the private and public domains safer and less threatening for women. This may be like asking for a revolution when even reform seems hard to come by.
The writer is a Bengaluru-based historian.
(L-R) Neha Hiremath, who was murdered by her former fiance, and Prajwal Revanna, the JD(S) MP who is accused of assaulting multiple women. (File Photos) 
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