What it Means to be a Woman in India
The summer of 1984 was a year that Time Magazine described as “one of the darkest years in modern Indian history.” Amid a military assault on the Sikh’s Golden Temple ordered by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, 18-year-old American woman Linda Rosa was living in Southern India volunteering at an orphanage. She was far from the violence and ensuing riots, which included the gang raping of many Sikh women by enraged Hindu men, but the ripples were felt throughout the nation. More than thirty years later, the Indian government remains immovable in its stance that “accountability comes in the form of silence” for victims of the mass violence, according to the Time article. This position is echoed throughout Indian society — namely in the area of sexual violence and justice for women.
“Definitely the women were socially beneath men in Indian culture,” Rosa explained, drawing from her three-month experience in the country. She recalled visiting households where the women were not allowed to address the men. During meals, the women did not sit and eat with the guests, but rather stood around the perimeter of the room waiting to serve at the beck and call of the guests. Mathew Ratnam, who emigrated from India to the United States 11 years ago, explained that gender issues in India are much more severe than simply that of male dominance. Sexual assault and, more frequently, stalking of women are common occurrences in India, according to Ratnam.
Ranked the world’s fourth most dangerous country for women by a 2012 Thomas Reuters Foundation expert poll, India is home to discrimination and mistreatment of girls beginning even before they leave the comfort of their mothers’ wombs. According to a 2011 study by The Lancet, between 300,000 and 600,000 female babies are illegally aborted in India each year — simply because they are not boys. Viewed as a “financial liability,” according to a 2013 CNN article, Indian women are often given in marriage before their 18th birthdays, along with a pricey dowry — a custom long-outlawed but still commonly practiced. Once married, the Indian woman’s oppression frequently continues with domestic violence and abuse.
“Those were all burns caused by her husband — in some cases even beating her with logs which were burning… She didn’t have a choice or a way out.”
Ratnam recalled one such female victim who showed up to church every Sunday with burns and bruises all over her body. Everyone knew the wounds were caused by her husband, but according to Ratnam, Indian culture does not have a process of reporting such crimes. In fact, until a string of infamous sexual assaults culminating in a gang rape which flooded international media in 2012, these actions weren’t even considered crimes.
“She is dark in complexion, but she will have these white patches all over,” he said, explaining that the abuse continued even up until the time he moved to America. The woman’s husband is part of a majority that constitutes more than half of Indian adolescent males who, according to a 2012 UNICEF study, think beating their wives is justifiable under certain circumstances. Ratnam continued describing that “those were all burns caused by her husband — in some cases even beating her with logs which were burning.”
One of the first things Ratnam noticed after his move was the drastic difference between the American and Indian judicial systems. “We are tremendously blessed to be part of a legal system that’s so clean,” he said, speaking for all Americans. “Though there’s pockets of corruption, overall, a common person can still report something and get a response that’s palatable or that’s just in nature.” He explained that the American system is completely opposite to the Indian system, in which law enforcement seeks out bribes, and the lower class is often brushed to the side. “She didn’t have a choice or a way out,” Ratnman said of the woman in his church.
On Dec. 16, 2012, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh, a female physiotherapy intern, was assaulted with a metal rod and raped by six men while traveling home on a private bus. She and her male companion, who were tricked into boarding the off-duty bus, were stripped naked after an hour of torture and thrown off the bus. The man survived, but Singh succumbed to her injuries and died in a hospital several days later.
“That incident kind of triggered the Indian judicial system to take a second look at how women are treated in public places,” explained Ratnam, referring to the 2013 Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, which implemented six fast-track courts for the hearing of rape cases. “There are some judicial measures being taken because of that, but I don’t think it’s very easy to change how you act when you’ve been in that kind of a setting for too long. It will eventually change — hopefully.”
Ratnam’s brother, who pastors a 700-member church in India, has attempted to be part of that hopeful change. He implemented a program which trains battered women to be self-sustaining by teaching lucrative artisanal skills, empowering them to leave their abusive husbands. Rosa and Ratnam are part of a team traveling to India next summer to help support this program.
“When I was there, they still had arranged marriages and things like that,” Rosa explained. “Women are kind of stuck in these marriages even if it’s abusive. So what they’re trying to do is give opportunity to women to be able to support themselves if they needed to.”
Rosa explained that the seamstresses she frequented during her stay in India were extremely talented, but they were all men. “Most of the merchants were men,” she continued. “The women who were alone on the streets were mostly beggars — very poor.” Along with gaining a wealth of cultural awareness during her time in the country, Rosa also learned how to sew on an “old-fashioned” sewing machine — a skill which Pastor Ratnam aims to teach many oppressed Indian women in his community.
“[In] India as a nation, there are a lot of opportunities for women right now as compared to two generations back, but what has not happened is society itself coming up and supporting opportunities for women,” Ratnam said, explaining that new laws take time to trickle down and change society’s ideologies. “When you look at what blessings you have in America, we should be totally thankful.”
His sentiments resonated with Rosa as well, who similarly expressed gratitude for her rights in America. “You start to see how much we take for granted,” she said of her return to the United States after her visit to India. “It kind of can make you mad when you look at people around — which I was among them — that are just ungrateful and unthankful. It changes you. I don’t like to hear things like ‘it’s unfair.’ The only thing that’s unfair is that we have too much.”
