This report from TOI saying that over half of young boys and girls believe that beating your wife is ok should have shocked me. But it didn’t. Because I can understand why. I understand completely because I kind of used to think the same thing when I was younger. Try not to judge me. Instead, understand the power that upbringing has on children even when there’s no explicit instruction given by parents. By analyzing myself, there are three reasons for so many people thinking that it’s ok to beat on your less powerful spouse.
1. They grew up in a house where their father used to (frequently or rarely) hit their mother. Look at this from a child’s point of view. To them, everything their parents do is correct. It’s only later that we obtain the discernment to question their actions. So naturally when a child witnesses domestic violence, the de facto position is that it is justified. How could they think otherwise? So even without the parents explicitly telling their children that domestic violence is wrong, the child picks up cues that it’s ok.
2. Males in Indian society are often told things like “Keep the woman under control”. “Wear the pants in the family”. “Don’t let her control you”. “You must be the ones to make the decisions” etc. People around them or their parents instill these values – either explicitly or implicitly. It’s not easy to break away from conditioning. Once you do break away, you slap your forehead and think “Doh!” – how stupid is that? But until these things are questioned, they’re there in your mind without you even knowing about them.
3. We are constantly told that it’s important to hold a marriage together. That “a ship can have only one captain” and that only by one partner asserting dominance and “taking control” can the marriage be stable. It’s like a dictator putting down a rebellion just to keep the kingdom going. What I didn’t understand till I got out of my teens was that marriage is not an end in itself. The freedom, integrity and happiness of the individual is far more important than remaining married. Just like it’s unacceptable for a tyrant to use force on his or her own people to keep the kingdom from falling apart, it’s unacceptable to use force to keep a marriage together at all costs.
Not a very easy post for me to write since it exposes some of my internal background. But I feel that people will find this analysis useful to better understand why people think the way they do and what points to work on to improve the way children and students think about domestic violence.
Those are good points but honestly these three points are also relevant for people who beat up their children.
Valid points…Most abusers have witnessed the same at home…Some try not to repeat the behaviour consciously, some do and some repeat even if they didn’t want to initially…
I just want to add another point…A lot of men think that domestic violence is not a serious issue because it is usually a result of a temporary loss of self control due to anger (hit her, she deserves it)…
In reply to Sraboney
Perhaps even religion should receive its fair share of the blame – removing one of the emotional impediments to hitting another person by saying that god allows it…
In reply to bhagwad
People actually use God as an excuse? Wow! Anyway, since religion is man-made, it is obviously skewed towards men…
True. Also there is this very widespread belief in might being right always–it probably comes from having being repeatedly colonised at different points in history. It is also exacerbated by the fact that the law-enforcing machinery is woefully unequal to the task of proving them wrong.
They’d probably be forced to change their views somewhat if they could see that there are consequences to trampling on the rights of those weaker than you.
Instead what they see is people all around them using power–economic, political, physical–to get their way and getting away with it too, which kind of validates their views.
In Haryana they have a pithy–if a little crude–saying–jiski lathi uski bhains. Small wonder that Haryana fares so terribly on gender-parity indices.
In reply to scribblehappy
Yes – strong law enforcement is definitely a factor. But the police force isn’t an alien organization. It’s made up of people who are drawn from the regular populace itself. So once again, it all comes down to how people everywhere feel about it.
Kudos for writing this and for breaking away from the conditioning. Not many people stop to think about the absurdity of traditionally passed on “values.”
Most of the men think that it’s their birth right to slap a woman.Moreover,they have a feeling that they slapped the woman because she deserved it in that particular situation
Valid points, and very, very relevant. The problem is that the same people do not seem to be influenced by people who do not commit violence on their near and dear ones, and brush away kind and gentle treatment airily.
And yes, oh yes, religion plays a very important part in this. While one may not actually say God allows me to do this, a lot of this bullshit is perpetrated by religious beliefs. Since every religion has this women inferior – man superior attitude, it is no wonder it’s given rise to domestic violence.
In reply to Fem
I think the behavior of parents specifically would have a disproportionate impact on the various perceptions of the child/young adult.
Indian men and women hardly ever hear domestic violence (just like sexual assaults) being seriously criticized. I have heard another story of how when a woman was being beaten, and somebody tried to intervene, she (even while being punched and kicked), didn’t forget her loyalty to her Pati Parmeshwar – and she firmly asked the person trying to restrain her husband to get lost, because who did he think was going to beat her if not her own husband.
In reply to Indian Homemaker
Yeah – that’s what makes this problem even more tangled!
wonder where times of india gets it samples from.
Just remembered you, and thought would visit your blog. :)
Surprisingly, the moment I had read of the facebook notification of IHM’s blog post based on the ToI news, I had an intuition that you too might blog about it. :D
Anyway, perhaps as a personality ‘flaw’, I felt the survey methodology (perhaps) was flawed or its reporting was not proper (as expected). I felt few additional questions should have been part of the survey:
1. Is it alright for wife to beat the husband?
2. Is it alright for wife to beat husband in retaliation?
3. Is it alright for husband to beat wife in retaliation (if it is the wife who would have beaten the husband first)?
4. Is it alright, in general, for people to hit/beat each other to vent out their frustration without being meted out any kind of punishment/reprimand in return?
5. What do you mean by “alright”? [Hahaha! :D No! But, I’m not joking; this is a serious question. If one says it is “alright” to hit, does one say that the one hitting should be lauded? Should be reprimanded? Should be isolated from the society/family? The incident of hitting should be ignored as if nothing happened? As you could easilty appreciate, anything less than filing a police complaint is ‘not’ exactly alright at a sociological level, hence I found ‘alright’ a very vague and misguiding term. I understand, though, that survey questions have to be kept simple].
The top 4 questions obviously are meant to filter out the ‘noise’ from the data – the generalized accepance of violence as against specifically against women (wives, included).
I am surprised, but yet, at the same time truly appreciate the honesty with which you conceded to have harbored a sentiment akin to “it is alright to hit women/wife”, and furthermore appreciate the process of self-interrogation and the empathy/compassion you possess that led you to firmly conclude that hitting women (or anyone, for that matter) is ‘not alright’.
My childhood experience is such that I used to hit my sister who is seven years younger than me. I used to try to use my restraint but used to fail many times. Many times it is she who would hit me first (or, rather on most times). A whole lot of my antagonism was bred by my belief that parents cared for her more (which they in fact even admitted to :D but that would be cuz of her being younger) and used to love her more. But, I used to find it ‘alright’ to hit her not because she was a girl (female), but she was younger and less physically powerful [I find it pertinent that two commentators above have mentioned the issue of hitting children and ‘jiski laathi uski bhains’]. I think it was once when I was 15-16 years old when I my sister had woken me up despite my warning her against doing that (when I was preparing for medical entrance exams and had been sleeping less than 3-4 hours every day for almost a month and used to be very much in need of afternoon nap to be able to focus on studies), I had hit her very hard. Though what I’ve parenthesized might sound like a ‘justification’, it is not. She had cried, and I think I had felt very guilty because she just could not have hit me that hard, and at that point I had decided to never, ever hit my sister again.
One another thing from my childhood I remember prominently is, guys being reprimanded even at the thought of hitting a girl – “ladki/aurat pe haath uthaayega? Sharam nahin aati?” [“You’ll raise your hand against girl/woman? Do you not feel any shame?” – spoken in Gujarati as well as Hindi]. Although, I was quite against hitting *anyone* (including animals), I found this kind of isolation of females as ‘unhittable’ reeking of extreme contempt rather than respect/empathy. I hope you get the point.
As I have mentioned in my comments over your blog previously, I feel the problem in the society (across all the nations) is with inherent worship of the ‘powerful’. That ‘power’ could take any form – brawn, brain, money, resourcefulness, beauty, etc. The ‘worship’ is blind, as in those in possession of this kind of powers are given privilleg not given to the less powerful; they are perceived to have a greater right to live and all the kinds of resources present in the society and nature. In that very process, the ill-treatment of the less powerful is also perceived as acceptable and natural.
In reply to Ketan
Thanks for stopping by Ketan – long time no see.
The word “alright” refers to how acceptable it is in one’s mind. There are two levels of course – the first is things that are legal/illegal. But in our regular lives we don’t match our actions to the criminal or civil penalties before we do something. There’s no punishment for being rude to someone for no reason for example, yet most of us don’t do it. It’s just not “acceptable” to us. We don’t feel ok doing it.
So in the context of this post, “alright” to me means “acceptable”.
Here’s the thing. Physical strength is something which people are more or less born with. Since it doesn’t indicate superiority in any way and more importantly, doesn’t have anything to do with the issue of most arguments, using it against a person weaker than yourself is a way of saying “The issue doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong in this argument here. What matters is that I’m stronger!”
It’s as ridiculous as me proclaiming in the middle of an argument “I have brown eyes!” Utterly irrelevant and it kind of means that you’ve run out of arguments.
To try and answer your points:
1. No, it’s not ok for the wife to beat the husband. Why would it be?
2. It’s ok to retaliate in self defense. Though not everyone can.
3. Same as 2
4. No not alright. Since this depends on physical strength which is irrelevant to who’s right/wrong and unfairly favors the stronger person.
Bhagwad,
Thanks! :)
Of course, I get that it is totally ridiculous to use any of the personal traits (including physical strength) to win an argument or to get one’s preference/choice have a way rather than someone else’s. And that is why it is so abominable to do that, but on the other hand, this phenomenon is quite frequent in the society as well.
I was also not meaning to say that one would actually proclaim that they are ‘better’ at certain trait (e.g., brown eyes) and that is why they should have their way, but the dynamics in the society are such that that gets meekly accepted without even people realizing it. But I get that is absolutely ridiculous, and I agree with you. :)
I was not meaning to ask **you** if it is alright to do what’s asked in the four questions, just that they should have been part of the survey for the purpose I mentioned. I’d forgottent to mention in my previous comment that I have no doubt that violence against women by men (as is against children, younger sibling, students [by teachers]) is lot more acceptable in the society than violence by women against men, but those questions were necessary to make out general acceptability of violence as against specific acceptability of violence against women. It is possible that those who feel beating wife is alright, might also be more accepting of beating of children/younger siblings/students for chastizing them. Not that if that were demonstrated, the scale of the issue would be any different, but to try to remedy the situation, attitude not just towards the female gender, but also towards physical violence would have to be tried to be altered.
In reply to Ketan
Indeed – especially in India, our attitude towards violence can be summed up as “might makes right”. This is why Prashanth Bhushan was beaten up for exercising his freedom of speech, Salman Rushdie was scared into not attending the Jaipur festifal and Bal Thackaray can get away with so much shit.
I sometimes wonder if a group of people can be “immature” as such instead of them being mature or immature on their own. Perhaps it’s just the average or mean level of maturity of the whole. In which case, India is SO damn immature. Of course, there are other countries worse than us, but I don’t think we should be comparing ourselves to them anyway!
I really appreciated the US response when a pastor there tried burning the quran. The government disagreed with his action, but didn’t try and stop it since it’s legal to burn your own property. No threats of violence. People protested of course, but without violence.
That is something we need to import into India.
In reply to bhagwad
I haven’t been to any other country, but I do tend to believe that the more industrialized nations doing better on human development indices indeed are lot more egalitarian, and perhaps by extension, they also tend to respect personal space much more – not interfering in each others’ life.
I remember I’ve mentioned this before, but I think this indiscriminate worship of the mighty/’superior’ is because of resource crunch in India (and less developed nations). It is obvious that when resources are less, to legitimately get what one needs/desires becomes all the more difficult, and use of illegitimate means to snatch that from others gains greater acceptability cuz in desperate situations it is the ends that would matter and not the means. Then, when use of violence/illegitiamte means (including bribing, nepotism, etc.) gain currency, they just remain socially acceptable for a few generations before the society as a whole starts realizing that they can do away with these. These are just my ideas, and of course, I could be wrong cuz there must exist exceptions to what I am suggesting. But then also most problems are multifactorial. :)
I have also noticed that Indians are obsessed with the idea of hierarchies in the family, in the schools, in the workplace, and even in small groups get formed amongst adolescents, e.g. Yes, a chain of command needs to exist, but it existence need not spill over in other areas of life. E.g., if one does not argue very assertively with one’s boss in the office, does not mean that the boss should get the right to sit in a crowded public transport bus than the subordinate, but again this phenomenon is very common. I guess you must get what I mean. I’ve veered a bit from the original issue, but I do think that this kind of strong stratification of people in the society and its units (like the family) makes people lose sight of the human behind the stratum [E.g., for a young boy polishing shoes at the railway station, every passing well-dressed person is an unreachable ‘saahib’ totally forgetting that the said saahib might also have his own sets of problems, whereas, the saahib would not be able to see the human behin the shoe shining boy, and would be nothing more than a machine. It should not be surprising that both the boy and the saahib would be insensitive towards each other. I remember your pointing out that it is important to not seggregate boys and girls while they would be growing up, and I entirely agree with you].
I tried to do a bit of my ‘research’, and reached this document: http://www.unicef.es/sites/www.unicef.es/files/Progress_for_Children.pdf The relevant portion is on pages 31 and 32. There is of course another primary source of info that I did not have the patience to search for. The examples in the question given as ‘reasons’ for justifying of violence are quite unsettling in that they represent very, very low threshold of intolerance. But, on the other hand, I could not get data on countries like Sri Nepal, which also find a mention in the news piece. It is possible they might have consulted the original primary source of the data, but that does not seem to be the one named in the article.
In reply to Ketan
I think a lot of change can come from just disseminating relevant information. For example, women are often mistreated because they gave birth to a girl in India. But if people were told that it’s the chromosome from the man that determines gender, that entire section of violence should disappear completely.
Humans can live collectively or individually. The former is when most of this kind of violence tends to occur. The former also comes more naturally to humans, whereas the latter seems to be something that needs to be worked towards. The collective/individual mindset is also self propagating. Children pick up the attitudes of people around them, so once it reaches a critical mass, hopefully the number of individualists will continue to grow.
Unfortunately I have a suspicion that the collectivist people tend to have more children in the long run :(
In reply to bhagwad
While writing the above comment when I was adjudging the Western societies as ‘better’ than the Indian in their egalitarianism, I was somehow reminded being told by almost all Indians who have been to the US, that it feels very “lonely” out there. I was curious if your experience is the same, and if it could be because of the collectivist v/s individualist mindset? I know this question is totally irrelevant to the topic, but I was just curious.
Also, is it a case that American society ends up breeding more vioent people than the Indian one? Case in point being adolescents having access to firearms indiscriminately killing people **despite** on the whole law-enforcing machinery being lot more effective there than in India, or is it a case that such much-publicized cases are merely isolated, not truly representative of the American society and do not pose a major problem on the whole?
I agree that information dissemination of the kind you mentioned would help. More important (of course), it is to question as to why a boy child is ‘better’ than the girl child? Till women end up doing more and more work that fetches ‘real’ money as against doing household work, their contribution in running the family is going to get overlooked and they would not be seen as of ‘use’ to the family. Further important is to inculcate a questioning attitude right from the childhood. I feel introspective people are less likely to resort to violence and subjugation as they would recognize the fallacies of the social bracketing. Also, curious people are more likely to find interesting things in their surroundings to observe and ponder about rather than go about hitting people. :D
I think we’ve also discussed the idea of collectivism in the past. I strongly feel that ‘groupism’ of any kind breeds violence – something I had noted in a blog post called ‘Communalism’, and used to associate that only with religion/ethnic based union of people [atheism being my pet theme back then]. But I realized I was wrong when a reader had pointed out that even fans of rival football clubs indulge in gruesome violence. I must admit my convictions about genesis of collectivism had been quite shaken. Would you consider these kind of football fans as ‘collectivists’ or ‘individualists’ given how they’re perhaps very heterogeneous in their ideologies in other areas of life, and could also actually be having quite a solitary existence otherwise? Now, you might better realize why I’d brought up the issue of ‘loneliness’ in my comment in the beginning. In other words, I’m simply meaning to ask what had you meant by ‘collectivists’ and ‘individualists’? :)
In reply to Ketan
For a lot of people moving to a new country the “loneliness” comes from suddenly being thrown into a new culture where there are no familiar landmarks, where people socialize differently etc. In reality, if you have the right tools, if feel the US is far less lonely. One example is there are very good and reliable websites where you can easily meet up with those who share your interests, date etc. Those services are not well developed in India.
In short, a south Indian might feel at a loss in Delhi as much they would feel in the US!
Reports of shootings in the US are of course, well publicized. No doubt the fact that guns are easily available is a factor as well. But that doesn’t reflect on people’s capacity of violence per se. If guns were as readily obtainable in India, I dare say it would be worse here.
I think collectivism breeds violence for the following reasons:
1. Being in a group means your own morals can be set aside for a while. For example, people in a riot would be far more willing to beat up bystanders than if they were alone. Being in a group gives you protection, anonymity, and the behavior of those around you can validate stuff you do.
2. Being in a group means the scope for taking offense is far greater. Any “insult” to any member of the group becomes an insult to you directly. So if you view other people’s insults as yours, you would be taking offense all the time at something or the other :D
3. Being in a group is almost always a defensive move. All groups have an enemy. A “them” as opposed to “us”. Your football team had a rival. Communism had capitalism. Blacks have whites. Muslims have Hindus and vice versa. A group without an enemy loses its cohesive unity. There’s no “cause”. No one to fight against and the raison d’etre of the group vanishes!
Given that groups are always formed with an “opposition” in mind, it follow that there is a greater propensity to violence in a “collectivist” mindset.
In other words, only insecure people who feel under threat, go and form groups.
Wow – that’s quite a cool insight :D