When I (Shreya) visit India, I notice every eye is turned towards me. Whether I’m in the mall, or walking on the street, or if I’m in the car, everyone stares at me. It’s most likely because the people around me can tell that I’m not from India. But, staring slowly transforms into catcalling.
I’ve been lucky to never experience catcalling, but unfortunately, many women in South Asia face this on a daily basis. It is extremely disappointing to see how normalized catcalling is when visiting South Asia.
It’s never the woman’s fault for this; she is simply minding her own business, walking to wherever she needs to be. But, we can most definitely blame the environment that the men grew up in. Parents need to learn to teach their children respect, and specifically, minimal respect towards women. Men are rarely taught about controlling their sexual urges; it’s the reason why victim-blaming exists. Therefore, they obviously don’t know what is appropriate to say, and don’t realize that catcalling can eventually lead to being traumatizing for women. The only way we can truly eradicate the word "catcalling" is discipling boys from a young age when they partake in inappropriate behaviors, and to uplift women to them from an age where they can understand.
As mentioned earlier, men are not usually sat down by their parents, and forced to understand the importance of respect. South Asia is doing better, but not doing enough when it comes to education on sexual violence. Most schools don’t have mandatory health education classes like most first-world countries. Those who get into relationships and get married may not understand that they’re experiencing sexual violence because they believe whatever they are going through is "normal." Women and men are not taught the warning signs of abusive relationships, and will continue to be imprisoned to an extremely dangerous person. Additionally, a large part of sexual violence includes human/sex trafficking. This topic is already as taboo as it can get, but in countries of South Asia, it is barely talked about.
Schools truly need to include mandatory classes for all on health education. In a country that has one of the top rape rates in the country, simply having this class available to all in schools can easily help girls protect themselves, and help boys learn the importance of respect; ultimately decreasing the rate. A change like this will not happen quickly, but we must continue to fight to give students access to health education.
Almost 90% of rapes in India in 2014 were committed by people known to the victims such as relatives, neighbours and employers. In its annual report, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) said there were 337,922 reports of violence against women such as rape, molestation, abduction and cruelty by husbands, up 9% in 2013.
The number of rapes in the country also rose by 9% to 33,707 in 2014 - with New Delhi reporting 1,813 rapes, making it the city with the highest number of such cases. Mumbai and Bengaluru recorded 607 and 103 rapes respectively.
The data showed that 86% of rapes had been committed by close family members such as fathers, brothers and uncles, as well as neighbours, employers, co-workers and friends.
The report indicated that 14,102 - 38% - of rape victims were below the age of 18.
Unfortunately these statistics only represent the cases that were reported. There are many more cases of sexual violence in South Asia that go unreported.
In fact, An estimated 99.1% of sexual violence cases are not reported, and in most such instances, the perpetrator is the husband of the victim.
The average Indian woman is 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from her husband than from others, the analysis shows. These victims are afraid of how their family will react when they bring this news to them. They live in fear of being shamed by their family and friends. It all goes back to the “What will other people think?” idea that is sadly too common in the South Asian community.
According to Quartz India, India’s sterilisation campaigns for both men and women have been part of international campaigns intended to control the nation’s population: long after Indian independence, these measures were—and continue to be—rooted in imperialist ideas, and in long-held Western attitudes about Indian manhood and womanhood. Nearly half a century after the aggressive campaigns of the 1970s, women are still dying in sterilisation camps, undergoing procedures that they understand to be the only option, without fully knowing the risks or the alternatives.
We plan on writing a whole post about consent in the future but we wanted to touch on the topic a little bit in this post. Consent is when someone agrees or gives you permission to do something. Feminism India said it best. It is important to look at the parallels between social consent and sexual consent in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy creates and sustains a culture which makes it easier for men to define and maintain their boundaries as individuals than it is for say, women. Hence, the concept of consent is strongly dependent on how much say an individual has in the society.
According to Feminism India, there are two parts to sexual consent; seeking and giving consent. In India, because of how female sexuality is demonised and tabooed, it isn’t such a simple task for women to be active seekers or givers of consent. I talked to some women who are in heterosexual relationships and tried to understand what consent means for them.
The two most common responses were, “I’m too shy to actively consent for it, even when I want to.” and “I don’t think I wanted to but I didn’t want to make him feel bad, so I caved in.”
Both are sheer violations of consent; the first one deals with how sexual autonomy is tagged as too radical for women, taking away their agency and the second one deals with how we’ve made it a norm for women to please men with sexual favours, even if it means going out of their way.
Also another point that applies to the South Asian community when it comes to consent, is that marriage does not imply consent. Because arranged marriage and child marriage are extremely common in South Asian countries this aspect is misinterpreted.
Thanks for reading! Come back next week for our next post in the All Around South Asia series all about Pakistan!