About a year ago Kolkata erupted with protests almost every day for weeks on end. On August 9 2024 a young doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was found dead in the seminar room of her own hospital. She been raped and murdered,
The brutality of the crime and the allegations of cover up shocked people.. But what really shook people was that a young woman was not even safe in her place of work.
But then where are women truly safe?
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
Swayam is a feminist organization founded in 1995. For 30 years it’s worked on gender based violence, dealing with courts, government, police. Anuradha Kapoor is the founder of Swayam.
AK1: Mostly when we talk about domestic violence the first thing that comes to mind is marital family.
Women trapped in marriages, facing abuse from husbands and in-laws.
But the natal family isn’t quite the shelter we imagine it to be. Kapoor says that became clear during the Covid lockdown when many people were trapped at home. Working women, college students had all had to go back home.
AK3: during the lockdown, the number of cases of natal family violence coming to Swine increased by 13%. Earlier it was 3%, and then it became 16%.
Kapoor has now authored an exploratory study on the Natal Family as a neglected site of domestic violence against women.
Natal violence she said can actually start even before the girl is born.
AK4: It starts from before women are born with sex selective abortion
And then it can take many different forms, physical emotional sexual, forced marriages.
AK5: We Will say child marriage is an issue we will say sex selective abortion is an issue, child sexual abuse is an issue but we don't put them all under one umbrella to think this is natal family violence.
In their sample the numbers were eyeopening.
AK6: 68% women have faced physical abuse. That's a huge number
AK7: Verbal and physical and emotional abuse was 72%. And that was criticism, shaming them, character assassination was a big thing.
They heard horrific stories. Sometimes emotional. Like Character assassination. Sometimes downright physical.
AK8: Our grandfather would throw me on the ground, kicked me, grandmother would pinch, bash my head against the wall, uncles beat me up, smashed my head on the wall.
AK9: when I used to hear my uncles were visiting, I was as terrified as if there were news that there was a terrorist organization planning to bomb that level of fear and that level of abuse
Abuse was normalized. One respondent said she had a good childhood.
AK10: my father was good. He provided for everything. But, you know, when you used to drink, which was 3 or 4 times a week, he would beat us. He would throw us out of the house,
This kind of violence can happen at the marital home too of course. But here’s a big difference.
Even if some women can muster up the strength to complain to the authorities about their in-laws, few want to go to the police about their blood family..
AK11: some of them said, you can't even talk to my parents. If you can't even talk to your parents, then how are we going to address the issue?
They wanted the violence to end. But they didn’t want to lose the family in the process. In fact, says Kapoor, much of natal violence has to do with property. For example, brothers wanting married sisters to give up all claims to their parents property. Else they said you can’t visit the family.
AK12; And visiting the family home for women was a big thing. It was like having a safe space to go back to. So they would write it away
But not that safe either. Kapoor says the natal family often knows when their daughters are being abused at the in-laws but they still keep sending them back. One woman told her
AK13: I went back ten times begging not to be sent back. And my father would say, child will fix everything. What will society say?
Women fight back in many ways. Sometimes escape.
AK14 : somebody said, like, I went to the riverside. I just sat there for hours.
AK15: a lot of them shielded their mothers from marital violence. They fought for education, asserted their right to work, um, eloped, uh, married people of their own choice, despite the family being resistant.
The answer isn't always new laws. Amrita Dasgupta the executive director of Swayam says the new study will demand new ways to deal with very old problems.
AD1: it's though-provoking, it's disturbing, it's visually appealing, and it's relevant to all of us. And I think this is a very, very unique piece of research because it's going to make us think outside the box.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW
For more on Swayam go to https://swayam.info