Shalu Nigam

  From a Pati-Parmeshawar or a Lord to a Partner: How the Conservative Patriarchal Family Ideology Operates and Is Challenged in the Courts 29/8/2022 The data from the NCRB shows that an increasingly large number of women are approaching the courts with complaints of domestic violence every year. In 2018, around 1,03,272 cases were filed, in 2019, again 1,25,298 cases and in 2020, around 1,11,549 cases were under section 498A IPC. These women are approaching the legal system as  agents of change  with the  hope that they will no longer be abused . Complainants do not see their violent husbands as  pati-parmeshwars,  lords, or masters, but are  expecting men to be their partners . The new generation of women  views marriage as a companionship . They are simply  demanding violence-free homes . This changing aspiration among young women is also reflected in some of the recent movies such as The `Darlings’, `Secret Superstar’, ` Thappad ’, and so on. However, on the other side, neither t

  How Malimath Committee Denied Women their Rights? Section 498A IPC is inserted in the Indian Penal Code in 1983 and provides to protect women from cruelty in their matrimonial homes. The Malimath Committee Report (2003), twenty years after the enactment of Section 498A noted, “In less tolerant impulsive woman may lodge an FIR even on a trivial act. The result is that the husband and his family may be immediately arrested and there may be a suspension or loss of job. The offence alleged being non-bailable, innocent persons languish in custody. There may be a claim for maintenance adding fuel to the fire if the husband cannot pay. She may change her mind and get into the mood to forget and forgive. The husband may realize the mistakes committed and come forward to turn a new leaf for a loving and cordial relationship. The woman may like to seek reconciliation. But this may not be possible due to the legal obstacles. Even if she wishes to make amends by withdrawing the complaint, she ca

 Excerpts from my book Women and Domestic Violence Law in India: A Quest for Justice , 2019, Routledge p. 54 Anti-arrack movements and alcohol ban protests have been held at various places where the agitating wives continuously have drawn attention to links between wife beating and their husbands’ drinking habits and that drunk men as husbands are vile and deviant who destroy the ‘sanctity of the family’. However, the discourse on domestic violence could not demonstrate the fact that these men are ‘incompetent’ to rule within their homes. Similarly, greedy men and their families who were burning brides or abandoning women to remarry to recollect dowry from other women could not be held accountable for their rapacious criminal acts. Rather, the authority of violent husbands could neither be questioned nor they were held accountable; instead, gruesome reports of wife battering have been suppressed under the garb of ‘protection’ and ‘privacy’. Domestic violence is not visualized as a ‘law