The great divide

Software engineer Raghav Iyer is startled every time the phone rings. His septuagenarian father Balasubramanian and 65-year-old wheelchair-bound mother Meenakshi, weep as he recounts the nightmare his life’s been reduced to since the last two years.

“Ever since my 28th birthday, my parents were after me to marry. I gave in a year later when mom bought up her poor health and dad’s rising age.”

Accordingly, word was passed around in the community to find a girl for Raghav and a civil engineer-turned-interior designer from Hyderabad was found. “We had a long meeting with my in-laws and Ratna. We even went out for movies and dinner dates several times. She was friendly with my parents. I saw that as a great sign since we were going to live together.”

They married after a courtship of about three months. “We travelled through the US on our month-long honeymoon where we visited my sister in San Antonio for a day in December 2013. She seemed to enjoy this trip and enthusiastically posted photos on Facebook.”

First signs of trouble began after they returned to their home in Mumbai. “She felt we should live separately. I pointed out that my parents were old but she insisted. By Mumbai standards, 1,500sq feet is huge. My parents are often in a self-contained bedroom with their own TV. When they found out about this, my mother got an induction hob in the room so that she won’t have to go to the kitchen. But even that wasn’t good enough.” After creating a scene, Ratna left for Hyderabad with her clothes and jewellery. “I bought her flight ticket and called her parents to receive her. I told them what had happened. They said they’ll make her understand.”

Even though she had cleaned out the cupboard, Raghav didn’t think much of it. A call from Ratna’s brother a week later set off the alarm bells. “He threatened to file a case against me for beating her up,” Raghav remembers being stunned. “In fact, she’d broken the drawing room TV and clawed me when restrained.”

Soon after, a case was filed in Hyderabad alleging torture and harrassment under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Section 498A and Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (DV) against Raghav, his parents and even his San Antonio-based sister Malavika, who, it was alleged, had “tortured Ratna on the phone.”

Police then came to Mumbai to arrest Raghav and his aged parents. They were taken to Hyderabad where they spent a fortnight in the lock-up. “If it weren’t for my father, who collapsed while in detention, we would’ve never gotten bail. My mother’s spirit was broken after this and she is wheel-chair bound. In the building, all that everyone knows us for is the arrest. My parents have even stopped going to the temple.”

After calls from his in-laws, his firm threw him out. He has managed to find work again but the court cases in Hyderabad keep him shuttling back and forth. “All my earnings are spent in legal fees and in my parents’ medical treatment.” He says he has contemplated suicide. “The thought of what it’ll do to my parents prevents me.”

Is the line between fighting for women’s rights and brazen misandry blurring? Because Raghav’s case isn’t an isolated one. Latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics show every nine minutes a married man commits suicide in India. That means a whopping 64,000 suicides by men every year, twice that of women. “Unlike in case of women where the NCRB classifies deaths as dowry or marital violence related, here it is left in the realm of the unsaid. This invisiblises the sheer number of men forced to take their own lives in face of cruelty from their wives,” points out men’s rights activist Amit Deshpande of Vaastav Foundation, a men’s rights group working in the area of advocacy for gender-equal laws.

He should know what he is talking about having experienced being trapped in a bad marriage and having fought off false 498A and DV cases. “I realise how alone a man must feel with laws stacked against him and society judging him based on a woman’s false accusations,” he adds.

According to Bangalore-based marital counsellor Sudha Rao, instances of husband harassment and abuse have reached “epidemic” proportions. “This is further fuelled by avarice of lawyers who incite women into taking recourse to these laws by promising to get them more money and property, a percentage of which eventually goes into the lawyer’s pocket as fees,” she says. “Driven by this greed, sensitivity, empathy, justice and equality are given the short shrift. The damage we have done to society will only emerge in another decade or two. By then, the toll of this injustice will be too huge.”

Noble intent gone wrong

Commonly known as the anti-dowry law in India, Section 498A of the IPC was first introduced in 1983, after national outrage over unprecedented and widespread dowry-related harassment and killing.

It was felt that such a law will empower women by making offences under it non-bailable (only courts are empowered to grant the accused bail). It also made it mandatory for police to arrest the husband (and often his family) forthwith, merely based on a woman’s complaint.

Over the years, Section 498A has become a potent tool to subjugate and oppress husbands.

“The sheer damage wreaked by the misuse of 498A has far outdone any benefits it may have brought to Indian women,” says Rao, adding, “Even the Supreme Court has asked the legislature to re-look the law.”

Kids caught in between

Stock broker Aritra Mukherjee points out how even children are not spared by raging women, out to bring a man to his knees. “My wife has filed six cases of domestic violence in her hometown Baroda and in her maternal uncles’s hometown Indore. She contends that I accosted her and beat her up in public. I have not seen my son and daughter since two years. Though the family court has given me visiting rights, she has continuously called me to various places and stood me up.” He breaks down remembering his son’s ninth birthday. “I’d taken a cake and a gift and waited there for five hours but she never showed up like she had agreed to in court.”

Ask why he hasn’t complained to the court, and he laughs: “Are you serious? Do you know the speed at which our courts work? It will take months for a hearing to happen, and my precious time with my children will be gone.”

View on women’s rights

Advocate Flavia Agnes, who runs the women’s rights advocacy organisation Majlis, says she is aware of the growing clamour from men to make women friendly laws more gender neutral. “However, given the disproportionately larger number of women who suffer abuse and harassment compared to men, I am not in favour of making these laws gender neutral. It’ll open doors to cross complaints, further frustrating women’s fight for justice.” She went on to ask how many women from marginalised classes actually find anyone willing to take down a complaint. “There is a reason the unheard woman has been given an upper hand in the laws. Any effort to change that will take the whole campaign against domestic violence for which many gave given their blood and toil back be several decades.”

(Some names have been changed on request)