Mantrapped Even admitting to harassment by a woman can seem like a slight to manhood. But when a man braves ridicule and comes out with it, not many will take his side.

Mantrapped

Even admitting to harassment by a woman can seem like a slight to manhood. But when a man braves ridicule and comes out with it, not many will take his side.

Yes, I am a harassed husband.’ That is a tough admission to make for a man, especially the Indian male. Neither can he expect too many sympathisers nor would he be spared ridicule. And worse still, given the large number of dowry-related deaths and incidents of domestic violence against women, hardly anyone would believe the poor man. “I’ve suffered every humiliation short of physical violence,” says Krishna Gowda*, shaking his head sadly. This 34-year-old’s story is not that uncommon, but it isn’t one that is told aloud too often. Gowda married Sudha* five years ago. She was educated, pretty, seemed polite and her parents were rich. A marriage arranged by the families, Gowda’s kin considered it a stroke of good luck. Irritants crept up even before the wedding. Sudha would pick on small things during phone conversations and get angry. “I dismissed it as childishness,” Gowda recalls. “Then, on our wedding night, she was upset for some reason and refused to talk to me. I thought she might have some fears and to help her feel comfortable, I stepped out to the balcony. A while later I found she had locked me out. I was stunned. I was fuming for a while, then calmed myself down, justified her behaviour as immature and slept on the cold balcony floor.” The marriage soon collapsed. Sudha’s parents began to tell him to quit his job as he wasn’t earning a big salary. “You can stay at our house and look after our property,” they said. Enduring the ignominy “Sudha would never stay for more than a few days at my house, and would insist that I go to hers. My mother became the target of her ire. She was even abusive, but my parents insisted that I be nice to her.” Men of Gowda’s community are generally known to be aggressive, even ferocious. To be hen-pecked is one of the worst insults. “And here I was being tormented mentally. Yet I endured it. I moved out with Sudha, thinking that would make her happy. But she still found reasons to fight. She took charge of my salary, and wouldn’t let me give any of it to my parents. When I protested, she went off to her house in a huff. My parents forced me to mollify her, but her behaviour only got worse after she became pregnant. Her parents egged her on too, ridiculing my family and our lower economic status as compared to them.” After she gave birth to a baby boy, Sudha refused to let Gowda’s parents visit the hospital to see her and the child. Her ultimatum was that Gowda should disown his parents, quit his job and live at her house. If not, she wanted a divorce. “I was fed up by then. I was allowed to see my son only once at the hospital. Even when I went to her house, they didn’t let me see the baby. Finally, I said yes to the divorce.” A much bigger shock awaited Gowda, however, in the divorce petition. It accused him of five charges, including dowry harassment under IPC Section 498a. Misuse of anti-dowry law Section 498a, which was intended to protect married women, is unfortunately being misused by many to harass men, says Uma Challa, an activist. Ever since her brother was dragged into a false case by his wife, Challa has been studying this issue. “The Supreme Court itself has labelled the misuse of section 498a as ‘legal terrorism’ and stated that ‘many instances have come to light where the complaints are not bona fide and have been filed with an oblique motive’,” she points out. Loksatta Legal Cell leader advocate CVL Narasimha Rao, who has handled “hundreds of such cases”, quotes a study by the Centre for Social Research which indicated that 98% of the cases filed under IPC section 498a are false. “Only two percent of them are convicted,” he says. Why do the rest of the cases get dismissed? “Because women don’t really want prosecution. They just want to settle scores in most cases. They want to threaten and instil fear in the husband and in-laws,” says Rao, adding that often the man’s mother or sister is accused too. Gowda experienced this. “Prompted by my wife’s family, some cops came home when my mother was alone and told her that others in the family would be arrested along with me. Sudha’s lawyer demanded that we pay her Rs50 lakh as alimony and give up all rights to the child. I went to a lawyer and he said if we were ready to get our hands dirty, we could fight. But he also suggested that as Section 498a is dangerous, a compromise would be best.” “I wouldn’t have given up if not for how the stress affected my mother’s health. I have digital records of Sudha and her family abusing us, her lawyer demanding money, cops threatening us etc, but most of it would be dismissed as the court goes by the wife’s word.” So Gowda compromised and paid her Rs12 lakh. He has now lost all faith in the Indian legal system. A similarly bitter experience turned design engineer Santosh Patil into a crusader for men, volunteering with a Harassed Husbands association, several of which have come up around the country. “On an average, I get about 25 calls on the harassed husbands helpline every week,” he says. But don’t we live in a patriarchal society that subdues women, and aren’t men the stronger gender? Paradoxically, feels Patil, such a milieu makes it harder for a harassed husband to get a sympathetic hearing. Adds Rao, “Men might be physically stronger, but they are emotionally weaker than women. That is evident from the suicide statistics.” According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 3,42,812 married men killed themselves in 2005-2010 as against 1,81,399 women, which is a ratio of two is to one. The fact that there are countless crimes against women in our society is indisputable. But Challa feels that most women who are actually beaten up and harassed by their husbands and in-laws rarely resort to 498a or other dowry-related laws. “While IPC 498a is supposed to be a law to protect women, it ironically harms many women. For every man charged under 498a, there is at least one woman (his mother or sister) who is implicated in a crime that never occurred. The entire family is ruthlessly arrested without investigation and there are no words to describe the financial hardship and emotional trauma that they have to endure,” says Challa. NCRB figures show there were 8,391 dowry-related deaths and 90,000 cases of cruelty towards women in 2010. But in trying to deal with this, our legal system has made the tormented husband an easy prey of unscrupulous women.