Beyond Spectacle: Chop Down Violence Against Women

A gruesome incident from district Budgam where a 30-year-old was murdered and mutilated has led to widespread outrage in Kashmir. The gory tale of this murder has forced people in the valley to have a look at violence against women which often goes unnoticed. The nature of the murder has made it difficult to look away, however, it is to be seen whether this attention is going to be faint, short lived and inconsequential – as has often been routine. 

Many are raising their voice and drawing people’s attention to the actual reasons that lead to violence against women which brews in the form of everyday normalised violence, abuse in closed walls of supposedly safe domesticity, sadistic impulses sanctioned by patriarchy and the threat posed by a generalised oppression and abuse of women in our society. Violence is closer, omnipresent and machiavellian. Read on to know what our readers have to say, in detail: 

Who Wants to Get Called a Feminist? 

Sadaf Masoodi , Writer and Researcher

My head and heart are a messy knot usually, thinking of the invisible apparatus that enables, reinforces and normalises violence against women. This violence is usual and accepted and many times important to an imagined honour because it isn’t a mere fleeting act of violence but a deeply rooted discursive process as well. The gruesome Budgam murder makes me sick to my stomach, this heightened sickness will go but what remains like a malignant, unattended cancer, eating away this society, woman after woman, child after child, family after family is the entire system which sometimes emboldens a perpetrator to cut a woman into pieces, everything lesser than that may not even qualify as violence for most. But it isn’t in isolation that such events occur, they happen in an  apparatus that enables. The same makes women blame their fate for all the struggles of being women rather than questioning and standing against what should be unjust for a normal functioning society. An average Kashmiri woman will weep the incident out, cursing the solitary perpetrator but  can’t tap where the injustice stems from, because it’s gone too deep, invisible and routinized. Besides, if we do look beyond the psychotic reason of this one murderer, we might end up offending people on the questions of culture, religion, misplaced masculinity, patriarchy and much. But who wants to get called a feminist?

This heightened sickness will go but what remains like a malignant, unattended cancer, eating away this society, woman after woman, child after child, family after family is the entire system which sometimes emboldens a perpetrator to cut a woman into pieces, everything lesser than that may not even qualify as violence for most.

Intimate Partner Violence: The Silent Epidemic

Faakirah Irfan, Head of Legal, Serein 

The recent case of the gruesome Budgam case where a 30-year-old woman was killed is a case in point about increasing violence against women in Kashmir. The details of the incident might be misconceived as being singular but violence against women is all too common in Kashmir. Infact, 1 in every 3 women have at some point in their life experienced physical violence at the hands of their intimate partner.

Domestic violence seems all pervasive, most prevalent and thus needs to be addressed more urgently. In Srinagar, there has been an increase in domestic violence cases at the rate of 6.5% since 2019 as recorded in the study conducted by the Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College.

As a society, this is a wake-up call to not turn a blind eye to cases of domestic violence. It’s only when the violence is gruesome we see people up in arms. However, if the violence isn’t gruesome or amounts to murder often the same society expects the survivor of domestic violence to reconcile with her perpetrator. It’s not just violence but creating an environment where the woman faces the threat of violence can impact an individual’s life.

It’s important to make people and young girls aware of their rights and actions that they can take while they’re facing this abuse at their spousal homes.

The Domestic Violence Act protects an aggrieved woman from mental as well as physical abuse. Any form of harassment, coercion and harm to health, safety, limb or well-being is covered. It includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse and economic abuse.

This protection is provided from acts committed by both male and female relatives of the husband or male partner.

Following are the rights of the aggrieved person under the act.

1. Right to reside in a shared household.
2. Protection orders for victims’ safety.
3. Maintenance or monetary relief.
4. Custody of children.
5. Penalty for not following orders.
6. Penalty to protection officer for not taking appropriate action.

The Domestic Violence Act protects an aggrieved woman from mental as well as physical abuse. Any form of harassment, coercion and harm to health, safety, limb or well-being is covered. It includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse and economic abuse.

It’s important to emphasise that we need to empower women to stand up for themselves. The local authorities have to stop pushing conciliations in situations where there is violence that is perpetuated. We should not be questioning the status quo only when another woman succumbs to violence.

Ed Kemper in Kashmir

Aqib Javid Parry, Researcher 

When a man was held for killing a woman and chopping her body into pieces in the Soibugh area of Budgam, I was reminded of an infamous American serial killer, Ed Kemper. While these events give us shock as to how a human being could think of carrying out such a merciless crime, we are instantly driven to ask whether he was influenced by satan or if this is a sign of end times? However, we must move beyond these generalisations and pause for a moment of reflection. There’s a need to have a deeper understanding of these sociopaths.

For instance, Edmund Kemper the infamous American serial killer known as a “Co-Ed Killer” who brutally killed at least ten people in California during the 1960s and 70s was a product of a traumatic and tumultuous childhood. His mother was an alcoholic and her abusive and erratic behaviour played a fundamental role in building his mental makeup. Since his childhood, Kemper developed deviant and dark habits because of his conflicted relationship with his mother. He started to decapitate his sisters’ dolls and forced his sisters to play disturbing games like the ones involving electric chair and gas chamber. Later, he killed six female hitchhikers and finally killed his own mother. He raped corpses, mutilated dead bodies, and buried his victims’ heads in his backyard.

This grotesque history invites us to the pressing idea that the recent incident of mutilation and chopping of a girl in Kashmir needs to be put into a perspective. Ed Kemper’s story gives us the idea that these incidents are not always a result of a sudden impulse to mutilate a woman’s body; rather such monstrous acts are quite often a product of multiple deviant behaviours left unchecked by victims. Parents need to gauge their child’s erratic behaviour and seek medical assistance and counselling. Abusive and alcoholic parents should be reported by immediate relatives, police and legal help must be sought. Women should observe and notice sexual perversions and other deviant attitudes in their husbands, friends, partners, and co-workers.  Women should notice such monstrous behaviours and habits in men and shouldn’t treat them as mere abnormal fantasies. Simple perversion is an alarming call to put oneself into a better position and start to rethink one’s relationship with such a person. We are living in a society where violent masculinity remains unchecked and unreported. Under such patrilineal symbolic order, a woman is an abject creature meant to be subdued. Almost all the confessions of serial killers – most of them are remorseless killers who take sadomasochistic pleasure in mutilating the bodies of their victims – teach us that they started with little perversions which were not taken seriously either by the people who knew them or by the authorities when their violence was reported.

With all shock and surprise, we have Ed Kemper in Kashmir.

Simple perversion is an alarming call to put oneself into a better position and start to rethink one’s relationship with such a person. We are living in a society where violent masculinity remains unchecked and unreported. Under such patrilineal symbolic order, a woman is an abject creature meant to be subdued.

Beyond Spectacle and Shock 

Zaid Bin Shabir, Independent Journalist 

The brutal killing of a young woman in Budgam is a stark reminder of the horrors that women continue to face in Kashmir. It’s a damning indictment of our society that rather than engaging in tough discussions about the issue of violence against women, some people actively slander and blame women for the violence perpetrated against them. This behaviour actively perpetuates a culture of violence and victim-blaming. It is time that we recognize the immense courage and strength that it takes for women to speak out about their experiences and work to create a society where women are not only heard but valued and protected. By doing so, we can honor the memory of those women who have been killed, and work to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future.

Moreover, by framing these incidents as mere “spectacles”, the media fails to address the underlying issues that contribute to such violence. Rather than using their platform to raise awareness and promote meaningful solutions, they instead perpetuate a culture of apathy and complacency, where people are more interested in consuming sensationalised news than in taking action to address the root causes of gender-based violence.

It’s a damning indictment of our society that rather than engaging in tough discussions about the issue of violence against women, some people actively slander and blame women for the violence perpetrated against them. This behaviour actively perpetuates a culture of violence and victim-blaming.

Culprit, Thy Name is Patriarchy

Prof. Shazia Malik, Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies Centre, KU 

What I figured out while working as a women’s studies scholar in Kashmir is that patriarchy is never seen as a potential source of oppression for women in Kashmir.

While patriarchy may not be the overarching cause of all abuse, it is an enormously significant factor, because in traditional patriarchy males have a disproportionate share of power. Many abusive men, in order to maintain their fragile sense of masculinity, use physical force to keep their wives in their proper place. However, Kashmir has seen the emergence of a ‘new patriarchy’ to control women in public as well as in private domains. Gender violence in Kashmir has a social context that is informed by shifts in perceptions of gender identities, and the role of women in marking/ preserving community honour. It is also tied to the shifts in the organisation of the family and household, for the tensions that emerge in the outside, public/ political spaces create new anxieties, leading to a renewed assertion of masculine authority in the spaces of the household. The unprotected social and political environment has turned women vulnerable to violence from their own community.

Even though the last few years saw frequent killings, burnings, suicides, and severe wife-beatings, there is no acceptance of the fact that patriarchy is responsible for such actions by powerful men.

As a community, we need to build strong indigenous spaces to support the marginal sections, especially women. Combating domestic violence requires us to collectively promote structural changes. We need to challenge social norms surrounding domestic violence through properly organising ourselves not against the individuals but against the system of patriarchal oppression that normalises humiliating women on a daily basis which eventually results in heightened violence in the later phases.

Even though the last few years saw frequent killings, burnings, suicides, and severe wife-beatings, there is no acceptance of the fact that patriarchy is responsible for such actions by powerful men.

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