Whenever a sensational crime makes headlines, along with the media deluge of the usual gory details, and crime procedurals, we are flooded with videos, tweets, posts and discussions about the personal lives of the victims and perpetrators. Why did she not go to the police, why did she not alert the neighbours, why didn’t she scream, why did they not seek help? The questions are endless, and sadly, so is the cold judgement.
Human nature is complicated. When we look at crime coverage in newspapers or TV channels, we are glimpsing merely a single page of someone’s life, that too from the point of view of reporters and investigators who never knew the characters in the story till a crime happened and was found out.
In the recent case of Shraddha Walkar, there have been many discussions on her life, her live-in relationship, her relationship with her parents and siblings, her lifestyle choices, and so on. As human nature goes, we are all too reactive and prompt in responding, and giving our judgement about others.
One question, in this case, has been recurring. “Why didn’t she leave him?” A number of people, across political, ideological and socio-economic classes have added their own wisdom to it. Some have blamed her father, for not ‘welcoming her back’, some have accused the modern culture that allegedly encourages women to step over their boundaries and leave the family for a lover, and some have blamed feminism.
That haunting, painful photo of a smiling Shraddha with multiple bruises on her face has been doing rounds, triggering many to question the same thing, “Why didn’t she just leave him?”
The truth never has one narrative or one straightforward explanation. Shraddha is only the current media highlight. Since the news of her murder broke, there have been dozens of similar cases worldwide, several in India. All those cases are different, and despite common socio-economic grounds, the victim’s mentality, circumstances and the perpetrator’s thought process will be unique in each case, because that is how human beings are, so similar yet so different from each other.
Social stigma
The victims of abuse, mostly the victims of domestic violence are trapped in a cycle of violence, fear and guilt. They don’t often have the perspective or the luxury of thinking rationally. Fear of the perpetrator’s immediate reaction to any form of defiance, fear of social backlash and stigma is especially true in conservative societies. A married woman is just ‘expected’ to tolerate everything that comes her way and when things go awry, it is often she who gets blamed for not being a good wife, or daughter-in-law, or a good mother. Popular narratives in our country, blared incessantly through social interactions and entertainment formats reinforce the point that the woman somehow has the ‘power’ to right every wrong inside a family and indirectly, when the wrong happens, it must have been because the woman did not make everything right.
Whether the relationship has been that of a marriage or a live-in understanding, women usually put much at stake. Yes, men are abused too, and men become the victims of domestic violence too. But the fact is, in the case of domestic abuse, the overwhelming percentage is that of women, not just in India, but worldwide.
The confines of a house often make it difficult for reality to come out. Even if it does, the commentators would probably have then moved on to the next sensation or lacked the interest to follow the details. So the stories go untold.
In marriage, the women worry about their children, financial security and the general social stigma of being branded as a divorcee, which by itself is heavy with implications of a hundred allegations and blames.
Fear
The chemistry of an abusive relationship is askew, in ways where the perpetrator controls all the strategic tactical positions and the victim is left without advantages. The relationship is abusive in the first place because the abuser has figured out what makes the victim the most vulnerable and scared. And he uses these vulnerabilities to his advantage. Be it love, or a weakness that the victim thinks is love, need for attention, validation, fear of being beaten, fear of being proven wrong, or fear of being abandoned, whatever makes the victim weak, makes the abuser stronger.
The victim-abuser chemistry is the same regardless of the social stamp on the relationship, that is whether they are married or in a live-in relationship, whether they are a duo of the groomer and groomed, or just in a romantic liaison. Abusers exploit the fears of the victim to their benefit and control the actions of the victim like a puppeteer pulls strings. Shraddha had made her friends aware of the abuse, and the beatings. We know it because her messages have been going viral. In the case of Mrs Ushashri Parida of Bhubaneswar, we do not have an idea whether her husband of many decades, with whom she had raised 2 children in a posh upper-class neighbourhood, was regularly abusive towards her or just did it in a fit of anger.
Some victims of abuse lose their rational thinking to such an extent that for them the usually acceptable norms of rational decisions blur into a series of confusions and the energy to seek escape drains away eventually, taking away chunks of their own identity with each instance of violence.
Hope for things to be better
A victim does not know how much is too much, or when to draw the line. In many cases, as mentioned above they lack the perspective or the rational thinking to determine how much should be too much. Like Anurag Kashyap’s movie ‘Thappad’ society, in general, may decide retrospectively that any display of physical violence is unacceptable and the woman should leave immediately. But that is just a shallow, ideological stand, perpetrated by people who have no stakes involved in the life of so many victims who endure abuse with hopes that maybe things will get better one day. A woman who has been in a relationship for, say, 5 years, would have invested 5 years’ worth of efforts, money, hopes and dreams for a better life every single day of those 5 years. Son for her, it is not an easy decision to leave all that and just walk away.
Maybe Shraddha thought that she will walk away after she saves a certain amount of money, or has a fallback plan in place, or thought that something will happen and things will get better. “Times heals everything”, “patience is a great virtue”, aren’t we told these things from childhood?
Uncertainty and lack of resources, or the fear of lack of resources
Studies have shown that most married women stay in abusive relationships for the above reasons, plus more, like financial constraints, the fear of losing children, or not being able to provide a secure environment for their children if they walk out. Despite the existence of helplines, police, NGOs and other kinds of help, how is a victim going to be certain that her life won’t be worse than it already is once she decides to walk away? It often takes tremendous mental strength, and often a lot of meticulous planning for victims of abuse to decide that they need to walk away. Unfortunately, mental strength is usually in very short supply for victims of abuse.
Hope, fear, uncertainty and a dozen more reasons, plus the design of the abuser’s exploitation make many victims just give in to their fate. To get used to the beatings and learn to keep their heads down. For each Shraddha that makes headlines, there are a thousand women who don’t, either because they are not killed yet, or because they have just acclimatised themselves to live with it, at the mercy of the abuser.
As for the judgements and cold sanctimony floating everywhere on social media, which are just versions of victim shaming dressed up in different fancy words, let us be aware that unknown, invisible to us, a thousand internal battles are being fought. The battles may not be in line with our personal views about social or political ideals but they still go on. The least we can do, is to be kind, and show kindness in our approach to anyone seeking help.
Helpline numbers for women in distress can be found here on the official website of the National Commission for Women. The all-India helpline for victims of domestic violence is 181 and 1091. Statewise helplines can be found here.
