Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap. What a busy week this has been in terms of gender news. A male student peeps into his professor’s private Instagram account, the woman professor is sacked. A problematic movie on domestic violence. In Afghanistan, one year since the Taliban cut back on women’s freedom. But, as always, a silver lining from women athletes. Read on and, yes, a very happy 75th Independence day to all. THE BIG STORY: There’s nothing funny about domestic violence, least of all ‘dark comedy’ Darlings Source: BREAKTHROUGH In a week dominated by chatter around Netflix’s new release, Darlings, comes the sombre news of yet another woman dying by suicide on August 3 after eight years of marriage and unceasing domestic violence. “I kept thinking he’ll reform,” Mandeep Kaur says of her husband Ranjodhbeer Singh Sandhu in a video that has gone viral ever since she recorded it in Queens, New York just before dying of suicide. “He keeps getting drunk… has extra-marital affairs... and hits me,” the 30-year-old says in Punjabi. According to Jaspal Singh, Mandeep’s father, demands for dowry from Ranjodhbeer, a truck driver, and his family began soon after the marriage in 2014. The abuse escalated after the birth of their first daughter. When the violence became intolerable, Mandeep’s family filed a complaint with the New York police. A chastened Sandhu then apologised to his wife and promised to end the abuse. According to Jaspal Singh, Mandeep’s father, demands for dowry from Ranjodhbeer, a truck driver, and his family began soon after the marriage in 2014. The abuse escalated after the birth of their first daughter. When the violence became intolerable, Mandeep’s family filed a complaint with the New York police. A chastened Sandhu then apologised to his wife and promised to end the abuse. It only got worse. “My in-laws didn’t do anything to help me…you all ganged up and left me helpless,” says a weeping Mandeep in the video. The Indian embassy tweeted that it is in touch with the US authorities and the Uttar Pradesh police has registered criminal cases against Ranjodhbeer Singh Sandhu and his parents. According to the Kaur Movement, that helps sexual and domestic abuse victims, the Americans are treating the death as a homicide and not suicide and social services has taken charge of Mandeep’s little girls, aged 4 and 6. But in a post on Friday, the Kaur Movement said as Mandeep’s next-of-kin Ranjodhbeer had been handed over her body and had conducted her funeral in secret. Real life v reel life Source: BBC News and Netflix Cinematic treatment of domestic abuse does not always have to be grim. Maid, a 10-part series also on Netflix, is the real life story of a young mother who walks out of an abusive relationship. It is affirmative and, at times, funny. When it was released in October 2021, it was the top five most-watched show for weeks. Darlings too opened to mostly positive reviews and, according to BBC’s Geeta Pandey quoting a statement from Netflix has had “the highest global opening ever for a non-English Indian film”. But to find the comedy, dark or of any other hue, in Darlings is hard. The first half of the film that shows a volatile husband take umbrage against a multitude of minor faults, from the stone in his rice to the discovery of his wife’s shopping spree, is triggering and traumatic precisely because it is so graphic in its telling. “Would I hit you if I didn’t love you?” the faux contrite husband asks. Convinced that her husband will change, the wife, Badru rejects the legitimate escape routes that come her way. These include the local police who urges her to register a case so that it can arrest the husband. The alternatives also include the independent life lived by her mother, Shamshu. Shamshu has brought up her daughter single-handed and is now venturing into a home catering business. Yet, it is the mother who rejects the simple option of a divorce on the grounds that it will stigmatize her daughter. The second half doesn’t get better with Badru extracting her vengeance. If the first half cuts close to reality, the second (and presumably comedic half) is fantasy. A husband as dominant and vicious as this one tied up and tortured for days in a crowded chawl? I don’t think so. More to the point, violence for violence instead of taking a legal route sounds like a cop-out. In the end, if justice is served it is not by Badru’s actions but by a twist of fate. So, what is the message? That women caught in an abusive marriage should remain optimistic and that in the end, everything will be magically resolved on its own? It is offensive and disrespectful to every woman who suffers domestic abuse. Domestic violence tropes Source: Wikimedia Commons Darlings is set in a Mumbai chawl and feeds into several tropes about domestic violence – that it happens within a certain lower middle class economic strata (not true), that it is triggered by alcoholism (that’s not the only reason and nor is every man who drinks an abuser). Worst of all, with its unrelenting focus on Badru, the film seems to endorse the notion that women are to blame for the violence inflicted on them by their spouses – a meal that’s not up to scratch, disobeying an order, suspicion of an affair. The husband is never to blame, especially if he’s acting under the influence. “Darlings is an important film because films on real issues are few and far between,” said Sohini Bhattacharya, CEO of Breakthrough, a non-profit that works towards making violence against women and girls unacceptable. “But the onus of leaving an abusive relationship cannot lie only with the survivor.” The willingness of the police to help Badru flies against the reality of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) findings that just 3% of domestic abuse victims seek help from the police. In seven states, more than a quarter of the women surveyed by NFHS-5 said they faced violence by a spouse. In Bihar, a ‘dry’ state, 40% of women are victims, and that’s a decline from 43.7% in 2015-16. In Karnataka, the numbers of married women who reported facing physical or sexual violence from a spouse more than doubled, from 20.6% five years ago to 44.4% in 2019-20. Nothing funny about domestic violence Domestic abuse and the patriarchal systems that support it is not funny. Darlings is out of its depth when it veers into ‘dark comedy’ terrain. This in fact ties in with NFHS findings that a majority of people—more women than men—justify spousal abuse. In Telangana, 83.8% of women surveyed (70.4% of men) said violence from a husband was justified on grounds including disrespecting in-laws, neglecting the house and children and on suspicion of marital fidelity. In the end, the joke in Darlings is on us – and on the one in three victims of spousal abuse. India has strict laws against domestic violence. If you are a victim of physical, emotional or sexual abuse from your spouse, you can call: All India Women’s Helpline: 1091 Emergency Response Support System: 112 Women’s Helpline: 181 |