Vimochana: A Women's Forum is one of the dynamite agencies I was privileged to volunteer with during my time in Bangalore. Below is a brochure I did up for their fundraising campaign in the work against violence, with information and some sad humour. The humour would be almost funny if it was not such a faithful representation of what husbands and in-law families do say to explain away the deaths of young brides.
Burning Brides - Expendable Women
Dowry deaths and other violence against women.
Every month, in Bangalore alone, 100 young married women die violent deaths. Are their deaths accidents, outright murder, abetted suicide, desperate suicide to escape intolerable harassment by a husband or his family? The suicide-murder lines blur in deadly violence against women.
More than 70% of these young women die by burning. The police register 40% of their deaths as suicide, another 45% as cooking accidents or stove bursts. Is it possible that there are so many despondent, accident-prone brides in Bangalore?
What the husbands say:
• The stove burst, what a shame – her saree was aflame.
• Her stomach was panging – she cured it by hanging.
• Reaching for sugar – she fell into the cooker.
• Hanging clothes on the top – she fell . . . a long drop.
• She tripped and fell – and drowned in the well.
What the police say:
All too often the police accept these “reasons” offered by husbands and their family members. Unnatural deaths are recorded as natural, or casually cast aside as accidental. Patriarchal, woman-blaming attitudes, that bestow low worth on a woman during her life, further denigrate her burned, mutilated body in death.
What hospital staff on the Burn Unit say:
• 1 in 4 women admitted has deep burns on 80 to 100% of her body.
• 3 out of every 4 women admitted to the Burn Unit will die.
• Burning is the routine method of murder in dowry deaths and other acts of violence; it serves to
destroy signs of earlier brutality.
• 3 women in 4 are under 29 years.
• Dying statements are difficult to obtain, so perpetrators routinely escape punishment. Husbands
go free, to collect an added dowry as they arrange yet another marriage. How can this happen?
Easily.
• Riding with the burned woman to the hospital, the husband or in-law family tutors her - they
construct her story, convince her she will recover, promise that her husband or in-law is sorry
and will change.
• Or the in-law family may tell her that no one will believe that he, his mother, sister or brother
burned her, so she better lie, or be charged with attempted suicide later.
• Some women stick to that first story, and die refusing to talk to the police. They pretend to
hospital staff as well; why make trouble if they must return home?
• Others get support from mothers, sisters, aunties; they talk to medical staff and social workers,
and decide to expose the violence.
What the burned women say:
Most burned women are discharged dead. In hospital, frightened and alone, some repeat the tutored story provided by their in-law family until they die. Others make a Dying Declaration to the police. This account tells of one woman who broke the silence:
A rural homemaker is admitted to the Burn Unit at 11:30 PM on a weekday. She is 18 years old, 4 months pregnant, and burns cover 90% of her young body. Medical staff gently remove her clothes, treat her wounds and place her on a bed, naked, under a tented sheet.
The next morning staff encourage her to talk about her burns. She tells them her husband often talks tenderly to a divorced woman in her village. When he came home late last night, she felt sad and poured kerosene on her body.
On the second day this dying woman decides to speak her truth to the unit social worker. Her husband is a farmer. Yes, he came home late; he was out drinking. On the day he burned her, he sent her to her family for more dowry money. This time it was Rs. 2000 to buy potato seeds. Dutifully she went. Dutifully they paid.
When he came home that night, late and reeking of alcohol, she asked him if he intended to sow potatoes or just drink away the Rs. 2000? Enraged that she would question him, he poured kerosene over her and set her on fire.
With support from the Burn Unit social worker, this young woman gave a Dying Declaration to the Police. The social worker will follow up, ensure that charges are filed, stand by the dead woman’s family in Court. This fulfills one mission of Vimochana; to expose the medical-legal aspects of dowry violence, burning brides.
What the women of Vimochana say:
You do not have to die.
Your life is precious.
If you need help, reach out to a friend, a neighbour,
a relative, an organization that can help.
Vimochana, one of the oldest NGO’s in Bangalore, Southern India, opened in 1979. It speaks for the rights and empowerment of women and recognizes that, in its praxis, this voice for women’s empowerment is as essential for men as it is for women.
They listen to women speak of their pain and their trauma. Listening often leads to registering complaints at police stations, as in the cases of dowry deaths, harassments, sexual violence, wife beatings … and then following up the complaints in the Courts.
They campaign and engage in public protests to bring about changes in social structures such as the law, media, religions, the family and the community, to make them more responsive to women’s realities.
They facilitate discussions on the complex nature of gender issues, provide safe spaces for women who are victims of violence, run the first feminist bookplace in India, and work closely with the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council. Vimochana began the Women in Black movement to speak out against communal violence in India and all forms of violence against women. Twenty years ago, to assist battered women become economically independent, and to contest gender stereotypes, they initiated a programme to train young girls and women in motorbike auto mechanics.
In 1997 they began the Campaign to Safeguard a Woman’s Right to Live. Investigation lead to their effective work on the Burn Unit, in public education, and their interventions to defend the safety of women in law, order and justice.
Vimochana
Forum for Women’s Rights
Comments