Marital rape is the act of coercing your spouse into having sexual relations without their permission. It is an unfair, but not unusual, method of degrading and disempowering women. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) recommended to the Indian government in 2013 that marital rape be criminalized. The same was suggested by the JS Verma committee, which was formed in the aftermath of countrywide demonstrations over the December 16, 2012 gang rape case. One of the most terrible and oppressive aspects of the Indian legal system is that marital rape is completely lawful.
Section 375 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) defines the offence of rape with the help of six descriptions. One of the exceptions to this offence is “Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape”. Recently, Kerala High Court held that “Martial Rape valid ground for divorce”. A married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman. Unfortunately, Indian rape laws do not uphold this idea. They are not your property; they have a life of their own.
Rape laws in our nation maintain the patriarchal viewpoint that women are the property of men after marriage, with no autonomy or power over their bodies. They deny married women equal protection under the Indian constitution’s laws. It is high time for the legislature to recognize marital rape and put it inside the ambit of rape legislation by repealing Section 375(exception) of the IPC.
Rape is rape, irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator, and age of the survivor. A woman who is raped by a stranger, lives with a memory of a horrible attack; a woman who is raped by her husband lives with her rapist.
Aishwarya Says:
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