Category: Books

Here are some more extracts from Bitter Chocolate.

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‘What can it be called,’ she [Vidya Apte of Terre des Hommes] asks, ‘when they marry off young girls, except Child Sexual Abuse?’ A socially sanctioned environment which crushes the girl-child as she grows: that mother hood can be her only mission, that she therefore has to be ‘married off’ at the soonest possible legal age even if she is not mentally or emotionally ready for it. What kind of mother can such a child herself make? Most research clearly states that men do not have an in-built ‘father touch’, they have to actively work on it if they genuinely want to be decent fathers. Young men—nor older ones, for that matter—are not expected to be fathers in the complete sense anyway. But young mothers are expected to ‘mother’ from the time they are born. Most research also proves that ‘natural motherhood’ is a myth, there is no such thing as ‘mother pangs’, except for social pressure. A woman feels ‘motherly’ only from the third or fourth month of her pregnancy and this is a primal feel which continues for the infant’s food and physical protection. There is no other in-built manual on child-rearing in a young mother who is otherwise bewildered, exhausted and very alone. What kind of ‘complete’ mother can she make to another child?

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‘From childhood women are geing primed to expect too much from marriage and motherhood and too little from anything else,’ says Prasanne Invally of Susamvaad which is developing ‘marriage workshops’ in Marathi. ‘Boy children are primed to expect everything from their wives in the marriage, and not give too much if anything at all.’ The workshops Susamvaad has conducted till now reveal young couples—about to get married—coming in with ‘they lived happily ever after’ dreams because the partner is being expected to heavily ‘adjust’.

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Explains Dr Shalini Bharat of the Family Studies unit of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, ‘We have a sacrosanct view of the family in our country, even if it teems with strains within. In such a structure human rights are not regarded as rights in the individual sense. There is a “we”, but if you hear an “I” the reaction is knee-jerk even if there is only negativity in this “we-ness”. Everyone is supposed to subsume their own individuality in a family, specially the women and definitely the children. Those who want to be an “I”, as is the wont of the young males, have to do it outside their family structure and home. This leads to our famous Indian characteristic: the duality-and-denial syndrome. Ghar mein kuch, bahar kuch; like being “vegetarian at home”. In such an environment it would be well-nigh impossible to get a family to admit that there is a horror like Child Sexual Abuse happening within the four walls of any house no matter how educated or rich or perhaps more so because the social image of the family has to be guarded. If we acknowledge Child Sexual Abuse in our middle and upper-class homes, we would have to look for reasons for this abuse within. We would then have to admit that these reasons are not as terribly complex as we would like to think. And we cannot have our families being seen as anything less than part of a great and ancient culture, can we now?’

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[…]First there will have to be acceptance of the very existance of Child Sexual Abuse in all classes of Indian homes. And this acceptance is likely to take a very long time to come because if there is such an acceptance, it would affirm that there are a lot of adults abusing children. And then this would start to say something about Indian society. And its false facade of happy families. And the men in these families. And the kind of women who live with these men.

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The world over fathers who have been sexually abused when they were little boys tend to sexually abuse children, their own and others, as adults.

Mothers subconsciously try very hard not to sexually abuse children, their own or others, even if they have been sexually abused when they were little girls. Instead women, specially mothers, take it out on themselves. They also physically abuse the child with slaps and other forms of beatings. They emotionally neglect them by mentally ‘blanking out’ their children from time-to-time; this space which the mother puts between her and her offspring is seen by psychiatrists as a desire on the part of the mother not to hurt her children the way she was hurt by her elders.

*

Well, has there ever been a time when fathers, along with their wives, have not impressed upon their sons, almost conditioned them into thinking, that they—the male—possess that magnificent trump card: the power of choice? Mothers tell their daughters only this: the male will come and choose from a sea of simpering young girls like you; on a white charger he will come and whisk you off your feet, please perfect the art of simpering till he arrives.

The male and his magnificent trump card: that power of choice. So now, before he ‘settles down’, and even during and after, he also chooses little boys. But will this be enough proof for the parents of young males that they need to explain to their sons that they need to behave with other mothers’ daughters, and other people’s sons too? If those parents had done this before, maybe the statistics would not be as bad as they are today? And now that the world is turning on its head, or so it may seem to the parents of only sons, with older—and much elder—men actively seeking little boys, what should the mothers and daughters feel?

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Prema is now a child-prostitute in Calcutta’s Sonagaachi. She is not plump anymore, she has several sexual diseases including Aids. She says she never complained against her inspector-father at the police station because she knew they would suspend him and then what would her stepbrother, stepsister and stepmother eat?

Rishikesh, 26 August 01

I’ve finished reading another disturbing book. After the concentration camps of World War II and Partition, here comes Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani – a study on Child Sexual Abuse in India.

One out of four boys. Four out of ten girls. In all social classes, from lower to upper. By aggressors of same or different sex. The rare comlaints filed take years to reach court. More often than not, they are dismissed for lack of conclusive evidence.

My new “tagline” for India is The Country of Red Tape. Related, this example of Indian logic, excerped from Pinki Virani’s book.

A young boy is abused in his school by a meditation summer class teacher. The parents refuse to report the case to the police. Another parent, a lawyer, alarmed by the fact that this same teacher has been invited to give classes in his son’s own school, decides to write to the police commissioner, detailing the whole incident.

On 25 October 1999, Raju Zunzarrao Moray gets a visitor from the police station near his residence.

The police officer tells him, ‘Your complaint to the police commissioner has come to us. We were well aware of the incident but no one came forward to register it as a case. This is the first written complaint on the matter, so you are our First Informant. Therefore, we will have to start our investigations with you first.’

All right, is Raju Moray’s reaction, but then what.

‘After investigating you, we will investigate everyone else.’

‘Okay,’ says Raju Moray, ‘but just remember that I was not an eyewitness to even the boy who came home hurt. You need to speak with the boy’s family.’

‘We will.’

A doubt flickers in Raju Moray’s mind. ‘By now the boy has gone back to Pune. Suppose his family here says nothing of the sort happened.’

‘Then it will be assumed that you have made a false complaint.’

‘What absolute nonsense!’

‘Not nonsense; it is a serious matter to make a false complaint.’

‘But it is not a false complaint.’

‘If you cannot prove it, it is; also, then you have no business to unnecessarily clutter up our files and cause us unnecessary hardship.’

Raju Moray re-starts the conversation, ‘Listen, let us assume—correctly, since I know what they have decided—that the boy’s grandfather says that there was no incident. Then what?’

‘Then we will call you to the police station to question you on why you filed a false complaint.’

‘But it is not… oh all right, then what happens?’

‘Then we will call you, and we will call you again for questioning, as and when the need arises.’

‘I have to go to court you know, I have to be available for my clients and my practise. You should at least tell me when you would call me, I cannot come in the mornings, I can after court during the evenings. And, obvioulsy, I see no reason to come every day to simply sit in the police station.’

‘Then it is better you write a letter saying you are withdrawing your complaint so that we can close the file.’

‘But you have not even opened a case till now because no case has been filed. Where is the question of closing an un-opened file?’

‘These are technical matters; better you just say in a letter you are withdrawing your complaint.’

Please do read this very sensible book. Awareness is what is needed first – and your awareness could make the difference for someone. Whether or not you are in India or Indian.