Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is a very dangerous social evil; it is running as a cancer disease in the society. It is ruined the future of children slowly-slowly. Multiple reasons are increasing domestic violence day-by-day like dowry, drinking and other family taunts. The region with less educated people are unaware of their responsibilities, thereby harshly subjugating their spouses. Negative repercussion on the child is never paid attention by family, which leads to other social evils. So domestic violence is a violence that is not harmful only to women but their children also get ruined in this problem. The children face the lot of problems to live in the society. They discriminate and exploit within a category, within a family. Some cases present that the children lose their identity. The people do not pay attention to their dignity, respect and childhood.
In Indian family system, the man is the master and woman is the inferior and subordinate. Wife beating is the most prevalent form of violence against women in Indian society and it is considered as a general problem of domestic discord (Jejeebhoy, 1998). Domestic violence is that violence which runs in any family. Any person can be affected by it but most women are the victims of the domestic violence. It is always very dangerous and is perpetrated in various forms like harms or injuries to the health and safety. Mental and/or physical aggression also constitute serious forms of violence against women. While physical abuse is followed by the sexual advance towards women, mental abuse is characterized causing a sense of fear to develop in women’s mind which includes verbal and emotional abuse, economic abuse, and restriction on the wills and so on (Malhotra, 2011). Within a family, a woman is subjected violence in various forms which ranges from physical to psychological one. Driven by prejudices and biases against women, domestic violence is committed by male members of the family. They are always at receiving end and thus harmed in any sort of society (Rob Stephenson, 2006). Domestic violence against women arises out of strongly embedded social evils and structure which includes, dowry, no property rights to women, curtailment of women’s liberty, patriarchy, and discrimination of all hues.
In Indian, the first attempt at legally defined domestic violence by Government with the (Prevention and protection) Act of 2005. It defines Domestic Violence as “any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behavior, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. This can encompass but is not limited to the following types of abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, and emotional” (Sultana, 2006). The behavior of women is which increases of subordination, dependency, and discrimination of women become superior in the family and some are there to be subordinated and are always controlled by others. They are exploited and are deprived of their entitlements and are caused to become dependent on others for their survival. Coercive and threatening behavior is also a form of violence inasmuch as it instills a sense of fear and helplessness in the mind of women. Threatening and coercive behavior towards women is humiliating by its very nature (Ibid, 2005).
Violence against women has also been termed as intimate terrorism, which is entirely alleged to the intimate partner, or life partner, who terrorizes and uses complete control of his partner. Intimate terrorism mostly used by man to terrorize women. The forms of Domestic violence in which men control “their women” using a variety of coercive control practice, including physical and physiological violence. Virtually every women’s shelter and feminist domestic violence program around the country uses the power and control machine to describe and define domestic violence as a pattern of violent coercive control in which the coercive partner makes use of violence in combination with variety of other tactics such as psychological or economic abuse to take virtually complete control over his partner (Johnson, 2006).
Casteism: An Indicator of Violence
After understanding the social structure of Indian society and its various dimension of social structure like caste, class, religion, culture, rural and urban it reflects that casteism is most dangerous that effect everywhere in the society. So, when it is going to understand the casteism or caste, firstly should know about caste. The word caste owes its origin to the Spanish word „Casta‟ that means bread, race, strain or a complex of hereditary qualities. In India, this term known by the name of jati. Knowing the concern on casteism, it is necessary to know that firstly Hindu Society was divided into four Varna‟s and many castes and sub-castes vehemently based on the idea of pure and impure, touchable and untouchable, high and low, and superior and inferior. Many thinkers have described the caste and casteism in Indian perspective. Caste can be defined as hereditary endogamous, having a common name, common traditional occupation, common culture, relatively rigid in the matter of mobility, the distinctiveness of status and forming a single homogeneous community. So Scheduled caste is the lowest caste of India caste system. Scheduled caste is a name that given by Indian Constitution. In ancient time scheduled caste was known untouchables. Since the 1850s this community was loosely referred to as depressed class and scheduled caste also being known as Dalit’s. In 1935 parliament passed the Government of India Act 1935 designed to greater self-rule and set up a national federal structure. In 1937, the Act introduced term Scheduled Caste defining the group as such castes, races which appear to his Majesty in council to correspond to the classes of persons formerly known as the deprived class.
Intimate partner violence or domestic violence is a human rights and public health concern throughout the world. World Health Organization estimated that domestic violence against women to vary from 15 to 71 percent in 15 sites across 10 countries. Various studies reported that IPV or domestic violence in South Asia has received special attention because it is going very prevalence and severity (Segal, 1999, Ahmed-Ghosh 2004, Sharma, 2005).
