Smack that bitch: Why Darshan is our self-made Frankenstein

There were “loud gasps” in the courtroom yesterday when Kannada actor Darshan’s bail plea was rejected by Bangalore judge RB Budhihal. Assembled fans and members of the media were reportedly unprepared for the verdict.

But why? The injuries to his wife are incontrovertible: a swollen left eye, head and face, cigarette burn marks on her arms and neck, a bite mark on her ear, and fractured hand. The list of crimes further includes waving a pistol at her and their three-year old child, who he grabbed by the neck and threatened to kill. Add to that his clear attempt to bully the police and his wife, and the denial of bail ought to have been a given.

Yet Darshan’s fans are “shocked” – because he is a star, yes, but also because of the nature of his offense. Wife-beating is hardly a serious crime.

It’s just normal, yaar

In a Times of India survey of urban Karnataka, 35 percent of the respondents said Darshan’s crime was “a mistake, but a minor one.” Another 18 percent agreed that “it’s normal in every household, so it’s not a serious crime.” A whopping 68 percent did not agree with his wife’s decision to go public, i.e.  file a police report.

The sample targeted two groups, homemakers and young people, in four cities: Mangalore, Hubli, Mysore and Bangalore.

Now that’s shocking.

Or is it? The most recent National Family Health Survey reveals that being beaten by your husband is indeed routine and unexceptional. Forty percent of married women experience physical or sexual violence by their husband.

The numbers are smaller for the upper and middle class: Sexual violence is higher among the poor at 49 per cent as compared to 18 per cent amongst the rich. But the abuse is also more likely to be “invisible.” Educated women tend to be more ashamed to admit that they are victims, and far more invested in keeping their problems hidden. The level of abuse often has to reach epic proportions — as in the case of Vijayalakshmi — for it to become public.

No wonder, 51 percent of Indian men and 54 percent of women think assaulting a wife is acceptable and justified. And that’s the really bad news from the Darshan case: Karnataka isn’t an outlier, it’s the norm.

Keeping it private

The very phrase, “domestic violence,” is misleading. It transforms a woman’s personal, real suffering and turns it into a societal, legal issue. Stuff for feminists and do-gooder activists to worry about. We get more worked up when women are assaulted by strangers than by their own spouse — because it could be our own daughter, sister, wife, etc. Yet there is no such empathy when it comes to domestic violence because it’s someone else’s ghar ka mamala.

The Kannada film industry was willing to raise a fuss about the ban on Nikita but remains reluctant to say a word about Darshan’s wife.

Actor Raghavendra Rajkumar says a producers’ association cannot interfere in the personal affairs of anybody. “Any association can’t take a decision based on the personal life of a person. In this incident also, it is a personal problem between two persons. So how can they take action against Nikita based on this incident?” he said on Tuesday referring to the ban on the actress.

Stating that any person raising a hand on a woman is unacceptable, Raghavendra said: “I would pray for the Darshan couple’s quick recovery and that they settle down in life fast…”

The privacy argument made on behalf of Nikita serves as a convenient excuse to avoid condemning Darshan whose actions which can be brushed aside as “a family matter.” But who gave Darshan and other men the idea that it’s entirely okay to beat up their wives? Was it just his family or our society at large?

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Smack that bitch

Much like Rajkumar, film industry folks will piously claim it is wrong to hit a woman. And yet violence against women has long been the mark of virility in our movies and serials. The “slap-the-bitch” scene remains a favourite of script-writers down South. All the top heroes smack their women around, including Vijay, Dhanush, and even the beloved Rajnikanth in his heydays. As one Tamil film blogger sums it up :

You cannot watch a TV serial or a Tamil movie without coming across it. Every time a man has a disagreement with a woman (she can be a wife, girlfriend or sister), he slaps her to shut her up. Every time a woman speaks up and points to a man’s mistakes, the man slaps her to shut her up, presumably for daring to speak up. If she does something wrong, he slaps her. If she does something right (but not in the manner that the guy approves off) he slaps her. If she disobeys him, the man slaps her. What does a woman do in nearly all of these instances? She accepts it as though she deserves it or that it is the correct order of things: it is proper for a man to show physical violence towards a woman.

Hindi films may be less offensive today, but who can forget poor man Amitabh Bachchan whipping Amritha Singh in Mard; an orgiastic display of sexual violence disguised as underclass rage. The rich bitch had it coming! But ever since Bollywood went multiplex, it’s lost its appetite for all things underclass. Wife-beating doesn’t fit the urban, middle-class fantasy of the suave, cosmopolitan hero. Physical abuse is now the preserve of Hindi serials that show women being slapped, beaten, and even raped by their own husband in shows like Naa Aana Iss Des Laado, Balika Vadhu and Pratigya. Social empowerment is the new excuse to wallow in scenes of sexist abuse, much like prolonged rape scenes of yore.

Fiction imitates life but also shapes it. The daily scenes of women enduring abuse become normal. A ghar ghar ki kahani that we come to accept, even expect.

Wife-beater, street thug, same difference

It’s comforting to pretend that spousal abuse is a lower class problem, and therefore shows up in movies and serials aimed at downmarket audiences. This stuff happens to your maid not you. But the relative numbers are irrelevant when we all live in a society where hitting women is A-okay. Like charity, violence begins at home, and spreads out like a virus.

Yet we remain a nation in denial. We are quick to express outrage over a Jessica Lal but Vijayalakshmi’s woes provoke at best an animated dinner conversation. We prefer to focus on violence that is out there than in our homes. But if I as a man can slap my wife, why can’t some self-styled “activist” punch, kick and drag my daughter by her hair out of a bar? Both are an assertion of the same male privilege, and both send the message that women are easy targets to be attacked with impunity.

Darshan is our very own Frankenstein, created by deluded notions about “privacy” and sanctity of the family; the expedient line we draw between home and the world. Our courts have finally faced the obvious: There is no marital privilege to assault or rape your wife. Maybe it’s time the rest of us do the same.