In February 2006, a Sudanese man married amidst great media attention. Having been caught trying to have sex with a neighbour’s goat, it was deemed by a council of elders that the accused would have to pay the owner a dowry of 15000 Sudanese dinars and, of course, marry the goat.

When asked to comment on the issue, the owner Mr. Alifi, who had caught the accused red handed, said that the elders had not felt the need to involve the police. The dowry would suffice for the loss of the goat. The marriage of goat and man (who according to the owner were still very much together) was of course necessary because the goat had been ‘used as a wife’. (Source: BBC Article)

The phrase ‘used as a wife’ troubles me. Deeply. Why do I know that if this can happen to a goat, it can happen to a woman?

In December 2005, the mother of a mentally challenged girl was willing to have her daughter wed the main accused in the gang rape c

ase that was being heard by a Sessions Court at Ahmadabad. Her daughter was pregnant as a result of the sexual assault and the mother saw it fit for the man who got her pregnant to marry her.

Why, I wonder without wanting to be unduly unkind to the mother, who I am taking for granted did not know that domestic violence was even a crime, would the mother want her mentally challenged daughter to be married to the man who violated her and got her pregnant and that too in as gruesome a crime as gang rape? Is it because the society would pardon the victim, if the man who once ‘used her as a wife’, now legally accepted her as one?

In January 2007, Kamalnath Patel of Madhya Pradesh agreed to marry the girl he had kidnapped and raped a couple of years ago. The girl had only been sixteen at the time of the crime. The marriage, no wonder a ploy to soften the court’s judgement, was solemnised in the presence of the girl’s parents. Why does the rape of a minor appear any less a crime once the accused agrees to marry the victim?

I understand that the members of Kamalnath’s village were socialized in their narrow beliefs. But a member of the judicial system?

In 2005, we all heard the case of a nurse who after being raped in Delhi, sustained heavy injuries including the loss of an eye. When the accused offered to marry her, the Sessions Court asked her to consider the offer as a chance to re-establish herself in society. This time, thankfully the victim refused. But I wonder what the judge was thinking when he spoke of re-establishment? Did he mean that she could gain her respect only by marrying the man who had violated her sexually and gouged out an eye?

There are other extreme cases of course, especially in Asian and African countries where religion and that too, a misinterpreted version, finds it necessary to act as judge. Take the case of twenty-five year old Salma, whose marriage to her husband was annulled by religious leaders in her community, when she returned to her parents’ home, after being raped and molested for six months by her father-in-law.

Mother of two, Salma of Muzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh was haraam now. Since Islam forbids the wife of a father from being in a sexual relationship with any of his sons, the woman who had been ‘used as a wife’ was asked to leave her legal husband, who was, in the turn of events, given custody of her children since it was deemed that the victim could not have been completely innocent in an incident which repeated itself many times over six months. Salma tells her story differently. The father-in-law kept her under house arrest and threatened her with fire arms, also allegedly threatening to kill her father and brother if she refused to oblige.

Well, these are only the reported cases. We all know that most rape cases go unreported. I now wonder if many of them are settled out of court when the accused marries the victim.

While I do know that in the eyes of the conservative East only a husband and wife are allowed a sexual relationship, I do not understand how sexual assault becomes grounds for an offer of marriage. Assault, it has to be understood, is clearly different from a consensual relationship. How can the society even ask the accused (who indulged in a criminal and violent act) to take responsibility for the victim as a husband (I say this assuming that in these marriages, the wife will remain financially dependent on her husband), and by this, legitimize his crime? Why should it consider the victim at fault and seek to redeem her life?

While it is time for the society to rethink many things, I hope one of the first will be the idea of ‘using’ a woman ‘as a wife’, because the wife is not meant to be ‘used’.

In the meantime, I feel really sorry for that goat. I hope animal rights activists stepped in.

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The Author
 There is nothing Shweta loves more than writing. A graduate from Madras Medical College, she is now a student at the Knight's Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University, from where she hopes to graduate a fine science writer and a nuanced thinker. Apart from experimenting with eggs in the kitchen and paint brushes in her room, Shweta enjoys watching cricket and tennis and just about any movie. She is a voracious reader and enjoys astrophysics, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, mythology and just about anything that will kindle her imagination. Sa, for Shweta is her means of telling the men and the women in the world that there is enough space for everyone. It is also her way of letting people know that no one is more equal than another.

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