Can we deal with adultery like adults?

The public humiliation of a man and a woman by stripping and beating them publicly in a village in Udaipur district for adultery is not the first incident and neither will it be the last, sadly.

I am not going to join the progressive clichés of "what a barbaric thing to happen in the 21st century" or "barbarism, inhuman treatment of two lovers which prove that we are still a feudal society" and so on.

Adultery indeed is a grave crime. Isn’t it painful and humiliating to find out that someone who you love has been cheating behind your back all this time? Isn’t a deterrent needed, something which can give justice to the aggrieved party, regardless of whether its husband or the wife?

Adultery is dealt in two different ways in India at the moment, as a matrimonial and as a penal law. It is a criminal offence under the penal law, but under matrimonial law it only exceeds till giving the divorce (but it has an impact on the wife’s right to get maintenance/alimony)

But on the other hand, although it is a criminal offence in penal law, only the adulterer stands to be punished and the adulteress goes scot free. In case of matrimonial law, both the spouses can use adultery as a reason to get divorce.

Penal law allows the guilty wife to go unpunished, not even accusing her of being an abettor. It puts the entire blame on the third person, who invades the sanctity of marriage. The adulterer is considered 'an outsider to the matrimonial unit who invades the peace and privacy of the matrimonial unit and poisons the relationship between the two partners constituting the matrimonial unit.'

This is unfair as it makes a laughing stock of the husband and puts all the blame on the other man while vehemently denying that the wife is the part of and equally responsible for the whole scenario. This makes the husband take everything out on the third person and not considering any culpability on the part of his equally guilty wife. This is like if your child gets hit by a table while walking, you ask him/her to hit the table instead of teaching him/her to walk carefully.

 

Till the time such lopsided laws remain, these things will continue unhindered. Justice only prevails when there is equal culpability regardless of things like gender.

Before the bleeding hearts call for my head, I want to make it clear that no way can such a thing as public beating and stripping be allowed to happen in any human society. Its a trauma for life for the victims even if they survive unscathed and puts a very question on our claim as one of the greatest civilizations on earth. What difference remains between our people and the delusionary desert apes who gleefully stone women to death for adultery?

These kind of lynchings are mostly carried with the dictates of caste based panchayats who are linked to their counterparts throughout the state. We can therefore forget about any action to be taken by politicians as it means endangering their caste based vote bank. Policemen in rural areas too largely come from the same kind of mindset. Civil servants from the same caste will do everything in their power to prevent the law from reaching the guilty. Therefore these things will continue because the people who have been elected and deputed to prevent this find their benefit in looking the other way. A few arrests here and there will not change anything.

But the bigger problem, which causes these incidents, is the definition of manhood defined by tribal culture or conservative societies.

The infidelity of the wife is looked upon as a question mark on the manhood of the husband. He is a coward if he lets her escape with anything less than dozens of mutilating scars or a few broken bones. He has to reclaim his honour, to wash his face clean which has been blackened by the accusations of his jaat and biraadari.

Surely, you arent a man enough that your wife has to quench her thirst elsewhere, the honourable jaat/biradari sniggers, thoo hai teri zindagi par (we spit on your very existence). The man who is having the time of his life with your wife is a challenge for the very being of your masculinity. Dont be a namarad by letting this bastard escape.

Yes, the aggrieved husband says, I will teach the bastard and that whore of a woman who happens to be my wife a lesson that noone will ever forget. I will reclaim my izzat. 

Bravo Son!!! All the blessings of the elders are with you!!!!

So what follows as a result are mercifully blurred images of the victims crawling and tottering on the ground, images which make cultured and sensitive people like us spill their morning coffee on the table. How dreadful of these village folk to spoil the taste of our breakfast. Don’t they have better things to do, like organic farming?

Now back to the question of adultery, which in the opinion of yours truly is a crime .Crime because it is deceit, betrayal and the theft of dignity from the life of the the families of both the perpetrators. It is a humiliation for the perpetrator's spouse which lasts a lifetime, which can make him or her lose confidence in fellow human beings. The cases of murders done to avenge or to conceal infidelity are aplenty, even in the jungle of us civilized creatures. 

Matrimonial law in these cases is better as it gives the right to the wronged spouse of whether to continue the relationship or not. But hate as we might, it is a bitter truth that the writ of law does not run as soon as one leaves the cosy urban surroundings and enters places where clan and community rules are placed above everything else, even humane justice. And if one has to change all this, the laws in this regard have to undergo a serious change to inspire confidence in everyone that they will be dealt fairly by law.

And no, it is not about education that will be decisive in preventing these kinds of incidents. It is the change of mindset. As long as we have these ridiculous definitions of manhood, honour and glory amongst us, this will go on. No use crying hoarse about the lack of human rights. You will have to have a society of humans first.

http://theviewspaper.net/can-we-deal-with-adultery-like-adults/