Combating domestic violence in West Bengal, India: Gendered norms and legal regulations

Abstract

Domestic violence has long been a major concern for women's organisations globally. Despite decades of progressive legislation in India since the 1980s, this paper underscores the persistent and structural nature of domestic violence, which afflicts lives across gender identities. The study draws on findings from a survey of 2193 aggrieved women and select case studies across 13 districts of West Bengal who have accessed the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), a civil law enacted in 2005 to give protection to victim-survivors from domestic violence (as opposed to punishing the perpetrators). The paper argues that even ‘radical’ legislation such as the PWDVA helps survivors manage and endure violence rather than eliminate it from their lives. In doing so, the legislation offers a coping strategy to the aggrieved rather than a means through which deep-seated social structures of patriarchy that perpetuate domestic violence can be challenged to ensure gender justice. Our study indicates that there is a greater degree of precarity among women survivors with psycho-social disabilities and members of gender-sexual minorities. The majority of actors in the socio-legal ecosystem who should be upholding survivors’ right to live a life free from violence instead place them primarily in the heterosexual patriarchal family. The feminist vision behind the enactment of PWDVA, which valued the assertion of a survivor's rights as a citizen of a democratic country to lead a life free from violence, is eschewed in favour of preserving the institution of family and marriage over gender justice.