NEW DELHI: Marital rape, recognised in much of the world as violence against women, cannot be applied in India as marriage is treated as a sacrament or sacred as per mindset of the Indian society, the government said on Wednesday according to the Press Trust of India.

Hindutva groups who shore up the Modi government have urged Hindu women to produce inordinate number babies each to be abreast of Muslims whose population is alleged to be growing at a faster clip. To keep the orthodoxies of both sides happy, the Rajiv Gandhi government had controversially accepted the advice of Muslim clerics to spare their community from the ambit of divorce laws.

“It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors, including level of education, illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, the mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament,” Minister of State for Home, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said. He was replying to a written question of DMK MP Kanimozhi in Rajya Sabha, PTI reported.

Ms Kanimozhi had asked the home ministry whether government will bring a bill to amend the IPC to remove the exception for marital rape from the definition of rape; and whether it is a fact that the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against women has recommended to India to criminalise marital rape.

She had also said that according to the United Nations Population Fund that 75 per cent of the married women in India were subjected to marital rape and whether the government has taken cognisance of the fact.

Mr Chaudhary said the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Women and Child Development have reported that the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women has recommended to India to criminalise marital rape.

“The Law Commission of India, while making its 172nd Report on Review of Rape Laws did not recommend criminalisation of marital rape by amending the exception to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code and hence presently there is no proposal to bring any amendment to the IPC in this regard,” the minister said.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2015

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