Press release: Urgent need to replace PWDVA and such laws with gender neutral laws

About Save Indian Family Foundation:

Save Indian Family Foundation, Bangalore is an NGO dedicated to promote the cause of Gender Equality and Family Harmony. We commandeer the cause of those grief stricken families who are victimized by the misuse of laws like Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, Section 125 CrPC, Child Custody laws to name a few.

Press release: Urgent need to replace PWDVA and such laws with gender neutral laws

What are the problems with PWDVA and similar gender-biased laws?

The PWDVA (Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act) was passed by legislature and came into force on 26th Oct 2006. While the name of the Act itself suggests noble intentions like protection and welfare of women, the act itself is hardly helpful to needy women. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence that it is being misused by unscrupulous women which has led to complete hijack of the Indian Family System by external vested interests.

Then who benefits from laws like PWDVA?

No data has ever been provided to justify unconstitutional laws like the Domestic Violence Act and the cruel and unusual procedures therein. On what basis, has the Domestic Violence Act neglected,

1. Domestic Violence against children.
2. Domestic Violence against elders in the family.
3. Domestic Violence against male members in the family.
4. Domestic Violence initiated by female members.
has never been established which violates the democratic process of passing any law.

Is it really Domestic Violence prevention or license to kill?

1. PWDVA uses a very broad brush to paint any kind of ‘abuse’ against married woman as domestic violence. The proponent of PWDVA and such laws quote disputable studies by the United Nations which say that 70% of women in India are victims of domestic violence. However, if the criteria used to define domestic violence against married women were also applied to all sections of society, then at least 70% of all men and 90% of all children will also be victims of domestic violence in India.

2. The suicide rates of Indian men are consistently double of that of women, according to NCRB statistics. However due to lack of media attention on male suicides, the society fails to consider how emotional, economic, psychological, and physical violence affects and scars the men and boys in their homes. Men are expected to protect, provide for their families, and yet take it on the chin any form of emotional abuse without complaining because of the emotional castration men undergo from the ages of 6 suppressing their emotions and pains. The propaganda machinery of government, aid agencies, and women organisations are only focussed on ‘violence’ against married women of reproductive age in their matrimonial homes. All men, children, and women relatives of husband are excluded from their concerns. This leads to lack of emotional, family, society, and legal/judicial support for men which leads to higher suicide rates among them.

3. The proponents of PWDVA would have you believe that the basis for PWDVA was respect for human rights of the individuals concerned in a domestic relationship. But you cannot confer rights on one section of the citizenry by removing the fundamental and human rights from another section of the citizenry. This is exactly what the Act accomplishes. The only other instance where one set of people gain at expense of the other without justified reason is called War. PWDVA has been enacted to give a civilized mask to an act of gender war unleashed within society.

4. The common and good sense on which a just society can function and prosper has been thrown to the winds. Any woman who seduces a man into few instances of consensual sex can claim reliefs under PWDVA from him. She has same rights under this legislation as the wife of twenty years of a man.

5. The PWDVA violates the principles of natural justice and violates basic civil rights of the accused men, and increasingly accused women. Men are robbed of their communication channel and are subjected to unconstitutional processes just to satisfy the anger and ego of the complainant woman which is a violation of the fundamental rights granted under Articles 20, 21 and 22 of the Indian Constitution.

PWDVA and such laws are a threat to our children, families, and society at large

1. It is a well-known fact from several studies that children that grow in a fatherless home have much higher chances of future crime, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, and emotional imbalance. But the proponents of PWDVA and such legislation unabashedly proclaim the right of a woman to take her children away from father’s home and father’s care. False and ridiculous allegations of child abuse and cruelty are routinely used in PWDVA applications to deny fathers any access to their children. And what about rights of children ? Where is the law to protect children from domestic violence and abuse from vengeful women who will use them as mere pawns to aggrandize their own goals.

2. If the broad definition of domestic violence as given in PWDVA is taken at face value, then it is a foregone conclusion that men, women, and children are sufferers of domestic violence. However there are no laws to protect husbands, children and other family members of the husband from domestic violence by wives. The credit goes to the Domestic Violence Industry and its stakeholders (women’s organizations, law enforcement machinery, legal fraternity, politicians and bureaucrats) whose survival depends on inciting and fuelling a gender war, spreading myths and false statistics about domestic violence, encouraging false allegations, breaking families, and siphoning funds in the name of women’s empowerment from National and International funding agencies.

3. The institution of family is founded on mutual trust and confidence. If relations run into rough weather, the social mores, courts, and other institutions try to bring about a rapprochement by coaxing, cajoling or prodding both sides to work together to restore harmony. But PWDVA and such laws are an attempt to rewrite and rearrange the time tested rules and are hell bent upon bull-dozing the man into a settlement treating him, throughout the process, as a known scoundrel and a person whose word is not to be trusted. He is dealt with as a man already condemned and who has no role to play in issues that affect his life as well. Needless to say, any man or his parents having been put through such processes as entailed in PWDVA will never be able to reconcile to a normally married and family life again.

The cause of Save Indian Family is the cause of harmony in family and society

Save Indian Family Foundation believes that help should be available for victims and punishment should be given to guilty. It should be crime based and not gender based. These are not gender issues. Today, expectations from men have skyrocketed. They are not only expected to maintain their immediate family i.e. parents, spouse, and children; but also extended family of in-laws. Any man falling short to the expectations is considered a criminal sans evidence, and deemed to be punished before trial. This is a serious infringement of men’s survival rights to which Save Indian Family Foundation has strong objections to such laws like PWDVA which facilitate the infringement legally.

Gender wars have been started by vested interests to benefit several multi-billion dollar industries world-wide. SIF plans to work together within families and society in not letting them succeed in making our society weak and our families fractured.

Save Indian Family Foundation in support with All India Mother in Law Protection Forum (AIMPF), Children Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP), All India Daughter’s Protection Forum (AIDPF), is conducting a Dharna on the 25th of October, 2009 in front of Gandhi Statue, M G Road, Bangalore from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm to create awareness about unaddressed forms of Domestic Violence and lacunae in the existing PWDVA.

We request our media friends to join the event and help us spread the message.

Thanks and Regards
Public Relations Officer
Save Indian Family Foundation, Bangalore