27 November, 2007

Women As Property Of Men

This headline is fairly disgusting:

Man gambles wife in Bihar village

But this attitude, of woman as property of man, is enshrined in the Indian Penal Code. Consider the following laws (emphasis mine):

497. Adultery

Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall be punishable as an abettor.

498. Enticing or taking away or detaining with criminal intent a married woman

Whoever takes or entices away any woman who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of any other man, from that man, or from any person having the care of her on behalf of that man, with intent that she may have illicit intercourse with any person, or conceals or detains with that intent any such woman, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

These laws, which I’ve blogged about before, are not the only idiotic laws in the IPC, which was drafted in the 19th century by the British. There’s 292, and 295 (a), and 377, and so on and on and on. We’ve thrown the British out, but, as if out of a perverse nostalgia, retained some of the worst things they left us, long after the British themselves have modernized. Such it goes…