Jawahara Saidullah May 1, 2006

Tags: rape , honor killing , Diaspora

href="/tag/death">death.” He stalks away with purposeful steps as plaintive music plays and the background glows red-gold, from the fire and his passion. Women in the audience cry and men blink back emotions. They understand.

I remember scenes like this from many older Hindi movies. The body in the pyre was the hero’s raped sister who committed suicide rather than face disgrace. It was only as I became older, gained a consciousness of my gender at some level that I realized the message contained in those scenes. Raped women had two choices: kill yourself or become a prostitute. In the movies, of course, a raped (and dead) sister was the perfect, righteous reason for revenge. The woman herself was a ploy, a cheap reason to gain sympathy and to obtain a righteous reason for violence.

To some extent, these movies (even though fewer of the old-style revenge movies are being made) are reflections of our society, the culture and society of the sub-continent. At a deeper level, they show us the value and worth of a woman. Her chastity. Her honor or her izzat that can be easily looted by anyone. That is the essence, the core of her being and she is nothing without it. In fact, her rape, not only robs her of honor but also that of all the men in her family. This is, therefore, the reason that revenge for honor being looted strikes a common chord. Vengeance is not exercised on behalf of the victim or for her physical and emotional trauma. It is for losing something that defines her as a decent woman.

Women’s bodies in most cultures have never been truly their own. Apart from a lucky few, women’s bodies were used to solve tribal differences, to assuage angry gods; were chattel to be traded by one man to another.

A woman’s virginity and her chastity are still used for trade. Parents arranging their daughter’s marriages tacitly acknowledge this fact and the “innocent” divorcee in matrimonial ads proclaims it.

And, in more, extreme cases, if a woman tries to own her sexuality and her own body, she can be rightfully killed for it. Her virginity and her body is not hers alone. They are symbols of her family’s honor, whether it is her birth family or that of her husband. Whether she is raped or enters a consensual, physical relationship, this does not change.

Movies softened the problem by making the woman conveniently commit suicide (if the story line could not accommodate her becoming a whore) rather than having the sympathetic hero kill her. In fact, the hero-brother was shown to be tender and understanding towards the sister, though it was still a relief when she died and left him to avenge his (not necessarily her) honor. The real story, of his heroism, could proceed without being bogged down by a fallen sister.

Things have not changed so much since the 1980’s when a husband in India can kill his wife because she dared contemplate complaining to the police when her brother-in-law raped her. Then there were the six Muslim women in 2005 who were killed by their families in Germany because they dared to date and wanted to live a life away from religious strictures. This does not take into account the many hidden cases of anonymous women being killed for compromising their honor in many traditional societies.

Life for women in tradition-bound societies—whether in the country of origin or re-created in a foreign land—is yoked to out-dated, archaic and rigid notions of honor. Until women are free to own their bodies and until their honor is tied not to their chastity but to the strength of their character, these (dis)honor killings and other anti-female acts will not stop.