The subject of marital rape has been debated for years in India, whether we need a law about marital rape or not. Now the recently released web series Chairaiya has again put the focus on it. But are we ready to have an honest discussion about this topic?
For those who haven’t seen the series yet, warning, there may be spoilers ahead. So what happens in the series is that an independent minded young girl, Pooja, gets married in an arranged marriage system. Good thing in the series is that to impress upon the audience that the girl is independent, they showed her as an activist at an LGBTQ+ rally. Generally, to show an independent confident girl in Indian entertainment industry, they just show her drinking and smoking.
So the girl Pooja marries this quiet, shy guy and becomes his wife. However, the shy guy doesn’t turn out to be what he looked like. On the first night after marriage, Pooja says she has a fever and a headache and doesn’t want to have sex. However, her husband doesn’t listen to her and proceeds to have forcible sex with her, or to put it simply, he rapes her.
And the rape doesn’t stop after the first night, they go on honeymoon and the guy continues to rape the girl throughout the week. Obviously, after what happened on the first night, the girl doesn’t want anything to do with him, but she can’t stop him from raping her throughout the week.
The worst part is that the guy doesn’t even realise he is doing anything wrong. For him, she is his wife so he can do whatever with her, NO, you can’t do that.
Pooja even cuts her vagina with a blade to stop the repeated sexual assaults, now, I am not a woman but I shuddered at that scene. Following that, Pooja found much needed support from her sister-in-law, jethani.
And Divya Dutta absolutely rocked that role.
Anyway, the thing is that marital rape is not ok, just because a woman is married to you, doesn’t ,mean you get to fuck her every time you want. When a woman says no, it means no, its about time we understand that.
There has been a lot of discussion around Marital Rape laws. Opponents say why is law entering into our bedrooms, why is law coming into husband-wife relationship. What if she files a false case of rape? Brother if you are worried about false cases of rape, them your marriage is long over anyway.
I don’t know if a separate law should me made on this or not, but at least an honest discussion should happen because I don’t want to see any more Poojas in India.
