Nagaland: ‘Gender violence is not women-issue alone’

Our Reporter
Dimapur, Nov. 24 (EMN): The percentage of cases registered in connection with violence against women does not reflect the real picture in Nagaland, according to Vitono Haralu, the director of Pathfinder, an NGO in Dimapur.

On the eve of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which falls on November 25, she told Eastern Mirror that the data is low because there are lots of silent, hidden cases and even when the cases are revealed, customary and traditional laws overpower the judicial system, “where we compromise it outside the court or police station”.

According to her, it is the ‘ecosystem of our society that makes girls not even want to say I am hurt because they have to think about their reputation, their parents, and what will people say if they speak out’.

Sharing the examples of women selling liquor, getting into sex work etc., she said that they are all co-related but nobody wants to know the root cause ‘because we are not analysing it’.

Haralu further said that in most cases, it is women themselves who stop other women from growth and availing justice.

She also said that some men are victims of the patriarchal structure of Naga society ‘as the society thinks they are not man enough’.

‘So we need to really re-examine the root causes and if we are to eliminate any kind of domestic violence, we need to look at the root causes together and not say that this is a women issue alone,’ she said.

Haralu said that nobody teaches man to be violent ‘but the structural society is provoking and allowing them to become violent’.

According to her, violence against women will continue unless ‘we look it as a human issue because every time there is something wrong going on with women, the other stakeholders do not participate saying it is a woman issue and men in general do not participate in solving this problem’.

She pointed out that in some cases, men are the victims of domestic violence. ‘So we need to come up with a collective resolution and it cannot just be a women-centric resolution, she said.

‘The more we add gender into it, men will think it is not their issue. But at the end of the day, in the patriarchal society that we are living in, it is the men deciding, and therefore it is the reason we do not have women in any decision-making body and men are deciding about our health, education, and how we should live,’ she added.

Haralu further maintained that violence is a vicious cycle which starts from home because a child witnesses it and experiences it at home. ‘The perpetrator was once a victim and this cycle continues and it multiplies; so it is in the home that we need to talk about what is violence,’ she asserted.

According to the Health and Family Welfare statistics in India 2019-2020 report, in Nagaland, 12.7% of ever-married women have experienced spousal violence, with 13.6% in rural areas and 11.3% in urban areas.