NCJ Number
185478
Journal
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Volume: 28 Issue: 3 Dated: 2000 Pages: 357-359
Date Published
2000
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article comments on India's legal and cultural value systems.
Abstract
A young Indian woman who had been raped by her father-in-law was considered by her own father to have shamed their family. The young woman reported events to her grandmother-in-law, and the older woman took up the cause of the victim. Ultimately, the young woman's honor was restored in a ceremony that publicly shamed the father-in-law who had raped her, the father who had insisted that she commit suicide and the husband who had failed to stand up for his wife. The most significant aspect of the story, from a Western point of view, is the heroic role of the grandmother-in-law, who took up the cause of the victim against her own son and grandson. The article briefly examines India's caste system and the hierarchies of age, gender and caste that govern the rules of honor. It also reviews the status of women, violence against women in India, the country's traditional and contemporary legal systems and the cultural value system that undergirds events in the story of the young rape victim.