Actor Swara Bhasker got married, Sidharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani also got hitched, and cricketer Hardik Pandya renewed his vows in a month that celebrates love. But in recent times, love seems to have been forsaken as bodies of women seem to be turning up with regular alacrity packed inside fridges or bed-boxes. And all, apparently for love.
A couple of days ago, a 47-year-old man from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, attacked a 16-year-old girl with
a knife and dragged her by her hair for refusing to marry him. Thankfully she is still alive. A 2021 National Crime Records Bureau report revealed that love affairs account for more than 10 percent of all murders in the country. And there has been a shocking 28 percent rise in murders over romantic relationships. It is the third biggest trigger for killings in India.
Three recent murders of Shraddha Walkar, Nikki Yadav and Megha Dhan Singh Torvi expose the probable root cause. It must have been love, but it is misogyny and toxic masculinity now. It is the elephant in the room inside our age-old haveli of upbringing which are accepted and often celebrated not only within families but also in popular culture. A series of traits are common to the three cases.
These were all live-in relationships. The illusion of the relationship not being ‘permanent’ or ‘officially morally binding’ like a marriage could have led the three men to think that their partners could be gotten rid off easily, and tinged with their toxic masculinity, thereby ending the relationship violently.
Toxic masculinity refers to instances wherein men riding misogynistic gender norms use dominance,
violence and control to assert their power and superiority, and their ingrained prejudice against women makes them treat them with disrespect and contempt.
Sahil did not have the courage to inform Nikki about his forthcoming engagement and marriage. When she found out, Nikki confronted her lover who thought it convenient to kill her and stuff her in a freezer, and head off to his wedding. The unemployed Hardik and the bread-winner Megha often got into arguments, mostly about money. Hardik, unable to face the truth of his own doing, killed Megha and silenced her forever.
Shraddha suspected Aftab of having an affair. So they often ended up arguing about infidelity and household expenses. And he physically beat her during these arguments. When he couldn’t ‘control’ her, he killed her, chopped her body and disposed it.
When the women stood up to them, did these men feel their masculinity being threatened? Was violence the only way to assert their dominance? Shakespeare’s Othello displays toxic masculinity when he kills his wife Desdemona in a fit of jealousy, and justifies the murder to be necessary. Just like Sushil Sharma who killed his wife Naina Sahni in 1995 and then burnt her body in the infamous Tandoor Case. Domestic violence is the fallout of the parochial education that has been engrained in us for generations.
The remedial steps need to be there in our everyday dealings within society that do not further perpetuate this norm in the future generations so that ishq does not kill anymore. Misogyny and toxic masculinity professes ‘men should not cry’ or ‘boys will be boys’ making the boys grow into alpha-misogynistic-males. But real men don’t hit women, leave alone kill their partners.
Anirban Bhattacharyya
Author, actor and standup comic
anirbanauthor@gmail.com