The Union Minister of Women and Children's Development, Smriti Irani told the Rajya Sabha that condemning every man as a rapist and every marriage as violent is not desirable. Irani was responding to a parliamentary query regarding criminalizing marital rape in the country. "Let me say, to condemn every marriage in this country as a violent marriage, and to condemn every man in this country as a rapist is not advisable in this august House," Irani said. Indian law doesn't quite recognize marital rape as a criminal offense for now.
Much like Irani's, the arguments posited from the government have been in service of "protecting the institution of marriage" and/or preventing the "misuse" of gender-oriented laws. This raises the question: what happens when officials dedicated to women's welfare make statements devoid of nuance and complexity? As parliamentary member Binoy Viswam said, such statements "not only seek to trivialize the issue of marital rape and domestic violence but are deeply insulting to the numerous women who have been subjected to this crime."
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