Bengaluru: Reema*, 32, has been married for about five years but the man she thought would be her life partner has turned out to be a stranger – he refuses to communicate with her and beats her when he is drunk. Her brother-in-law and parents-in-law joined in the violence if she, a deaf woman with low vision, erred in domestic work.
Reema is an orphan raised since infancy by a church in Mumbai. With some computer and vocational training, she managed to find a job as a housekeeping staff at a hotel in 2015. It was the nuns at the church who found her a husband when she turned 27. She was hesitant about the match – the man was much older, deaf, and even at the time, aloof, she recalled. “But the nuns and his parents were very insistent. They said he had a decent job and was a nice man. I just went ahead because they kept pushing me,” she says.
Three months ago, Reema left the abusive marriage and moved into a temporary shelter. When we spoke to her, she was still not sure if she wanted to end the marriage legally. “The other men I’d met refused to marry me because of my eyes but he married me in spite of it. I am not sure if I should leave him forever…” she says, communicating in sign language through Sangeeta Gala, her interpreter.
Samidha, 24, lives with multiple disabilities like chronic pain and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects connective tissues and impairs mobility. She works as an editor with the Revival Disability Project’s magazine, which highlights narratives of disability and sexuality, and is herself a survivor of intimate partner violence. What kept her in the relationship was the thought that she had a partner as a disabled person, she says.
“At the time, I felt like it was the best that I could do,” she says, referring to a relationship she had when she was 19. “I grew up not expecting relationships because of my disability. A lot of times when the abuse happened, deep down, I believed this is what I deserve. I had internalised so much hate towards myself and my body – how would anyone else respect me? How would anyone like me? I thought it was better to have someone than no one even if he was coercive and controlling.”
There is significant underreporting of domestic violence in India, as per an analysis by The Wire which compares reporting under section 498A (cruelty by husband or his relatives) as per the National Crime Records Bureau (2020) with the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019-20 data. It should be noted that neither the NCRB nor the NFHS or any other national data source provides disaggregated information on domestic violence faced by LGBTQIA+ persons or disabled women with one or multiple disabilities. However, given their increased vulnerability to abuse and lack of access to relief and resources, it is not hard to imagine the extent of intimate partner violence (IPV) against disabled persons that likely goes under and unreported.
Our interviews revealed that intimate partner violence against disabled women and LGBTQIA+ persons takes on many forms other than those that are visible and physical. This includes acts of emotional cruelty, big and small, such as neglect, withholding of care, denial of financial support, and gaslighting, and more, detailed later.