{"id":2764,"date":"2003-06-01T15:14:57","date_gmt":"2003-06-01T09:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alpha.ravikiran.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/01\/more-on-consensual-crimes\/"},"modified":"2003-06-01T15:14:57","modified_gmt":"2003-06-01T09:44:57","slug":"more-on-consensual-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/vintage\/200306\/more-on-consensual-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"More on consensual crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay now I am pushed into a position where I have to defend really controversial views. But what the hell. I’ll go ahead.
RR (why are you going around with those initials? People might confuse you for me!) wants to know<\/a> if the following crimes should be legal:<\/p>\n

Sati<\/b>
Yes, if it is voluntary. I believe that suicide should be legal, with the safeguard that you should have to swear on an affidavit that you are doing it voluntarily without pressure from others, etc. etc. Most decisions to commit suicide are impulsive, and the actual process of swearing an affidavit will dissuade more people – and give time for social organizations to get across help to people who are hell-bent on doing it. <\/p>\n

Sati in the 19th century was rarely voluntary. The widow was usually drugged and dragged to the pyre. Needless to say, if it isn’t voluntary, it should be banned. <\/p>\n

The rare incidents of Sati that have taken place in recent years (just 2 in living memory ) might<\/i> have been voluntary. If they were, then it is more important to understand the conditions that made the widows take such decisions than to ban it. (I once heard Madhu Kishwar point out that the Sati law is draconian. It makes it a crime to abet or glorify it, thereby making potential criminals of every bystander who witnessed the act, thus ensuring that no one<\/i> came forward to give evidence as to what happened. )<\/p>\n

Euthanasia<\/b>
Should be legal. If a person has left a “living will” asking for death if he ever turns into a human vegetable with no hope of recove?y, the courts should take the will into cognizance and kill him. If the person is in a position to ask for death, then it should be given to him. <\/p>\n

Why should dowry be banned by the state when it’s done voluntarily ? When “gifts” are given in lieu of dowries doesn’t it become vague ? Besides, as you mention it’s not easy to bring offenders to book and using your logic, it probably leads to a general disrespect for the law. So, why bother to ban it ?
<\/b>
Why indeed? You’ve made most of my arguments for me. Of course, sudden and unreasonable demands for dowry that has not been agreed on earlier – the kind that happens the night before marriage, in the marriage mandap (such as happened in the Nisha Sharma case) , etc. should be treated as a breach of contract and be prosecutable as a civil offense. But there is no need to criminalise dowry that has been agreed on by both sides. <\/p>\n

But the girl’s side agrees to the dowry only because of social pressures and traditions. It might look voluntary, but it isn’t really voluntary.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

True. But in that case, what are the chances that the girl’s side, which wouldn’t resist social pressures to refuse dowry<\/i> will actually go to the extent of complaining to the police, thereby ensuring that their daughter will never get married? The only people to take advantage of the legislation would be people who wouldn’t need to legislation – gutsy women like Nisha Sharma, coming from rich families, or familes which will support them through the storm they’ll have to weather. My impression is that Indian society is changing – middle class women of my generation won’t take harrassment lying down, so we will hear a lot more cases like like Nisha Sharma’s.<\/p>\n

But soon, we will also hear of cases where the anti-dowry legislation is misused to harrass the guy’s side.<\/p>\n

Before you ask, there are other practices that I’d like to see unbanned – sex determination<\/b> and (especially female) foeticide<\/b>. Nasty practices no doubt, but legislation to fix them has proved useless and counterproductive.<\/p>\n

Banning sex determination is useless. An honest doctor isn’t allowed to even indicate<\/i> the sex of the child (which is tough to do if you are using a human language to communicate with the future parents) and unscrupulous ones go ahead and do it anyway. Faced with widespread failure there was a move to restrict import of sonography machines!<\/i> See what I meant about failure of government regulation leading to more regulation?<\/p>\n

Um.. Is it really an arguable question whether general contempt and disregard for the law is widespread in India?
And what distinguishes a democracy from mobocracy is that there is rule of law. If the government has the power to make arbitrary, vague, continuously changing law with lots of discretionary powers to government officials, the difference between the government and a mafia is obliterated.
<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay now I am pushed into a position where I have to defend really controversial views. But what the hell. I’ll go ahead.RR (why are you going around with those initials? People might confuse you for me!) wants to know if the following crimes should be legal: Sati Yes, if it is voluntary. I believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}