Complicit silence: How we normalise domestic violence

There are moments when a society is compelled to confront itself.

The recent brutal deaths of two young women – allegedly driven to despair and death by dowry harassment and domestic violence – are such moments. Beneath these sensational cases lies a darker, uncomfortable truth: India has not merely failed to eliminate violence against women; it has normalised it.

Violence does not always begin physically. It begins quietly – with control, humiliation, surveillance, emotional degradation, character assassination, financial dependence, and the erosion of dignity. By the time it becomes visible, it has hollowed out the human spirit. This is the tragedy of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): it hides in plain sight.

The National Family Health Survey indicates that close to 29% of ever-married women in India have experienced spousal violence. These numbers are staggering enough. But they still understate reality, because countless women never report abuse – not to the police, not to courts, not even to their own families.

Silence on IPV in India is not accidental; it is systematically and socially engineered. Women are taught endurance as a virtue. Adjustment is romanticised. Suffering is moralised. Families advise daughters to ‘compromise,’ to ‘save the marriage,’ to ‘think of the children,’ even when the marriage itself becomes a site of terror. What makes this even more disturbing is the social ecology surrounding violence. Neighbours hear screams and look away. Relatives suspect abuse and remain silent. Communities whisper but seldom intervene. Violence becomes everybody’s knowledge and nobody’s responsibility.

The dowry system, despite legal prohibition and decades of reformist rhetoric, continues to mutate and survive within modern aspirations. In such a framework, women are subtly converted from persons into negotiated commodities or mere liabilities and assets. And yet, we continue to describe ourselves as a civilisation rooted in respect for women.

There is a deeper contradiction here that India must confront. We celebrate women’s achievements in public life. We praise women scientists, women CEOs, women political leaders, women athletes, women fighter pilots. Indeed, in recent elections across several Indian states, women emerged as one of the most decisive voting blocs in the democratic process. But empowerment in the public sphere often coexists with subordination in the private sphere. A woman may vote independently, earn independently, and speak confidently in public – and yet return home to coercion, intimidation, and abuse.

This is why domestic violence cannot be understood merely as a law-and-order issue. It is fundamentally a crisis of social consciousness. India does possess laws. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, is progressive in scope. Anti-dowry laws exist. Legal safeguards exist. But the distance between legislation and lived reality remains immense. Enforcement is uneven. Police response is often insensitive. Judicial processes are slow. Social stigma discourages reporting. Economic dependence traps women within abusive environments.

Most importantly, society itself often refuses to recognise non-physical violence as violence. A husband controlling his wife’s finances is normalised. Emotional humiliation is dismissed as marital differences. Isolation from friends and family is rationalised as concern. Sexual coercion within marriage remains buried beneath cultural silence. The bruises we cannot see are often the wounds that last the longest. At the heart of IPV lies the question of power – not momentary anger, but sustained domination. Violence becomes a mechanism to enforce subordination. And this has consequences far beyond individual households.

Violence reproduces itself across generations, slowly shaping the emotional character of society itself. A nation cannot aspire towards social harmony while normalising brutality within homes.

What then must change? We must: First, see what is often unseen – recognise the many forms of violence beyond the physical. Second, speak when it is easier to remain silent – advocate within your spheres of influence. Third, act where you are – because communities are not abstract entities; they are made up of individuals like us.

Domestic violence must cease to be treated as a ‘private family matter.’ The home cannot become a constitutional blind spot where dignity and rights are suspended. As communities, we must rediscover moral courage. Sometimes, intervention begins not with institutions, but with ordinary acts of humanity – asking questions, offering support, believing survivors, and refusing silence. One abuse survivor, when asked what helped her most, answered simply: ‘Someone believed me.’ That sentence should haunt us. Because behind every reported case are countless unreported lives lived in fear, humiliation, and loneliness. And behind every death that becomes headline news are thousands of quieter tragedies unfolding without witness.

Until India confronts the violence against women that it has normalised within its homes, its claims of progress will remain morally hollow.

And perhaps the greatest tragedy is not merely that these women died. It is that, as a society, we had long stopped listening while they were still alive.

The writer is the former civil servant enjoys traversing the myriad spaces of ideas, thinkers, and books.

Gurucharan Gollerkeri The former civil servant enjoys traversing the myriad spaces of ideas, thinkers, and books

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.