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Recognising
passive violence A HOUSEWIFE striking her maid across the face for breaking a crystal vase; a young man pulling his girl friend’s hair, pinning her on the ground for having the gumption to defy him in public; a girl banging her head against a wall in a bout of hysteria, etc are all very obvious instances of physical abuse. But all violence is not necessarily of the obvious and brutal variety. There are any number of instances where violence is understated but palpable enough to terrorise its victim into mute submission. This is passive violence. It is perhaps even more dangerous than physical violence because it has the capacity to last for long stretches of time. It also goes unnoticed and leaves emotional scars which are nearly always permanently damaging to the victim. When a husband maintains a stoic distance from a wife whom he considers his intellectual inferior, he is inadvertently indulging in a prolonged act of violence. By silently shutting her out of his life, refusing to acknowledge and respond to her emotional and psychological needs, he is inflicting mental cruelty on her. The irony is that he thinks he is a good and fair husband because he still provides for her, lends her name and status and never raises his hand on her. On the contrary, he may perceive himself to be the aggrieved party since she is the one who fails to match up to his mental wavelength. He may even consider himself a martyr for putting up with her ‘so decently’. |
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| But his open condemnation of her, his
obvious lack of interest in communicating with her, or
his looking down upon what ever she says and does are
behaviour patterns which are of a violent nature. Such
violence is passive as the husband causes emotional pain
to the wife day after day without feeling any repentance
which he would have experienced had he beaten, or killed
her. In such a situation, he would have been condemned
and punished by society, too. On the other hand, the
victim herself cannot protest by screaming or hitting
back. She may go into depression, lose weight and sleep,
take to substance abuse or any other form of destructive
behaviour, but she does not show any outward signs of
reacting to his acts of violence inflicted on her. This
leads to a situation where the acts of passive violence
become more repetitive and damaging with the passage of
time. They cause grave psychological damage not just to
the sufferer but to the entire household which turns into
a dysfunctional home. When a man insistently rubs himself against a girl in a crowded bus, breathes down her neck and makes insolent gestures, he is indulging in an act of sexual violence. Although he hasn’t raped her or even physically molested her, he still has assaulted her sexual and individual sensibilities. This could impair the girl’s entire perspective on the man-woman relationship. Her fear could make her an easier victim in a similar subsequent encounter and, worst of all, it could trigger off in her a spate of negative emotions which could finally lead up to a violent act. When a teacher singles out a student time and again to berate him in class for his mistakes and makes taunting and personal remarks about his background, he is definitely being nasty. By venting his frustration on an unsuspecting and weaker victim, he is trying to establish his supremacy in a very unequal relationship by misusing the power his position allows him. This kind of passive violence too can have a long lasting effect on the student. It may also lead to a horrific situation where a mild-mannered student actually musters up the courage to plan a cold-blooded murder of his teacher. What, therefore, needs to be acknowledged is the enormous danger of allowing passive violence to exist both in the perpetrator’s mind and life and in the sufferer’s. Most of us look at violence only in its various forms of physical manifestation. So wars, fights, killings, arson, loot, beating, rape and other destructive acts of behaviour get instantly classified as violence. What we tend to overlook is the strong presence of passive violence in our lives. By ignoring it, wishing it away and diverting our mind to other more constructive things, we are turning a blind eye to the toll it is actually taking on us and on our immediate environment. Oppression which comes in the shape of seemingly harmless things like name-calling, teasing, insulting, uncouth and disrespectful behaviour must not be allowed to go unpunished. The person concerned must take responsibility for his violent and unacceptable behaviour. Here the individual will have to rise above the law. He has to conquer the feelings which push him to ‘square up’, ‘pay back’ and ‘get even’. Whether it is emotional abuse which takes the form of cursing, blaming and criticising or psychological abuse which involves behaviour which is threatening, such as breaking things or sexual abuse, we must recognise the symptoms and not allow ourselves to get sucked into the vortex of passive abuse and violence. Those of us who inflict such violence have to understand the emotions which make us wreak havoc on the emotions, feelings and lives of others. Why are we being nasty? Is it because we are insecure or jealous? Whatever the reasons, we have to get to the bottom of it and stop being the violent persons that we have become. The relationship between physical and passive violence is the same as the relationship between gasoline and fire. Acts of passive violence generate anger in the victim and since the victim has not learnt to use his anger positively, he abuses it and generates physical violence in the process. Thus passive violence covertly fuels the fire of physical violence. If we wish to extinguish the fire of physical violence we have to cut off its source. This is relevant both to the person indulging in violence as well as to the person who is at the receiving end. According to J. Krishnamurti, anger, like sorrow, isolates one. The violence which stems from an anger born out of disappointment, jealousy and of the urge to wound, helps to give vent to these negative emotions. Mahatma Gandhi sought to blunt the edge of the tyrant’s sword not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon but by disappointing his expectation that his victim should offer physical resistance. One has to exercise deliberate restraint upon one’s desire to seek vengeance and/or control and correct the wrongs around us. By controlling our anger and by learning to be more patient, tolerant and compassionate we will, to some extent, come to terms with our violent emotions. |
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