Bell Bajao! A call to action to end domestic violence

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Here is a piece on the simple but impactful Bell Bajao campaign that I had written for Himal long ago, for International Women’s Day.

It is a lazy Sunday morning for the man in his pyjamas, as he sips his tea and reads the newspaper. Tries to read the newspaper, that is. For he is constantly distracted by the sounds of a loud argument floating through the thin barrier of the shared walls of the housing complex he lives in. It is not quite an argument; it is the sound of a man berating a woman for a trifling domestic issue. He increases the volume of the radio on the table next to him to drown out the sounds. Nothing works. He gets up, puts on his shirt and walks with a purpose across the corridor to the house where the noise is coming from, and rings the bell. A man opens the door with a tentative look to see this stranger staring intently at him, the slightest tinge of aggression on his face. A second of silence, and then the person outside the door holds a hand out and says, “Can I borrow some milk?” By the time the man returns to the door, the stranger has vanished.

The moment has passed. Another incident of domestic violence has been halted.

Bell Bajao! Ring the bell, stop domestic violence – says this campaign which has been on air in Indian television since August 2008. The campaign was conceived by Breakthrough, an international human rights organization. It was created along with Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency, and supported by the Union Women and Child Development Ministry.

Staggering figures

Take a moment to read these figures: In India, every three minutes, a crime is committed against a woman. Every six hours, a young married woman is burned, beaten to death or driven to commit suicide. And according to the third National Family Health Survey published in 2006 (NFHS 3), over 40 percent of Indian women have been victims of domestic violence at some stage in their lives (while a controversial study by the UN Population Fund published just a year earlier pegs the figure at a much higher 70 percent)

Domestic violence is by no means endemic to India. 60 percent of women killed in the United States are victims of domestic violence, and it is the leading cause of injury among women in the age group of 15 – 44. Nor is domestic violence restricted to an illiterate population. In a prosperous and entirely literate country like Switzerland, statistics show that 12.6% of Swiss women suffer from physical violence, while 11.6% have faced sexual violence.

What is scary in the Indian context is societal attitudes towards violence against women, specifically violence within the closed walls of a home, a family, or a marriage. More than 50% of the men surveyed in the third NFHS and 55% of the women believe that violence against women is warranted under several circumstances. It is not that Indian women are particularly given to masochism; it is the effect of several years of conditioning. Your husband is your god, a girl is told from the time she learns to think. Adikkira kai thaan anaikkum – the hand that beats is the hand that hugs, goes a popular song from an old Tamil movie, encouraging the woman to turn the other cheek.

As with many other cultures, women are reluctant to come out in the open and talk about it, or even admit to being victims. Added to that is the strong belief that family matters should not be made public, and are not open to intervention by strangers or outsiders, a term that sometimes includes even the women’s parents or siblings and friends.

This stems partly from a need to maintain the honour and dignity of the family, and partly from the belief that once married, the woman becomes the property of the husband; at her wedding ceremony, a bride is handed over to the groom in a ritual called kanyadaan, translated into ‘gifting the girl’. Given all this cultural baggage, it is of little surprise that the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) passed in 2005 has not had much impact.

According to the findings from a baseline survey conducted by Breakthrough, along with the Centre for Media Studies in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, only 3.3 precent of respondents across three research centres were aware of the Act, while none of the women in Uttar Pradesh had even heard of it.

Everyone’s business

This baseline survey formed the basis of the Bell Bajao! Campaign: 80% of the respondents think that only family members should intervene if the husband physically abuses his wife, while the rest believe that it is nobody’s business, and the wife should remain silent. And it is precisely this attitude of unconcern for what goes on behind closed doors that the Bell Bajao! campaign seeks to shake, if not completely demolish. So far, the campaign has taken the form of television commercials, radio spots, wall paintings and documentaries.

The ads attempt to convey the message that anyone can intervene and make a difference; all it takes is one small step in the beginning. The key element in this campaign is the fact that in the television commercials, it is men who are shown ringing the bell. Men, traditionally seen as the perpetrators, are roped in as partners in the movement to raise a voice against domestic violence. The ads typically depict a potential abuser being prevented from violence out of the veiled threat of confrontation by an aware witness. No direct confrontation is needed; the simple act of ringing the bell – nothing before, nothing after – and a moment of possible awkwardness is tided over smoothly.

“While testing the campaign before the launch, we had responses from our test group saying, ‘Is that it? Is this all I have to do to stop DV?’ It’s so simple”, says Sonali Khan, Director of Communications at Breakthrough, India. As part of immediate future plans, Khan adds, Breakthrough is now looking at getting men of influence on board, from the village panchayat head to the Residents’ Welfare Association officer in housing colonies in cities to participate in the campaign.

Ringing that door bell on time – that is all it takes to make a difference.

Violence against women: facts across the Southasian region

* From the briefing paper, Towards ending violence against women in South Asia (Oxfam International, 2004), it emerges that one in two women in Southasia faces violence in her home.

* In Pakistan, abuse of women is among the highest in the world, with 70 – 90% of women admitting to being abused by their spouse at some time or the other.

* In Bhutan, cases of domestic violence are rarely reported, and there is not much data available. Last available figures are for 2006, with doctors at the National Referral Hospital admitting to treating 117 women who were victims of domestic violence and 33 of sexual assault.

* Data from Nepal state that 66% of the women in the country endure verbal abuse, with over half of them living with it on a daily basis.

* In Sri Lanka, it is estimated that roughly 60% of women are subject to domestic violence, while in Bangladesh, 47% of women experience domestic violence. 14% of all maternal deaths result from it domestic violence.