Abstract

A growing body of literature has begun to furnish information on the prevalence of child abuse in India. The irony is that the perpetrator is often well known to the child and often intra-familial. Though in some situations, it is beyond their control but many times the family fails to protect the child from sexual abuse. The cultural tradition of the family being a “private space” provides little scope for intercession of public into critiquing its members. Furthermore, severe barriers of culture, traditional practices and social stigma attached in the society make it difficult to speak about the incidences of child abuse in public. The globalization process with modern technology has had it both positive and negative effects. Though it has opened new spaces for gender equality, it also encourages commodification of the bodies. The present paper is based on empirical data collected from one hundred respondents with four in-depth case studies of college girls studying in undergraduate and postgraduate programs of the selected colleges of Lucknow city. It attempts to reflect on the incidents of child abuse through narratives on the complex situation and the processes through which the victim, the family members and the civil society at large deals with.

摘要

越来越多的文献已开始提供有关印度虐待儿童普遍性的信息。具有讽刺意味的是，肇事者往往是孩子所熟知的，而且往往是家庭内部的。尽管在某些情况下，这超出了他们的控制范围，但很多时候家庭未能保护孩子免受性虐待。家庭作为“私人空间”的文化传统几乎没有为公众代求批评其成员提供空间。此外，社会中存在的严重文化障碍、传统习俗和社会污名使得很难在公共场合谈论虐待儿童的事件。现代技术的全球化进程产生了积极和消极的影响。虽然它为性别平等开辟了新的空间，但它也鼓励了身体的商品化。本文基于从 100 名受访者收集的实证数据，对在勒克瑙市选定大学的本科和研究生课程中学习的女大学生进行了四个深入的案例研究。它试图通过叙述受害者、家庭成员和整个民间社会的复杂情况和过程来反思虐待儿童的事件。