“No means no, whether it’s a stranger, your girlfriend, a prostitute or even your own wife. No means no!”

This is a very strong and powerful dialogue from an Indian Bollywood movie, Pink, which gives an outstanding massage.

This article is about marital rape in India. India, where culture is so damn important and everything related to it is sacred. Indian marriage’s sanctity is also at its peak in name of culture. But can there be two yardsticks to define rape – rape of an unmarried woman and that of a married woman? Is it acceptable to discriminate against a woman just because she is married to a man who raped her?  The simple answer is NO.

Sexual intercourse without the consent of your partner has only one name, and that is RAPE. Whether then it’s with your wife in your bedroom, it’s a rape. In the whole world, it is known as marital rape and is criminalized as well in many western, developing and developed countries. But in India, it is not still criminalized, even though there are so many complaints are filed every year. Women have equal rights and they should also have the right to deny if she doesn’t want to get involved in sexual intercourse, whether then it’s her own husband. Marital rape simply means that husbands are insensitive towards the wife and that is unacceptable.

The Director of Social and Economic Development at the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), Priya Nanda, had told the leading portal, “the reason men don’t want to criminalize marital rape is that they don’t want to give the woman the power to say NO.”

This is alarming and needs to be given wide attention, for the sake of gender neutrality, equal rights and women empowerment.