The demand for men’s rights has become a serious discourse in India. In April, close to 100 men’s rights activists, including women, protested in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, claiming that the Indian legal system unduly favours women.
In a democracy, demanding rights is a citizen’s obligation. However, what qualifies as rights must be analysed in light of which section of society they are meant for. Identity-based rights, by their very definition, are meant for those who are on the receiving end of an oppressive socio-political structure. The fallacy of men’s ‘rights’, which, incidentally, is meant for a group that identifies itself as cis-heterosexual men, lies in the conflation of rights with privilege-based entitlement — the privilege of phallocentrism.
Yet, to deny men’s rights as a group is not to deny men’s rights as individuals, covered adequately under the framework of human rights. However, this framework, imagined from androcentric perspectives, operates under the assumption of a level playing field between men and women and is therefore insufficient in addressing women’s concerns. For instance, Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to rest and leisure, reasonable limitation of working hours, and periodic holidays with pay. This provision alludes to the rights of workers who participate in economic production in exchange for remuneration but it is tellingly oblivious to women’s unpaid and unrecognised domestic work, including child rearing, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women.
So how do we read into this demand for men’s rights in contemporary India?
The demand hinges on false narratives. For instance, suicides, though unquestionably tragic, have been cited as a sign of men’s struggle. However, the problem lies in mobilising the narratives of men’s suicide and the half-truths surrounding such personal tragedies as an antithesis of women’s rights.
The proponents of men’s rights belong to a specific demography, often representing class, caste, and urban privileges alongside gender. The agenda here is not to liberate people under various structures of oppression but to denounce the achievements of feminism.
Women are at the receiving end of violence in some of the crudest forms. Statistically speaking, the magnitude of direct violence against women is disproportionately high.
The structural conditions of gender-based oppression are incomparable to the isolated incidences of men’s suicide, allegedly due to marital reasons. The tragedies notwithstanding, these incidents are being cherry-picked to suit the narratives of men’s rights.
Let us consider some pertinent figures. The National Crime Records Bureau data do not capture the category of suicide due to false domestic violence cases. Between 2017 and 2022, 30.8% of the total suicides by men were due to family problems (not related to marriage) as compared to marriage-related issues (3.4%). In fact, more women (25,197) than men (21,579) have died by suicide due to marriage-related issues (including non-settlement of marriage, extra-marital affairs, dowry-related issues, divorce, and so on). Understandably, the complexity of this narrative does not
lie in pitting men against women by erecting a wall of men’s rights. Gender-based rights are located in the historical structures of oppression in which men have predominantly retained the place of oppressor.
The cry for men’s rights is an insecure response to the challenge posed to the status quo of male privilege. Men’s rights, at best, are fragile and unfounded orchestrations of masculinity that oppress men as much as they are hostile towards women’s rights.