Facing up to acid attacks

On June 2, while everyone was gagging for yet more news about cricket, a young woman named Preeti Rathi quietly died in a Mumbai hospital, her body destroyed by a man who, a month before,had tapped her on the shoulder and thrown acid in her face as she turned. Nobody yet knows who he was, or why he did this.

An acid attack is what Jane Welsh's 2009 master's thesis on the subject calls "an intimate act of terrorism".There is arguably no more vicious way to hurt a human being - plus it's cheap, requires no expertise or effort, and ensures constant and permanent pain. Nip out to the local market, pick up a bottle of sulphuric or hydrochloric or nitric acid for less than the price of a Coke, chuck the contents in the face of your target, disappear as people focus on the horror of sizzling, smoking flesh, and Bob's your uncle.
 

Acid melts flesh and bone in a matter of seconds. You have to look at the photographs of survivors to appreciate what that means. Chanchal Paswan would want you to. Last year a group of men poured acid on the 18-year-old'sface as she slept, then stuck around to watch and laugh as her mother tried to douse her burning flesh. Chanchal had turned down one of the men. She insists that you look at her face. So does Sonali Mukherjee, who is still waiting for justice nine years after a fellow student mutilated her with acid for refusing to marry him.

Acid attacks are not new, nor limited to one gender, nor limited to India. Jane Welsh describes a spate in 19th century Europe, when jealous women who earned the moniker 'les Vitrioleuses' attacked their husbands' mistresses (as they still do in Cambodia) and were often let off in a social climate that looked benignly on crimes of passion. Two women were attacked in Chicago in recent years, one by a woman who hired children to do her dirty work. In January this year, the director of the Bolshoi Ballet was the victim of an acid attack allegedly thought up by a rival dancer. Men have attacked other men over property disputes in Bangladesh. Parents have melted the faces off their children for choosing the wrong partner.

Survivors spend the rest of their lives managing grotesque injuries and deformities, chronic pain and health problems, severe psychological trauma, ostracisation, and the economic ruin of multiple surgeries and lost earning capacity.

Vicious hatred is not limited to a single gender or reason or geography. But today, in India, the vast majority of acid attacks constitute violence against women. And while no hard data is available, it seems that these attacks are on the rise.

Maybe that rise is partly because of increased reporting, but it's also because using acid is so easy peasy, and because a society in flux, like ours, is more prone to violence. The vast majority of acid throwers in India are men who locate honour and self-esteem in their ability to control women - starting with their sexuality - whose egos are wounded by rejection or jealousy or disobedience, and who have not been taught to handle those feelings.

In 2005, 16-year-old Laxmi was attacked in Delhi's Khan Market by a boy she had refused to marry. Seven years ago, Pragya Singh was attacked by a jealous admirer for getting married. In July 2011, 17-year-old Kiran died after being attacked by a man whose advances she had spurned. In May 2012, an 18-year-old volleyball player was inexplicably attacked in Rohtak. In August 2012 Hemalata was attacked by her own parents, for being in the wrong man's house. Handwritten posters appeared in Ranchi last year, threatening acid attacks on women wearing jeans or not wearing a dupatta.

If you dare to disagree with me or disobey me, I will destroy you - that's your plain vanilla terrorist. It's essential to ban or regulate acid sales and bring attackers to justice. Bangladesh has done that and seen a 75 per cent drop in acid violence over ten years ago. It's essential to provide medical, legal, skills training and economic aid to victims of acid attacks, as Cambodia is doing.

But as in all cases of violence against women, prevention is the paramount need and the much greater challenge. We have to reconfigure our collective social notions of shame, honour, sexual autonomy and human rights. That needs education, campaigning and awareness raising, better policing, political will, enough children raised to value themselves, respect others and repudiate violence, and enough women who, despite their horrifying injuries, will not be cowed.

We have to get this right. The costs of not doing so are unacceptable.