India Could Learn From California Court's HIV Decision

SAN FRANCISCO--In a ground-breaking ruling this week, the California Supreme Court said that people who don't tell their partners about their past sexual activities can be made to pay damages for negligently transmitting the human immuno-deficiency virus or other sexually communicable diseases. The ruling, the court emphasized, applies only to married or monogamous couples and not necessarily to those in casual relationships.

Bravo to the court, and bravo to the woman who was courageous enough to sue her ex-husband for infecting her with HIV, the virus that causes the deadly AIDS, even though she risked the possibility of having to go public about her own personal life.

Knowingly passing along the AIDS virus is already illegal in California, and people who do so may be sued for damages in state court. But the recent ruling makes it a crime for people not to divulge their sexual past even if they do not know they are infected.

India, which, at 5.6 million, has the highest number of HIV positive people in the world -- though non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assert that the number is closer to 10 million -- would do well to introduce such a law if it is serious about wanting to check the raging spread of the disease. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington predicts that the country, already at a tipping point, will have around 25 million cases by 2010.

In India, a woman's low status, woeful lack of rights and her training since childhood not to challenge the prerogatives of men, make her vulnerable to infections, regardless of her own behavior. Even if she knows her husband is infected, she will be too afraid to demand protected sex.

In India, there are no laws that criminalize rape within marriage. In many areas, girls are married off soon after they reach puberty. For a woman to leave her husband would mean forfeiting her rights to a marital home. It is estimated that 80 percent of HIV-positive women there have been infected within marriage, prompting U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan to say that the greatest risk a woman faces is getting married.

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