--Medha Chaturvedi
To see a 5-year-old girl who has been raped and her body mutilated, what do you say? When you see bite marks on her cheeks and nose and hear about a 200-ml bottle of coconut oil and three candles which have been extracted from the part of her body which she doesn’t even know about, what do you do? To find yourself standing in a hospital corridor where the endless tirade of media-persons are fighting each other to barge in, what do you think? I was blank. It wasn’t that a child was brutally raped by grown men for forty hours and left to die that tormented me. It was the helplessness of the situation that this child’s torture has again raised for about 600 million women is what anguished me. That this child wasn’t even aware of what was being done to her is what pained me and that the perpetrators conveniently absconded to their native villages guilt-free is what made me question the collective conscience of our nation.
In the 1980’s dowry deaths were a special concern for this country. The surgical precision of attacks on each of the women who were burnt, killed in ‘accidents’ or committed ‘suicides’, is what jolted our collective conscience then. The fact that they left behind bereaved families who could never stop blaming themselves for being ‘inadequate’ in providing the in-laws with more and more and protecting their daughters from an eventual death was what the society protested against. Now, despite the official records stating that 8600 plus women fall prey to registered cases of cold-blooded murder for dowry is not even discussed (Source:http://ncrb.nic.in/CD-CII2011/cii-2011/Chapter%205.pdf).
In the last six months, rape has become the new topic of conversation. The absence of a sensitive government and credible opposition - which has continuously failed in holding the government accountable for its shortcomings - has drawn people to the streets in protest, demanding this basic right of a safe environment for the women of this country. On the day when the media frenzy was its peak in this particular case, five cases of rape from Delhi alone were reported by 2 pm (Source:www.delhipolice.nic.in), but, none of those were noticed. Year on year, crime against women is increasing in India at an alarming 7+ per cent (Source: NCRB records) which goes unnoticed. Why does our anger rise on just these one or two cases? Why don’t we protest against the systemic failure of our policymakers since decades, which has left an entire generation of females vulnerable to crime? My fear is that just like we are now desensitised by dowry deaths in the country, we will soon become cold and indifferent to rape. Instead of looking at the incident, we need to see the why of that incident lest it dies at the hands of our declining sensitivity.
I was a part of the protests for the young woman who did everything right but still got raped and physically mauled by six sub-humans and eventually died in December. What made sense then and not now was that how much ever we protest or our leaders cry, the evil that resides within our people and is a consequence of deeply-rooted social conditioning of male superiority will remain. If a mid-senior level policeman can slap a woman protesting against this gruesome incident in a hospital, then who do you turn to for support? With a momentous anti-corruption movement still going on in India, when the victim’s family is offered Rs 5000 to keep mum about the incident, what do you do?
I often told my friends that this generation, our generation, will usher in the change for this country. That rose-coloured glass was shattered while speaking to a so-called modern progressive foreign-educated 29-year-old Indian man who lives in the most prosperous of areas in the Indian capital. He said that if he would see a woman walking alone on a street at night in Delhi wearing a dress and with make-up on, he would consider her ‘fair game’. On facing protests from the females in this group discussion he clarified by saying, “I wouldn’t rape her, but, knowing that only commercial sex workers or immoral women would walk on the streets in Delhi that way at night, I would try my luck with her.” As a woman, I took offense to that statement, as an Indian I was heartbroken because my hope for change being just around the corner, died.
I am not saying that protests are meaningless; my only argument is that do we know what we are protesting against? Instead of demanding justice for victim A or victim B, we need to demand good governance which will ensure safety of women and an empathetic police force. If the Recent Tehelka expose (Source:http://tehelka.com/video/tehelka-sting-expose-the-rapes-will-go-on/) on the ugly ‘she-asked-for-it’ attitude of policemen in the NCR towards rape victims is anything to go by, we are as far from an open society with Rule of Law in cases of sexual violence against women as we can be. We need to demand speedy trials and an end to the traumatic post-rape procedures that the victim has to undergo. We need to protest against the culture of violence that has been so deeply ingrained in us that we just keeping running around it in a vicious circle and we need to keep calm and firm on these demands and sustain them till they are met. I have hope for a change in this country, but that change will not come by merely protesting, it will come when we let that anger remain in us and propel us forward. It’s not the child, it’s our nation that has been raped and it is in our hands to restore its dignity.
To see a 5-year-old girl who has been raped and her body mutilated, what do you say? When you see bite marks on her cheeks and nose and hear about a 200-ml bottle of coconut oil and three candles which have been extracted from the part of her body which she doesn’t even know about, what do you do? To find yourself standing in a hospital corridor where the endless tirade of media-persons are fighting each other to barge in, what do you think? I was blank. It wasn’t that a child was brutally raped by grown men for forty hours and left to die that tormented me. It was the helplessness of the situation that this child’s torture has again raised for about 600 million women is what anguished me. That this child wasn’t even aware of what was being done to her is what pained me and that the perpetrators conveniently absconded to their native villages guilt-free is what made me question the collective conscience of our nation.
In the 1980’s dowry deaths were a special concern for this country. The surgical precision of attacks on each of the women who were burnt, killed in ‘accidents’ or committed ‘suicides’, is what jolted our collective conscience then. The fact that they left behind bereaved families who could never stop blaming themselves for being ‘inadequate’ in providing the in-laws with more and more and protecting their daughters from an eventual death was what the society protested against. Now, despite the official records stating that 8600 plus women fall prey to registered cases of cold-blooded murder for dowry is not even discussed (Source:http://ncrb.nic.in/CD-CII2011/cii-2011/Chapter%205.pdf).
In the last six months, rape has become the new topic of conversation. The absence of a sensitive government and credible opposition - which has continuously failed in holding the government accountable for its shortcomings - has drawn people to the streets in protest, demanding this basic right of a safe environment for the women of this country. On the day when the media frenzy was its peak in this particular case, five cases of rape from Delhi alone were reported by 2 pm (Source:www.delhipolice.nic.in), but, none of those were noticed. Year on year, crime against women is increasing in India at an alarming 7+ per cent (Source: NCRB records) which goes unnoticed. Why does our anger rise on just these one or two cases? Why don’t we protest against the systemic failure of our policymakers since decades, which has left an entire generation of females vulnerable to crime? My fear is that just like we are now desensitised by dowry deaths in the country, we will soon become cold and indifferent to rape. Instead of looking at the incident, we need to see the why of that incident lest it dies at the hands of our declining sensitivity.
I was a part of the protests for the young woman who did everything right but still got raped and physically mauled by six sub-humans and eventually died in December. What made sense then and not now was that how much ever we protest or our leaders cry, the evil that resides within our people and is a consequence of deeply-rooted social conditioning of male superiority will remain. If a mid-senior level policeman can slap a woman protesting against this gruesome incident in a hospital, then who do you turn to for support? With a momentous anti-corruption movement still going on in India, when the victim’s family is offered Rs 5000 to keep mum about the incident, what do you do?
I often told my friends that this generation, our generation, will usher in the change for this country. That rose-coloured glass was shattered while speaking to a so-called modern progressive foreign-educated 29-year-old Indian man who lives in the most prosperous of areas in the Indian capital. He said that if he would see a woman walking alone on a street at night in Delhi wearing a dress and with make-up on, he would consider her ‘fair game’. On facing protests from the females in this group discussion he clarified by saying, “I wouldn’t rape her, but, knowing that only commercial sex workers or immoral women would walk on the streets in Delhi that way at night, I would try my luck with her.” As a woman, I took offense to that statement, as an Indian I was heartbroken because my hope for change being just around the corner, died.
I am not saying that protests are meaningless; my only argument is that do we know what we are protesting against? Instead of demanding justice for victim A or victim B, we need to demand good governance which will ensure safety of women and an empathetic police force. If the Recent Tehelka expose (Source:http://tehelka.com/video/tehelka-sting-expose-the-rapes-will-go-on/) on the ugly ‘she-asked-for-it’ attitude of policemen in the NCR towards rape victims is anything to go by, we are as far from an open society with Rule of Law in cases of sexual violence against women as we can be. We need to demand speedy trials and an end to the traumatic post-rape procedures that the victim has to undergo. We need to protest against the culture of violence that has been so deeply ingrained in us that we just keeping running around it in a vicious circle and we need to keep calm and firm on these demands and sustain them till they are met. I have hope for a change in this country, but that change will not come by merely protesting, it will come when we let that anger remain in us and propel us forward. It’s not the child, it’s our nation that has been raped and it is in our hands to restore its dignity.
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