There seems to be something really wrong with the men of India. I am just not in a mood to start this post with flamboyant words. Anyone who has been following the news of late (regularly) can see that there is an incident of a rape every single day! Men with heights of perversion rape 3yr olds! How much more ridiculous can these guys get? Every single day we see a rape case. And invariably they always involve kids! I am not able to fathom if this some kind of new sexual preference. And its not as if there is this phenomena because these men have a bad lifestyle, deprived of women or something (deprivation also doesn't justify raping kids). To be very frank, there are enough brothels for these men to satisfy their desires. How much culture bugle they might play, it is seen that all men are inherently expressive about their sexual desires. Whether it is legally or illegally, men want to indulge in sexual acts with different women. Sex scandals are the most common scandals (at least no public money is lost there). Ok now I was talking about rapes here. Hardliners like the Ram Sena, Deoband, Evangelists who are always quick to attack women as the cause for the degeneration of the cultural ethos of India don't seem to have any voice in this issue? Why aren't there any fatwas issued, why aren't the perpetrators of such crime pulled by their hairs and dragged out on to the streets? (read Ram Sena) and why aren't the same evangelists who belabor about their opposition to contraceptives citing that sexual acts should only be for reproduction, coming out against such men?
Truth remains that religious organizations and dogmatic institutes for order mean no good to the society and only come out when popular voice is required. Thats another story altogether. Statistics say that in India, on an average, one woman is raped every 25 mins. Do your own calculations for the year. The rise in rape crimes has increased by 678% since 1971! 678%?! Thats more than the percentage increase in the number of women itself. And that still doesn't include marital rapes. How many women in India would be right now silently bearing the wrath of their perverted husbands. I do not want to list out the cases themselves because of the utter shame that I would have to feel inside for describing the crimes that are committed. What is certainly not fathomable to me is how many kids are getting raped. 5 yr olds, 6 yr olds, children who have hardly began to recognize the faces of their relatives properly. Why they wouldn't even understood what was being done to them when they were getting raped. Gang rape of these small children and then most of the times they get beaten to death! And we keep singing glories about our rockets, our culture, tradition etc and etc. A rape case gets published in the website of a news channel for a day and the next day its not visible in its main page. Not that we want it to stay there for perpetuity. But then, why aren't there national debates on such issues? The media created a hysteria behind the decriminalizing of section 377 of the IPC. The mass media hysteria brought up many a debates and gay parades throughout the towns and cities of India. Fair enough, gays and other sexual minorities deserve their due. India has grown and is more mature they said when 377 was decriminalized. I say, India will be truly mature and worthy of all the nice adjectives that are attributed to it only when its women are respected and given their due.
Whether we have a woman President or a woman PM or a woman Military General, it doesn't matter to the small girl who is repeatedly abused sexually in her home and in constant probability range of getting raped each time she wanders off to play. So much for a civilization thats probably the only living one that still has a concept of a Goddess. The concept of Shakti, the most powerful force in the Universe, gives tremendous amount of respect and adulation to the feminine being. We have to be more than just proud of such intellectual advancements that our ancestors had. The worst part remains when the rape victims are not accepted back into their family or that they don't get married at all. I call it indiscriminate, deliberately negligent and ruthless assault on the mental stature of a woman. Its like punishing an innocent person for a lifetime and then hanging him for wanting to lead a normal life when he gets released at the end of his term. I shudder to imagine what would be going in the minds of a rapist. How does he have a heart to ruin a woman's life and worse of all, a child's life. After the Austrian incest case surfaced last year, there seems to be a spurge in the cases of fathers raping their daughters. So much for taking inspiration from the west. One girl was repeatedly sexually exploited by her father for 7 years, this time with the complete knowledge of her mother because a tantric advised them to do so in order to get rid of financial problems. I know, the reader is bound to get stunned. The girl bore it all and when it dawned that her sister was also to be subjected to the same punishment, she managed to report it back to the police. In patna, a woman was sexually harassed in public while being paraded and then stripped of her clothes in full view of the police and the onlookers. Not a single voice of protest! Great Indian Tamasha indeed! None of them would probably face criminal action serious enough for their heinous crime. In news today, it disappears the next day only to be replaced by another 'story'. Highly gut wrenching, and sickening, each story has a girl who is left without a face for all her life. Above all this torture, society doesn't respect her anymore (for no crime of hers!). How much more hypocritic can we get.
Solutions. I truly feel having exclusive fast track courts for rape victims. Something the National Commission for Women in India should take up as a mission instead of demanding one third reservation in parliament. One third or two third, in the mass plethora of pervert men out there, women are always vulnerable. These fast track courts should deal with all cases of abuse against women because our regular courts have pending cases that will take probably couple of more generations to clear. However, care should also be taken to ensure that no false cases are registered as acts of revenge by women. Because women are after all, humans and not angels. Investigative approach to all cases but in a faster pace would ensure the criminals are booked and the victims are given justice. Secondly, I feel since the masses of India are easily swayed by talks of culture, religious morality etc, they should be used wisely used to bring some sense into the minds of perverts. A kind of mass campaign should be undertaken to ensure the men truly feel ashamed before they even think of committing such crimes.
This is a land where stories of Goddesses braving evil men and vanquishing them are known to every kid. The same civilization where God is portrayed in half male and half female form. The male and female attributes are in all bodies. As the Rigveda says, 'He, who is described as male, is as much the female and the penetrating eye does not fail to see it' meaning the male is only so much male as much he is female and vice versa the female is only as much female as much she is male. In a land where this magnitude of equality is attributed to women, why does our society fail to live up to its reputation and for sustaining this reputation, why is a woman's life ruined everyday and her voice of protest suppressed?
Vivek
