Today, I wanted to write. And then I
wondered how many times I was going to rant about rape in this
country. How many times I was going to emphasise on the fact that
every day I feel a little less safer in this country. My social
networking pages are clogged with statuses and photos asking for
capital punishment for those six men who gang-raped a girl on a
moving bus. The incident has even moved those apathetic people who,
most of the time, have no idea what is going on in their country.
Many of these posts claim that we Indians are passive and don't
really get out on the streets or express our anger towards these
atrocities. Little do they forget that all this while they are the
ones who have been passive and oblivious to the many attempts that
citizens have made to voice their dismay in light of the growing
incidence of rape in the country.
The heterogeneous nature of these posts
amazes me. There are a few ideas that are dominating, the most
prominent being those in favour of capital punishment and castration.
How is that a solution? How is such a violent punishment any
solution? Dig a little deeper and you will find that in Delhi, the
abundance of this crime is due to many loopholes in the system and
society. Only a small percentage of it is contributed by the lack of
a more trusting judicial system.
I have always opposed the use of death
penalty but what is most wrong with this method is that what people
want is to get rid of the criminal rather than the crime – to get
rid of the problem at hand rather than the root of the problem.
Instead, what we need is to rethink our ways of education and
outlook. There is so much that contributes to a society that
flourishes with sexual violence. Our outlook is outdated and largely
dominated by judgement. The men and women who contribute to
stereotyping another as “easy”, stripping them of dignity without
more than just a glance. Those who will question the attire, the
place, the caste, the family life and the choices of the survivor of
such a gruesome crime. The society that prohibits its men and women
from interacting with each other until a certain age and then throws
them into a bed with a complete stranger. The naive society that
glorifies its stronghold on the lack of sexual expression and yet
considers Bollywood item numbers as glamorous and ultimately wonders
why there is rampant sexual violence.
The worst part of this entire episode
is that we have all gone on a man-hating, woman sympathising spree.
We are talking about violence against women. About the safety of
women. About how this entire thing is about the way our culture
treats women. At this point, it would be the most obvious thing to
also question and stand up for the the safety of and the violence
against the men. But this is where I believe we are all lost. It is
not about men and women. It is about a crime against humans, a black
mark on humanity itself. No human being, regardless of gender, should
be treated like this.
A friend of mine put up a very
interesting status on the issue suggesting that Delhi rapists must
stop raping because they are giving feminists a reason to get things
their way:
“I guess it should be made
official. Delhi – The most dangerous city in the world for women!
Heinous, atrocious and merciless monsters dwelling in the place. Time
and again hearing the same news again and again. Thank you Delhi
rapists, you're giving the feminists exactly what they need –
stringent laws meant for women against men. Laws where even false
accusations count in any other safe city or any part of India because
of what happened in NCR/Delhi. Bravo, bravo! Thanks to Delhi rapists,
the threat of feminist laws would be the order of the day for the
entire nation's innocent men. Sentiments from an anti-feminist.”
Firstly, this guy has got the meaning
of feminism completely wrong. Feminism is the belief that men and
women are equal or gender equality. I understand there are feminists
out there whose ideas are simply repulsive but to completely
misunderstand the word feminism is sheer stupidity. I agree that the
literal term may be misguiding but a little research will lead you to
discover that feminism is not pro-woman and anti-man, rather it is
adhering to standards of gender equality. Sexual violence is not a
women's rights issue. It is a human rights issue. Completely and
wholly a human rights issue. The more we exclude the plight of men
and focus on a woman's rights in a society like ours, we encourage
exclusion. The only way forward is inclusion.
I'd like to keep up with the composed
and tempered style in which I have, in the past, penned down my
frustrations but at the moment, nothing seems to shake off the
anguish that has filled me with this incident. What irks me more is
the overwhelming response. In the past we have had the death of
Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez, the many incidents of rape in
Delhi leading to an imposition of a curfew, the gang-rape of a
student in National Law School Bangalore, courts not recognising
marital rape as a crime, khap panchayats blaming chowmein and
countless similar incidents. Did it take this one girl and her
friend's brutal torture for you to wake the fuck up?
While I am glad that this incident has
finally pushed the media to relevantly deal with and question on the
subject, I fear that this too shall pass like the many instances of
sexual violence that we have seen on the news. I fear that these
stories will come and go as fads for us to exercise armchair activism
and at the end of it we too shall contribute to it. What happened to
that girl, her plight was not only in the hands of those six men. It
was in our hands too. Our society is but a reflection of our
thoughts. How often do we walk through the streets, get felt up and
walk away in silence? How often do we see other people get teased and
molested and walk away in silence? If we don't do so now, at some
point we have contributed with our silence. At this point I urge you
to not lose the anger, wake up and scream. No more silence.
In the words of a friend, it is not the
end of the world we are approaching, it is the end of humanity.
