In
ancient India, women occupied a very important position, in fact a superior
position to men. It is a culture whose only words for strength and power re
feminine - “shakti”. [1]
Literary evidence suggests that kings and towns were destroyed because a single
woman was wronged by the state. We can see that in Valmiki’s Ramayana, it
teaches us that Ravana and his entire clan was wiped out as Sita was abducted. The
problem in India is not that there is persistent patriarchy in the society but
that patriarchy is presumed to be female subjugation. It will be wrong to say
that women are considered to be weak in India, it is correct to say that the
Lack of Education and Empowerment of Women has led for the other sex to believe
that women are weak. Let alone the male presuming so, daughters are taught by
their mothers to accept the different treatment as it is correct and well
deserved.
The infamous white coloured bus that went
around the streets of an emerging nations capital with a girl being raped
brutally. The case was one of the many rape cases reported in India but it
mustered a mass support. The slum dwellers raped an innocent medical student
while her accompanist was pushed out of the bus The awfulness of the incident, including assault with rod,
guaranteed the case publicity. It is hard to imagine the same publicity if the
girl had been from a poor migrant family. You might be concluding that it ends
here. No. The rapists had added raping a girl to the chores of their daily to –
do list and they regarded this as “fun”. The chief minister remarked, “Being a mother of a daughter, I suggest women
should not step out late in the evening.” The irony is in its statement
itself. The people reacted on the
incident which in turn granted the criminals a capital punishment. The question
is , will hanging the rapists serve any good? Is capital punishment the
solution to the deteriorating condition of women safety in india? Recent
studies show that each execution deters five murderers on average.[2]
A criminal who thinks of sexually abusing a screaming girl as fun cannot be
corrected by capital punishment nor can the others be prevented from getting
this thought in their head. Some psychologists suggest that a criminal is made
by birth, this is usually the explanation sought to justify the acts of serial
killers. The fear of death has from times immemorial made a man act differently
but it is not the solution for the heinous act that has already destroyed a
life and the others connected to this life. The old saying that, “Prevention is
better than Cure” shall still stand true.
Though
the statistics do not suggest high rates of rape in India, the figures are
highly questionable. Anecdotally, almost every woman seems to have a story of
being accosted, groped or worse. But the Centre for Social Research in Delhi,
sees progress in at least in how the word rape(balatkar) is now being discussed
openly , which was nearly a taboo. Surprisingly, in January 2013, the Ministry
of Justice, Office of National Statistics and Home Office released its first
official joint statistics on sexual offences in England and Wales. It reported
that approximately, 85,000 women are raped on average a year and 1 in 5 women
have experienced some form of sexual violence. The need of the hour is for an
updated action plan to tackle all
aspects of the problem. The implementation of
the plan is as important as the formulation.
I
would like to conclude by stating that there’s something uncomfortably
neocolonial about the way the Delhi gang rape case and subsequent death of the
victim is being handled in the UK and US media. While India’s Civil and
political Spheres are alight with protests and demands for changes to the
country’s culture of sexual violence, commentators here are using the event to
simultaneously demonize Indian society and minimize the enormity of western
rape culture.
Kritika
Angirish
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