RAPES IN INDIA a Man's Perspective

March 2004: A 59-year old Australian, Dawn Griggs was murdered and raped on her way to Mount Abu. 18th February 2008: An English teenager Scarlett Keeling, was raped in India which dew flak among international community 1st December 2009: A Russian national working in India claimed that she was raped by a Goan politician after having dinner with him that evening. 16th December 2012: The gang rape of a 23-year old student on a moving public bus, sparked large protests across the capital Delhi. She was penetrated with an iron rod leading to her death 13 days after the incident. December 2012: Within the 24-hour period after the after the horrific Delhi gang rape incident, at least two girls under the age of 18 were gang raped and one of them was murdered. March 2013: A Swiss couple cycling from Orchha to Agra, were physically assailed by locals, the man was overpowered and tied up while the 39-year old woman was gang-raped in front of her husband. The list is endless and further description of the crimes may put anyone to shame. The spate of incidences of rapes in India had forced me to think as to what is wrong with the current situation in our society and what could be done to make our family, workplaces society and country a better and dignified place for women. Like a man a woman is just a woman I remember a Sanskrit Shlok learned in seventh grade which goes by: यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवताः । यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः ॥ It means that the society that provides respect and dignity to women flourishes with nobility and prosperity. And a society that does not put women on such a high pedestal has to face miseries and failures regardless of how so much noble deeds they perform otherwise. I also clearly remember my childhood days when we were told by the elders to touch the feet of a girl if we had mistakenly touched her. Women in Indian society have a great significance with connotations like ‘Ghar Ki Lakshmi’ and ‘Kanya Maata’. This was quite evident in the introductory line (Shlok) of this article as well. That according to me is where part of the problem lies. Since we see them as goddesses, we expect them to dress, address and behave in a certain manner and when they don’t fit in the ‘societal criterion’ of goddesses, we label them as sexual objects. We must appreciate that like men, women can just be women, they don’t have to be necessarily tagged as either a goddesses to be worshipped or an object seen as just ‘sexual beings’. Rape is not just a sexual attack. One might be considered foolish to ask a rudimentary question like what exactly a rape is. To be very true, this question has haunted me since the days when a daily soap named Shanti with Mandira Bedi as its protagonist was aired on the only available and accessible national television channel. I always wondered as to what was this gruesome atrocity which was forced on Shanti’s mother. Of course, I know a lot more today but I still fail to accept that rape is only a physical assault motivated by sexual desires. Rape depicts the outburst of desperation and frustration of the perpetrator and a mark of his desire to show his physical strength and dominance over women According to me it’s a mark of infringement of the utmost level of a woman’s privacy and has a lot to do with a ridiculous concept of sanctity of women’s virginity. We still live in a society where it is thought that the essence of a women’s life is lost if she has been subject to a rape. That is a reason of a rape in most of the cases where the accused has tried to do an irrevocable damage to women for revenge. Until and unless, we as a society fail to understand and see that this irrevocable damage is done not to the victim but to the perpetrator of the crime, the situation is not going to improve. Acknowledgment of sex a natural desire It is a well known fact that the more we try to conceal a concept from some; more is the curiosity and the desire of that person to explore that concept. In our society, sex is a taboo for discussion and we fail to understand the fact that it’s a natural desire and there is nothing wrong to have this desire. There is a mention of prostitution as one of the oldest trades, in almost every historical biblical which makes it pretty evident that there is nothing new about this sexual desire. Let me categorically state that I am in no way proposing legal prostitution as a measure to curb incidences of rape. This measure might have been appropriate in some of the places where sex workers are not looked down at and instead given the requisite dignity and respect. Yes! Such places exist in this world and one such example is Amsterdam. We as a society have to travel a long distance, mature and evolve a lot to reach that stage. In current situation, prostitution in India in itself is a cancer leading to chronic problems like human trafficking and slavery. In the current state of affairs, sex education with focus on sensitivity towards women is the need of the hour. Stringent laws The insensitiveness of the police machinery, judiciary has a lot to do with the incidences of rape. Many a times the victim chooses not to even report the crime to avoid the embarrassment at the hand of authorities. The legal process is lengthy and based on archaic and outdated laws which doesn’t not hold true in today’s context. The length of the legal process makes it difficult for the victim to move over traumatic incident. In the recent incident of Delhi gang rape case, one of the accused, the most brutal in the assault has been penalized with only 3 years of imprisonment by juvenile justice board on the pretext of his age proven by his school records. The speediness and severity of the punishment based of the gravity of the crimes committed would set a right precedent and might act as a deterrent for these incidences. Viney Rao