This heinous Delhi gang-rape brings back to my mind memories from early 2000 (think 2004) when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged in Kolkata years after brutally raping and murdering a 14-year old! I was shocked at the time to see how human rights activists and others came forward in support of the criminal, condemning the death penalty, and held night-long vigils outside the jail. With its short memory, the public seemed to have forgotten the gory details of how Dhananjoy Chatterjee had raped the girl, killed her and stabbed her several times over (and I think in that order). Attempts were even made to show the perpetrator may have had some “motivation” to do what he did (like really?)!
What’s my point?
My point is we accept our failure as a society and not allow our outrage over the Delhi gang-rape melt away into a misplaced sympathy for the rapists (apparently some 40 percent of Kolkata wanted Dhananjoy Charterjee to be spared from the gallows at the time). We need to come together as one, make a conscious decision of not letting let this issue slip away and channel all anger and frustration to find a fix.
While a fix needs to be made to our law books, to the implementation of rules, most importantly a change needs to be made to our mindsets. And the fixing needs to start at home.
The patriarchal social set up doesn’t recognize the woman as an individual but more as an extension of her father, her brother, her husband or her son. And in this inequality lies the germ of all our problems. Have you ever thought of how regressive some of our rituals are? (How many fasts are men required to keep for their wives?) An equalitarian relationship between the parents will help set the required framework for the kind of mindset their children should have while kids should be treated alike, irrespective of their gender.
And like a wall post doing the rounds on FB puts it – Don’t tell your daughters what to wear, teach your sons how to behave! It is absolutely not cool to whistle at girls, get on to bikes and trail them, tease them, grope them and everything else that goes by the name of “eve teasing”. Eve teasing is not cool, it’s disrespectful and punishable. So instead of ignoring these incidents, boys and girls - if you see it happening or if it happens to you, report it. Some mode of public shaming for such people would be highly recommendable and probably more effective as a deterrent.
After all isn’t it the sense of shame, the feeling of living through the trauma all over again each time one looks into knowing eyes, that compels a rape victim to keep quiet? This needs to change. She needs to be confident that no stupid questions will be raised on what she did to bring this upon her (as if any woman would want to “bring” this on herself!) and that her life, her family, her friends will not be put under the scanner because really none of this is relevant. All the probing, questioning and humiliation should be set aside for the rapist(s). It is the criminal who needs to hang his head in shame!
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