The savagely brutal gang
rape of a 19 year old Dalit girl
in Hathras and her subsequent death should shock every
civilized person’s conscience. The cruel and vicious manner in which four men,
supposedly from a dominant caste, attacked an innocent young girl, leaving her
paralysed with severe injuries to her spinal cord, serves as a dreadful
reminder that as a nation we have once again failed our country’s daughters.
Her tongue cut and attempts to strangulate her is nothing short of barbaric and
reflective of our failure to cleanse the deep societal malaise which has systematically
crept in. The fact that our society continues to be divided across religious,
class, caste and economic lines, where the ‘superiors’ feel they have a right
to subjugate the supposed ‘inferiors’ is a failure of our polity to instill
within the populace the Constitutional values of equality. The belief that the
powerful can get away, and a different system applies to them, is a failure of
our administrative authorities who need to immediately address the existing
power imbalance. Such repeated incidents are a failure of the policing in our
country and, in a nation governed by the rule of law, also of our criminal
justice system.
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One had thought that
the Nirbhaya case of 2012 would have served as a
wake-up call. But 2013 witnessed the Shakti Mills gang rape case, followed by the Baduan gang rape
and murder in 2014 and then the infamous Sivaganga and Kandhamal gang
rape incidents in 2015. The subsequent year marked the Bulandshahr gang rape and in 2017 the Unnao gang
rape came to be recorded. Last year had many ghastly incidents of gang
rape; first of the Hyderabad veterinarian, followed by a
similar occurrence in Buxar. These repeated incidents are a
reflection of our collective failure as individuals and a testimony of the
depravity in our human values. But above all, they are a manifestation of our
patriarchal ridden society and a culture that normalizes sexual violence.
Immediate change is needed.
Dr. Madhumita Pandey, a
lecturer in criminology conducted the first of its kind research where she
interviewed several 100 convicted rapists. She concluded that when you talk to
the accused, “you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really
ordinary [part of our own society]. What they’ve done is because of upbringing
and thought process.” She goes on to state that a commonality in everyone she
spoke to was a sense of entitlement, which pointed to a male privilege in
Indian culture and society. Pandey further notes that “a lot of these men don’t
realize that what they've done is rape. They don't understand what consent is.”
The
Verma Committee constituted in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya case noted
that if “necessary steps are not taken by the State to provide basic amenities
and guarantees in line with the Constitutional mandate, the State runs the risk
of alienating its own citizens.” The State has clearly failed in its duties, as
there is only a steady increase in these atrocities. The last National Crime
Records Bureau data reveals the crime rate per lakh women population has
increased to 62.4 per cent in 2019, in comparison to 58.8 per cent in 2018.
Shamefully, rape is one of the fastest growing crimes in India!
No matter how enraged we are
today, the demands for immediate death of the accused and their public
shooting, as alleged to have happened after the Hyderabad incident, doesn’t
bode well for a country where due process was afforded even to Ajmal Kasab. In
fact, as social scientists point out, there exists a complex relationship
between punishment and sexual violence.
Therefore, while
candle-light processions and marches are needed to bring about accountability
and to create public awareness, our rage really needs to make way for action.
Before we start asking others for answers, we all need to ask ourselves some
questions on what we, each one of us, can do in our microcosm to bring about
change. What do we owe and what are our obligations asides from just expressing
dismay staring at our smart phones.
We can begin by directing
our attention towards “structural societal change that addresses the asymmetric
power relationship between men and women in our country.” This needs to be followed
by a deep cleaning of our thought process and a drastic change in our social
conditioning. We also need to change our inherent attitude towards women and
the role which our culture historically attributes to them in our society. It
sounds rather simplistic but, really, we need a reform in our perception and
psychological outlook which routinely promotes inequalities against women. As a
society we need to promote alternate forms of masculine expression and
re-define our social contract.
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The rancorous Nirbhaya
attack in 2012 and the several subsequent incidents should serve as an
unpleasant reminder that we can no longer wait. We need to act, collectively,
in a constructive manner and we need to act in the here and now. If we don’t,
there will come a time when that flickering flame in our hearts would get
extinguished, burnt-out or just blown-away. And then, each of us would be
complicit the next time another daughter of our country is brutalised.
About Author
Swamitra Kamble
5th Year IX Semester
Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur
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