By Tulika Narayan:
Every once in a while I pick up a newspaper only to get horrified. Every time I watch TV, the reality strikes me and every moment I have wondered over spending a night all alone, the issue has always pinned me. Elders often ask us not to get perturbed by such news, but it isn’t that comforting either.
Last few months have seen back to back cases of young girls being raped, mauled, assaulted, brutalized, harassed, shoved off a running train or left locked in a house without food or water for months together. Umpteen cases of rapes in a span of just 24 hours in every district of the nation used to sound dreadful; now it’s a part and parcel of life. There would not be perhaps a single girl not having one such frightful story in her kitty.
As a nosy media brings these images to us 24/7, the news seems to have anaesthetized us out of our ability to empathize, react or protest. Are we a citizenry bereft of any human emotion and conscience? Our silence condones crime. Our apathy is their power source. Our indifference is the curtain these criminals hide behind, each time they ruin a woman’s life.
More than twenty cases of rape and molestation were reported in Haryana, in a month; let alone Delhi and rest of the country. And mind you, twenty is just another number which have been figured out; heaven knows how many complaints the police refused to lodge. Add on to that, the number of cases which were not reported at all due to varied reasons like family reputation, the victim being too ashamed or afraid or murdered, etc. The toll of gang rapes seems to be increasing day by day. An ongoing struggle for emancipation of women seems unending; or, shall I say, redundant?
Going through a few back end stories of some of those cases, we find out that reasons for such inhumanity is that the accused wanted to teach the victim a lesson. Lesson for what? Because she refused to surrender before their unending, unethical pleasures; because she retaliated to their molestation; because she raised her voice!
What I see, the more such cases are being unearthed, the more these heinous crimes are happening! From one end of the country we come to know about a 6-year girl being raped by a father, and the entire “rape-culture” itself changes. Worse becomes the worst. Their inner animal mocks, “What an idea Sirji! Why the hell was I hunting down outside home when I have so many daughters/cousins/sisters?”
The moment an acid attack case hits our ears, galore of such cases started piling up. Probably, they got yet another Sirji’s idea. “A 50 bucks acid would satisfy my virility; or a lesson for her should satisfy my ego.”
You always see what you tend to see. They choose to see various methods to answer their overexcited hormonal calls from the pain and agony of women. And the government, society, feminists, pro-feminists and thinkers talk of emancipation of women’s destiny! It’s not their mentality, its sickness; they are the sufferers of low self esteem. You arrest them today and then release tomorrow to feed their sexual drives again. India has now become a land of wild and vile. Who are these men walking with us in the crowd and committing such heinous crime? Bringing on such news should make them realize of what they are doing. But is it happening? From any angle, do you see a sense of penance in their eyes? It’s not. It’ll not. Such news will give them new ideas to continue with their desires, ideas to sodomise! That’s it.
No, I am not asking to keep such news at low; not to raise your voice. But only raising voice won’t work. A story should always end with a moral. The headlines must change from “A girl was allegedly raped” to “An attempted rape was FIRed and a finger has been taken out of his body.” Personally, I have surrendered hoping that the mentality of men would change. No, the situation would only keep getting worse. No education, morale or therapy can make them gentlemen. Because they are not men, they are animals! Capital punishment is an easy walk. That girl who gets raped dies every day; she fights with herself every morning, fights with the mockery of the society, fights answering how ‘exactly’ was she raped, fights for being a ‘She’! Capital punishment doesn’t justify those tears. Such people should also be agonized and tortured to death!
Against the strangers who took away my sanctity;
Against the injustice I bore yet never seemed pretty;
Against the darkest night I fear talking about even to myself;
Against each tear that ran through my eyes on itself;
Against the present with a violence;
Against the people who never realized my essence;
Against the world that took away my toy;
Against the rules that killed my joy;
Against each devil the government spare
I dare!