By Upasana Sharma:
In an age where her world should be about dolls and chocolates, a five year old girl battles for life. She was repeatedly raped for 2 days, mutilated and violated with objects like candles and bottles. The police refused to file a F.I.R and a police officer allegedly tried to bribe the father of the little child with a suggestion that he should just be thankful to God that the daughter has been found. I am disgusted but not shocked. I am ashamed but not angry. I want to be hopeful but I am not.
With the words like “worst” and “horrific” being commonplace and only slipping down with every incident, what’s there to be hopeful for? The modus operandi is clear and fixed. Because of the brutality of the case, it will get media attention; #Delhi will trend on Twitter, articles like this one will be published, our so called leaders will express their grief and sadness. Everything will be blamed and surprisingly in the core reason will be women and their way of living everywhere. All this will happen for a few days and then everyone will go back to their usual lives and wait till the next time a brutalised rape victim turns up. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it?
The number of such horrifying incidents is high enough to shake the conscious of an entire nation. Yet, we find ourselves in these situations repeatedly. The reactions become mellow; outrage dies down sooner than the previous one and the bar of what’s acceptable and normal falls down by many notches with each incident. Unthinkable becomes doable and the shock merely translates to disgust. Every plausible solution hits a road block in terms of the system, mechanism and implementation. Reforms are imperative but are next to impossible to be implemented, given the current state. Police and the system tend to disappoint each time and all that the citizens get are empty statements.
Many incidents have happened for us to stop and look inside us. The root of the problem lies in the very culture we take pride in. The morals and values that we hold so close, somewhere have been misinterpreted. A whole generation of players screwed up while playing the game of Chinese whispers and passed on a corrupted message ahead. However, that doesn’t mean we have to carry them forward without thinking and rationalising. Unless and until, every one of us questions what we have learnt and followed blindly, nothing is going to change. We find faults in the system but do not do what we can on a personal level. We need to build a nation with an awake conscious. Not someone who nods and follows along.
Following the modus operandi, I have a name to suggest for her. Till we don’t bring about change and develop a conscience, let’s call every rape victim, India.