It seemed like another isolated and horrific episode of sexual violence in India, perpetrated against a powerless girl by brutal men, but in the months since an eight-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered, the case has become another battleground in India’s religious wars.
I wonder what her fault was. Was it that she was a Muslim girl? Was it that she was so little? Or was she simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?
She was just a small, eight-year-old girl, grazing her horses when she was taken into the forest. The police said that the girl was given sedatives, raped repeatedly by different men, strangled and hit on her head with stones. They eventually found her body in the forest, and three months later, there was a media uproar. The police say that she would have been killed sooner, had one man not insisted on them waiting for a while so that he could rape her once more.
In my view, all this happened to her only because of the battle between Hindu and Muslim extremists. It show’s us that the feelings between the two communities are still so bitter, that many don’t think twice about harming a small child to meet their agendas. Do you think that we still are in any position to talk about nationalism? Is this really the kind of country we want to be known as?
After all this, if we can’t stand up for this eight-year-old girl, if we cannot disregard our gender, caste, colour, religion, and more, and stand up for this girl, then we can’t stand for anything in this world. These people should be given the harshest punishment there is.
Where are we heading towards as a society? If even religious places aren’t safe, where do we go?
So please let’s all stand up for a good cause. Raise your voice, contribute to something for your nation. India needs your support because it’s not about Hindus vs Muslims! It’s about humanity vs evil, and we need to make the correct choice.