After 2 days of intermittent thoughts about horrific rape
incident in Delhi, I am penning down these thoughts. With my limited knowledge,
I am trying to analyze why such horrible crimes occur again and again. I don’t think
there would be anybody who was not shocked about this incident and all of us
had our own versions – why this happen again and again and what should we do
about this?
In my views, violation of a woman’s dignity is at par with
murder. There have been numerous incidents where after rape, victims have been
murdered. But, even when she survives, it’s almost impossible to forget the
incident and there are significant physical and psychological repercussions.
First of all, it requires tremendous courage to highlight
the crime because still there is stigma attached to these incidents because of
wrong notion of family honour attached with a wife/daughter/sister. Many times,
most accused are relatives or somebody close to victims and families choose not
to report these incidents. I would keep rape as most gruesome among all the crimes
committed against women, but equally notorious are female foeticide and sexual
abuse of children (both boys and girls).
What is wrong in our society? Why such crimes happen again
and again? Is it only a strata of our population who commits this? Is it done
only by psychotics? We all know, the answer is NO. Crime against women is deeply entrenched in
our patriarchal society and deep down, we also know that it cannot be curtailed
only by law. We need to CHANGE. There have been hysterical calls for capital
punishment for rape. Stringent punishment could be a deterrent, but it’s not
going to cut down the incidents dramatically. A society can change only if that
change is driven by its own people, from its common man. I don’t think just
making a law can make a significant impact. Laws have been here for curbing
female foeticide from amost 2 decades now, but we all know how malaise our
conscience has become.
Both reasons and solutions for these inhuman crimes would
come from within our daily life. It is responsibility of every family/every citizen/every
school and our state and central governments to provide an ecosystem where such
deviance is minimal. We have seen involvement of almost all sections of our society
in crime against women. Be it rich/poor, educated/uneducated, young/old – these
crimes cannot be categorized in any particular income group or age group
because these are widespread in all corners of our society. So, the solution
has to be multi-pronged and tailored for different sections.
I think poverty is a significant factor in increasing crime
rate. Still almost 70% of our population stays in village and we all know that
they lack basic amenities and most of village population is poor and deprived. They
migrate to cities, become far from their families, become prone to crimes and
women become easy target for them to vent out their aggression. It’s a shame
that our respective governments are not able to provide basic
health/education/food/sanitation/work to a major chunk of our population. So, in my view, if we could remove our
poverty, it would be a significant step towards lowering the crime rate.
Then comes the crime committed by rich/educated professional
people. This is far more difficult to tackle because it requires an attitudinal
change which can come only through our own thought patterns. Molestation of women outside a pub in Guwahati
was not done by poor, uneducated or sex starved men. That incident showed the attitude of young
boys – they could not see an independent young woman coming to pub on her own.
Do women really need escort today also? For few young men, independent/free
spirited women are challenge to their territory and they indulge in these
crimes to show women their place. They have seen a systematic bias against
women in their own family and in society in general as part of growing up and
it gets internalized in their attitude and behavior.
We need to provide a sound value system to our younger
generation and it starts from family and school. There still is strong preference
for male child even in rich and educated families, notion of son essential to
keep ‘Vansh’ running is deeply
entrenched in our conscience which gives rise to rampant female foeticide. Still
there are families where female child is disadvantaged as compared to male
child in all matters. One can still frequently hear that, ‘tum ladki ho, ladki ki tarah raho’. All these systemic prejudices
against girl child affect young boys too. I strongly abhor the notion of family’s
honor associated with girl child, it burdens girls and become reason for honour
killings and pollutes minds of young men too. We need to overcome this bias
against girl child from our conscience and provide a healthy/balanced
environment while raising children of both sexes. A strong value system where
young boys respect the dignity/rights/freedom of girls is essential for our
society to move forward.
The onus is on US to CHANGE and contribute whatever we can
to make India a better place for its other half.
