My thoughts

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.