It's been days since I've been watching, hearing and reading about this horrendous incident that took place in New Delhi, our beloved (yes, pun intended) capital, sometime last week. Honestly, I don't care about when, where, what, why etc. details of the same. I'd rather leave that on those news channels to judge, who make me believe that there's nothing else happening in the whole country except this mad, senseless struggle which is trying to hold the whole country at a ransom. The ransom being, the death of the rapist.
Before you jump to any conclusions about the incredibly absurd and probably hurtful, even, statements that I just made, take a few deep breaths and read on.
The Beginning
I have been watching the TV series Rome these past couple of days. It's a biopic (as far as I know) about the ancient Rome and its fall as an empire. Although, the details of the series are irrelevant here, there's one thing that I noticed there, that started with or before the mighty Roman empire and persists even today. There's NO equality between a man and a woman, a male and a female, a boy and a girl. None, absolutely.
This is something many of us would raise our arms for and object. But, let's face it, somewhere inside us all, there's that set of discriminated beliefs, values and superstitions about the tasks, work, status and so on and so forth between a man and a woman. It all begins when the brother of the family is busy learning the ways of their family business from his father while the sister is learning how to cook in the kitchen with her mother. Sadly, these have become the pre-requisites for a marriage, and this is the saddest state of the society that I can imagine being.
You know the reason for these rapes? Exactly what I stated in the previous para. The absence and thereby lack of equality, that has been passed onto us one generation after the another. The acceptance of how things are supposed to be between the sexes, and the ignorance to change that.
It's a very simple fact. We men, don't treat women as equals and that's where this whole story starts. We men, don't oppose when someone treats our women with disrespect, passes a cheap 'comment' and ignore it to 'avoid making an issue'. We men, ask our women to stay indoors while it's equally their right to stay outdoors. One of the prime reasons is because of there are not as many women on the roads as there are men! Just as an army of 10 can't fight a 100 people, a dozen-odd women can't fight those 100s of perverts on the street who desire to take undue advantage of the fairer sex.
It's we who allow this. Through how we treat eve-teasing, and let our ancestors, with their age-old, screwed up, superstition-ridden beliefs, ride our minds into actions which belittle the honour of a woman in our minds. It's the Indian culture which asks a woman to cover her head in front of a 'paraya' man, but the man can do as he pleases. It's the unfair treatment where a guy can sport the denims he likes, but the girl can't go out of the house unless she's completely dressed in a salwar. It's this absurd, unfair, un-written law, that we abide to, to please our fathers and forefathers, who never did and never will accept that women can stand side-by-side men and achieve more than what they can, that gives these other men the ability to rape.
The Reality
The crime against women is not a country, region, race, or class specific crime. It occurs in all classes, in all countries, in all regions, in all races. In fact, some of the developed countries register more rape cases than India (stats attached at the bottom of the post). It's a globally accepted belief of the lower standard of a woman in a family that brings such heinous crimes to effect.
Today
What happened in the last week in Delhi, was a mere incident. It was one of the approximately 22000 rapes that occur in India, every year (I talk from the 2010 data which being genuine, I can verify). This is the number of cases registered. And we all know how many cases actually get registered in our country. If you ask me, I'd say that'd be a roughly quarter or lesser number of cases.
What everyone fails to understand is that what happened last week was just one of the girls. One of those thousands of girls who undergo such a brutal and painful experience, at the hands of monsters, on a daily basis. From what I read (but I don't vouch for how genuine the data is), a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India. Every friggin' 20 minutes. This makes me cringe. This makes me wanna cry. And this makes me shout, "WHY ONLY THE CASE OF LAST WEEK?" What's so special about her?
I got a text message in the last week which ended in a link to an NDTV poll which asked if the rapist should be given a death sentence. It also described in detail what the writer of the message thought she had been through. From what I've been gathering as a research for this post, no publication (Indian or otherwise) wrote those details. Personally, I don't believe it. I haven't seen the girl, nor have I seen her reports, nor have I witnessed it first hand, nor do I know anyone trustworthy who has, nor has it been documented in the public domain. And that, for me is a simple definition of throwing mud in the eyes of the people. It's how people's emotions are played with, to create something that's insignificant.
Why is it insignificant, you ask? I ask you, is any other of those 22,000 rape victims of India in 2010, any less deserving of justice? Then why are we fighting for only this one? You may say this one lightened the torch and made everyone united. I ask, why this one? Why so late? Where was this India when Jessica Lall was murdered? Where was this India when Rueben Fernandes was killed for protecting his female friend from an eve-teaser? Where was this India when the rape victim, who went to the police for seeking justice, was raped by the police officer, all over again? Where was my India, then, fellow Indians?
We are people of emotions. We are easily fooled. That happened to us with the whole non-corruption movement led by Baburao Hazare. We shout for a few days in the grounds, and then come back home, tell our friends and family, that nothing will happen of this great (pun intended, again) country of ours, and sit back and watch TV. And then when we're asked, we say, 'I'm only alone, what difference can I make.'
The Blamegame
"The Government should do something about this,", "Such people should be hanged,", It's only corruption that's the cause of such rapes,", "What kind of a police system do we have that such things happen?"
I have just one sentence to everyone asking for justice. Shut the crap up.
You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who can't ask for equality from your parents, from your grand-parents. You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who'll break red light at 11p.m. in the night only because there's no traffic. You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who'll pay the passport officer a bribe to get your work done quicker. Yes, it's you and only you. Till you can't clean your own house, you don't have the right to raise a finger at those who don't keep the society clean.
Dump the Government, they're only figures of inability. Dump the police, they're only people who take bribes for the smallest of works. What did you do? Did you promote equality? Did you teach yourself / your kid how to fight when someone tries to loot them? Did you do your best to make sure that no one dare even touch you? You didn't. Then who gives you the right to blame someone else? It's easy to ride the blamegame train and keep pushing it from one authority to the next and feel good about ourselves that there was nothing we could've done, all while being oblivious to the bitter fact that we're where it has started.
Corruption. Oh yes, corruption. Incidentally, this is the corruption of basic human rights and that related to money. And yet, they both have the same name. (Sorry Arvind Kejriwal, you couldn't pick a piece of this incident's pie to decorate it on your everything-is-related-to-corruption board.)
And the biggest part, kill such animals. Yes, they're crude animals. Let's kill them, get them punished to death. Why not? It must be atleast 30,000 men who have raped women in 2010 alone. Let's kill them all first. Then, let's look for more men who'd possibly commit such barbaric crimes, those who tease, pass snide comments, etc., and catch and kill them all. And then, in the end, the few thousand good men that remain, let's threaten to kill them, and then, may be kill them one by one, so that no man ever exists to threaten the honour of a woman.
Doing this would be like killing all the ants from a corner of your home, instead of throwing the morsel of dropped food into the dust-bin. Until the day the psyche of the Indians changes, till we can't accept women as our equals, rapes will occur, and I'm sorry but this is the brute reality.
Our lives are at the behest of our own selves. Not the Governments, not the tyrants, not our parents, that seem to govern, rule, request us. The day we understand this, we understand that our lives are our own to live, our own to protect.
Let there be light.
Until the next post...
The articles and pages I reference to:
1) Rape Statistics - Wikipedia
2) An article on FirstPost
3) Another on Rupee News
Author's note: In my time as a blogger, I have written another blogpost, pertaining to the problems and empowerment of women. I request you to read the same, if you haven't already and leave your feedbacks, here: Women, Vowed to be Woed.
Before you jump to any conclusions about the incredibly absurd and probably hurtful, even, statements that I just made, take a few deep breaths and read on.
The Beginning
I have been watching the TV series Rome these past couple of days. It's a biopic (as far as I know) about the ancient Rome and its fall as an empire. Although, the details of the series are irrelevant here, there's one thing that I noticed there, that started with or before the mighty Roman empire and persists even today. There's NO equality between a man and a woman, a male and a female, a boy and a girl. None, absolutely.
This is something many of us would raise our arms for and object. But, let's face it, somewhere inside us all, there's that set of discriminated beliefs, values and superstitions about the tasks, work, status and so on and so forth between a man and a woman. It all begins when the brother of the family is busy learning the ways of their family business from his father while the sister is learning how to cook in the kitchen with her mother. Sadly, these have become the pre-requisites for a marriage, and this is the saddest state of the society that I can imagine being.
You know the reason for these rapes? Exactly what I stated in the previous para. The absence and thereby lack of equality, that has been passed onto us one generation after the another. The acceptance of how things are supposed to be between the sexes, and the ignorance to change that.
It's a very simple fact. We men, don't treat women as equals and that's where this whole story starts. We men, don't oppose when someone treats our women with disrespect, passes a cheap 'comment' and ignore it to 'avoid making an issue'. We men, ask our women to stay indoors while it's equally their right to stay outdoors. One of the prime reasons is because of there are not as many women on the roads as there are men! Just as an army of 10 can't fight a 100 people, a dozen-odd women can't fight those 100s of perverts on the street who desire to take undue advantage of the fairer sex.
It's we who allow this. Through how we treat eve-teasing, and let our ancestors, with their age-old, screwed up, superstition-ridden beliefs, ride our minds into actions which belittle the honour of a woman in our minds. It's the Indian culture which asks a woman to cover her head in front of a 'paraya' man, but the man can do as he pleases. It's the unfair treatment where a guy can sport the denims he likes, but the girl can't go out of the house unless she's completely dressed in a salwar. It's this absurd, unfair, un-written law, that we abide to, to please our fathers and forefathers, who never did and never will accept that women can stand side-by-side men and achieve more than what they can, that gives these other men the ability to rape.
The Reality
The crime against women is not a country, region, race, or class specific crime. It occurs in all classes, in all countries, in all regions, in all races. In fact, some of the developed countries register more rape cases than India (stats attached at the bottom of the post). It's a globally accepted belief of the lower standard of a woman in a family that brings such heinous crimes to effect.
Today
What happened in the last week in Delhi, was a mere incident. It was one of the approximately 22000 rapes that occur in India, every year (I talk from the 2010 data which being genuine, I can verify). This is the number of cases registered. And we all know how many cases actually get registered in our country. If you ask me, I'd say that'd be a roughly quarter or lesser number of cases.
What everyone fails to understand is that what happened last week was just one of the girls. One of those thousands of girls who undergo such a brutal and painful experience, at the hands of monsters, on a daily basis. From what I read (but I don't vouch for how genuine the data is), a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India. Every friggin' 20 minutes. This makes me cringe. This makes me wanna cry. And this makes me shout, "WHY ONLY THE CASE OF LAST WEEK?" What's so special about her?
I got a text message in the last week which ended in a link to an NDTV poll which asked if the rapist should be given a death sentence. It also described in detail what the writer of the message thought she had been through. From what I've been gathering as a research for this post, no publication (Indian or otherwise) wrote those details. Personally, I don't believe it. I haven't seen the girl, nor have I seen her reports, nor have I witnessed it first hand, nor do I know anyone trustworthy who has, nor has it been documented in the public domain. And that, for me is a simple definition of throwing mud in the eyes of the people. It's how people's emotions are played with, to create something that's insignificant.
Why is it insignificant, you ask? I ask you, is any other of those 22,000 rape victims of India in 2010, any less deserving of justice? Then why are we fighting for only this one? You may say this one lightened the torch and made everyone united. I ask, why this one? Why so late? Where was this India when Jessica Lall was murdered? Where was this India when Rueben Fernandes was killed for protecting his female friend from an eve-teaser? Where was this India when the rape victim, who went to the police for seeking justice, was raped by the police officer, all over again? Where was my India, then, fellow Indians?
We are people of emotions. We are easily fooled. That happened to us with the whole non-corruption movement led by Baburao Hazare. We shout for a few days in the grounds, and then come back home, tell our friends and family, that nothing will happen of this great (pun intended, again) country of ours, and sit back and watch TV. And then when we're asked, we say, 'I'm only alone, what difference can I make.'
The Blamegame
"The Government should do something about this,", "Such people should be hanged,", It's only corruption that's the cause of such rapes,", "What kind of a police system do we have that such things happen?"
I have just one sentence to everyone asking for justice. Shut the crap up.
You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who can't ask for equality from your parents, from your grand-parents. You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who'll break red light at 11p.m. in the night only because there's no traffic. You, the ones asking for justice, are the same ones who'll pay the passport officer a bribe to get your work done quicker. Yes, it's you and only you. Till you can't clean your own house, you don't have the right to raise a finger at those who don't keep the society clean.
Dump the Government, they're only figures of inability. Dump the police, they're only people who take bribes for the smallest of works. What did you do? Did you promote equality? Did you teach yourself / your kid how to fight when someone tries to loot them? Did you do your best to make sure that no one dare even touch you? You didn't. Then who gives you the right to blame someone else? It's easy to ride the blamegame train and keep pushing it from one authority to the next and feel good about ourselves that there was nothing we could've done, all while being oblivious to the bitter fact that we're where it has started.
Corruption. Oh yes, corruption. Incidentally, this is the corruption of basic human rights and that related to money. And yet, they both have the same name. (Sorry Arvind Kejriwal, you couldn't pick a piece of this incident's pie to decorate it on your everything-is-related-to-corruption board.)
And the biggest part, kill such animals. Yes, they're crude animals. Let's kill them, get them punished to death. Why not? It must be atleast 30,000 men who have raped women in 2010 alone. Let's kill them all first. Then, let's look for more men who'd possibly commit such barbaric crimes, those who tease, pass snide comments, etc., and catch and kill them all. And then, in the end, the few thousand good men that remain, let's threaten to kill them, and then, may be kill them one by one, so that no man ever exists to threaten the honour of a woman.
Doing this would be like killing all the ants from a corner of your home, instead of throwing the morsel of dropped food into the dust-bin. Until the day the psyche of the Indians changes, till we can't accept women as our equals, rapes will occur, and I'm sorry but this is the brute reality.
Our lives are at the behest of our own selves. Not the Governments, not the tyrants, not our parents, that seem to govern, rule, request us. The day we understand this, we understand that our lives are our own to live, our own to protect.
Let there be light.
Until the next post...
The articles and pages I reference to:
1) Rape Statistics - Wikipedia
2) An article on FirstPost
3) Another on Rupee News
Author's note: In my time as a blogger, I have written another blogpost, pertaining to the problems and empowerment of women. I request you to read the same, if you haven't already and leave your feedbacks, here: Women, Vowed to be Woed.
So TRUE.....first we ignore then we overreact and start the blame game.....its time we start changing our attitude....!!!!
ReplyDeleteI agree with many things but there's one that i don't agree to...and thats the one in which you say that death sentence is not the only right thing to do. thinking about 'no men will be left on this planet, so no death sentence' is wrong. its only when there's fear in the minds of these men that they will stop behaving like this. i totally support death sentence for rapists because after a few years of serving their time in prison, they are again scot free to do anything they wish to. a harsher punishment may help in reducing the number of such events.
ReplyDeleteThis is your first blog that I have read, and i am mighty impressed. The one thing I agree with whole-heartedly, is the fact that this discrimination is deeply rooted in our minds. Nowhere else. I am not proud to say, that this discrimination happens in my family too. Its a sad state of affairs really. And I hope and pray that my children will be brought up in a world of no discrimination. Otherwise, it wont be worth it will it?
ReplyDelete