The last two weeks before the onset of New Year celebrations had been nothing short of a curse for Indian society as it grappled with the most gruesome gender violence against women — the brutal gang rape and killing of the 23-year old Delhi girl.
In light of this shameful tragedy that should have been prevented, the civic society of the country is boiling with rage and anguish, especially in the Indian capital, New Delhi, where people are relentlessly pointing fingers at the performance of the Delhi Police.
Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All Indian Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA), believes such an explosive reaction was inevitable. “There was already a simmering, accumulated anger and outrage not only over rapes and gang rapes across India, but also at the daily sexual harassment and insecurity women face while stepping out of their homes, and at the victim-blaming drama that accompanies almost every crime committed against women in the country,” she says.
“This case touched people deeply because young women and men in Delhi felt that this horrendous crime, occurring in a bus in the prominent South Delhi locality, could have happened to any of them. The driving force was the huge number of young women and men who come to Delhi as students or in search of better jobs, and they identified with this brave young woman who fought off her assailants and struggled to survive.”
Shivraj Kumar, an MBA student of St. Christ College, Bangalore, said, “First and foremost, the laws will not do the job. Rather, it’s people who need to change how they think of women. Even after the death of her, the incidents of rape continue to rise. It’s absolutely contemptible. Let’s not sit complacent this time.”
Manisha Jain, a resident of Delhi, said, “I have seen many instances of girls being pushed or elbowed for fun while traveling in crowded buses. I don’t have faith in the police to do what they should be doing. They have been out of picture all along. They just ignore women’s pleas. Women have to be more robust from deep within in order to thrash out these crises.”
When asked what should be done to prevent such savagery in the future, Krishnan said, “Our government and state machinery, our society too, needs to take violence against women seriously, and commit itself to ensuring justice for women and also to resisting the deeply-entrenched patriarchal and feudal values that demean and subordinate women.”
Another writer-activist named Binalakshmi Nepram, the founder of Manipur Women Guns Survivors Network (MWGSN), demanded that there should be a national police force in operation, recruited from all sections of society who understand and respect the sentiments of all sections of Indians coming to live here from different parts of the country.
“This is one of the worst cases that we have ever seen in which a violation of woman’s life or body has been done in such a brutal manner. The vicious nature of it has shocked each one of us. So we felt equally responsible to do something about this so that it doesn’t happen to another woman or child. We are working very closely with women’s groups across the country,” she says.
“We don’t blame the police personnel only which are ill-trained. Many of them are political appointees from the neighboring areas like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana. They simply don’t know how to do proper policing in Delhi and other parts of the country. That’s why the government needs to use a stick approach by bringing in radical reforms in the police force.”
There are several other forms of violence women face while using public transportation like stalking, acid-throwing, stripping and sexual humiliation.
So is the death penalty the one and only solution to this all? “Certainly not,” Krishnan says. “As a women’s movement activist, I myself do not think death penalty for rape will help victims get justice. The question we need to ask about sexual violence laws is not ‘Are they severe enough?’ but ‘Are they gender-just enough?’ and ‘Are they firmly grounded in recognition of women’s inalienable rights?’
Nepram also said the death penalty isn’t going to resolve everything. “The rape has become a larger malaise for the country because of wrong policies and wrong implementation,” she says. “It’s quite outlandish to say that women should stay at home and not dress sexy. Significant changes are required in our syllabus to create awareness from an early age. I think the Indian media and film industry should play an important role in this. Bollywood needs to clean up its act by not sanctioning films, which contain rape scenes and sexual molestation of any kind. Most importantly, the bribe culture is also the reason why women in this country aren’t safe.”
“A gender-just protocol for police investigation of gender-based crimes will ensure a 100 percent conviction rate, as will changes in the laws to recognize the many kinds of sexual assault,” Krishnan says. “The conviction rate has plummeted from 46 percent in 1971 to 26 percent in 2010 because of shoddy policing and investigation, and deeply-entrenched gender bias in our laws, our police force and our judiciary.”
It’s just a beginning. Asked what advice she would like to give to the women of our country, she said, “We must demand equal rights, and reject and resist any attempt to impose double-standards and patriarchal rules and restrictions on women’s behavior.
The other big thing is that the protests are very encouraging, because for the first time you have this huge mass response to the issue of gender violence, and this is leading to a great churning and questioning of long-accepted patriarchal common sense in society, and is also forcing the government and police and judiciary to respond to the issue.”
