The recent horrific reports of rape and murder of women in India have exposed the ugly face of gender discrimination in the country. There were at least three cases of women sexually violated by gangs of men and then hanged. In another case, a girl was forced to drink acid after being raped. She died a painful death.
As if the incidents were not gruesome enough, leaders of some political parties made light of them. Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of the party ruling Uttar Pradesh, the state where all four incidents took place, was quoted as saying that a recently enacted law prescribing a harsher punishment for rape was unjustified as “boys sometimes commit mistakes.”
Babulal Gaur, the government minister responsible for law and order in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Madhya Pradesh state, did one better. He described rape as a social crime, saying, “Sometimes it is right, sometimes it is wrong.” The Bharatiya Janata Party is the party that won nationwide parliamentary elections last month.
These two remarks among many made by ordinary folks that go unreported explain the extent of gender discrimination in the country. They also go to show why police try to shoo away rape victims trying to file reports or verbally abuse their parents “for not controlling your daughter.”
There have also been cases of local communities trying to force parents to marry off their raped daughter with the rapist to “save family honor.”
The truth is odds are heavily stacked against the girl child right from her birth, that is if her parents do not opt for infanticide after an aminocentesis test in the first place.
The spate of rape reports has raised global outrage. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called Mulayam Singh Yadav’s boys-will-be-boys remark unacceptable and the US State Department has raised concern about the safety of thousands of American tourists visiting India annually. In the past rapists of foreign tourists could not be prosecuted in many cases because the victims had to leave the country as their visas expired.
India already has stringent laws to deter rape and they cannot be made any harsher. It’s their implementation that is lacking. The country needs fast-track courts dealing exclusively with sexual violence as the notoriously slow pace of proceedings in normal courts only emboldens the perpetrators.
But above all, Indian society needs to change its attitude toward women if it does not want such cases to further sully the image of the country in the comity of nations.
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