A dusty denim jean, black jacket, soiled boots, my watch an instrument that
continuously reminds me of the ebbing time before the game is over, holed gloves
with hands in pocket, a muffler to contain my throat, I am walking briskly under
the flickering florescent lights of platform number 2 at half past 4 in morning. Thanks
to my tardiness, I jump on the meter gauge and run past the signal wires just
to find the ticket window crowded with men buried under layers of blanket and peeping
into the small ticket window to obtain their passports of escape. Breathing
heavily in the cold air, my mouth smoking, I take my ticket and manage to grab a window seat in the
intercity express. The train starts and I can feel the wind blowing past my
hair. It is a cool December morning and the air has a typical smell of mist and
coal, one that can only be experienced while leaving Agra. I observe houses of
all shades as I pass them, bricks, quasi-clayed, a Mosque, a pond, buffalos and
dogs. Then comes the moor and the smell. It is a large tract of barren land
parallel to railway line, now occupied by men, women and children to answer the
call of nature. 5 in the morning as multitudes of individuals squat with loo
mugs by their sides to mark the break of dawn, I am drawn into a state of
contemplation over the miserable realities.
There
are 600 million Indians who defecate in open every day. This accounts for 55%
of our population. It is a disturbing reality because it spreads diseases like
diarrhoea and hepatitis. More recently open defecation has been into news of
cases involving abductions and kidnappings. Time and again, there have been
reports about girls who went to answer the call of nature at night and were
abducted and eventually raped by unscrupulous men. The recent incidents in
Hisar, Haryana (4 girls of Dhanak
community, SC) and Badaun, UP (2 girls,
lynched and hanged on a tree) have brought this crude reality to the fore.
Comments such as “Even animals can’t be
forcefully dragged”- Naresh Agarwal MP, Samajwadi Party are smacked with craven
attitude of political unwillingness and apathy to address the issue. Such
political ignorance exposes itself when one realizes that in both the cases the
victims belonged to a caste inferior than that of the perpetuators.
Gender
discrimination?
Gender
and Sex are two different things even though both are used interchangeably.
Gender is a social-cultural construct that runs on the stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. Gender differences are based on social roles and
status. On the other hand sexual differences are based on biological differences
such as the reproductive system. When physical differences are used as a tool to
discriminate with women in socio-political affairs in comparison to men, it is
called gender discrimination.
Gender
discrimination breeds very inconspicuously in Indian families. From the time a
boy and a girl is born, the former is seen as preserver of the blood line and
the later as Else’s Wealth (Paraya Dhan). The education, health and childhood
of the later will be readily compromised by the family for the former. Girls
are taught to rear children, be good homemakers and wives, while boys are
taught to be the bread owners. Women will be identified with their fathers or
brothers or husband (She is such and such’s wife). They do not have share in
family property (Hindu succession act 1956 is indeed present but only for the
better placed citizens. The voices of more needy rural women are never even
heard let alone answered). Manusmriti does not accept independent status of
women and dictates that a women should be controlled by her father in
childhood, in youth by her husband and by her son when she goes senile. In such
a patriarchal atmosphere many boys grow up unconsciously believing that women
are objects of homemaking and male satisfaction. This feeling is all pervasive
in the Indian society and it eventually circumscribes the engagement of women
in public and social life.
(The very fact
that you are reading this article proves that you are less likely to directly experience
such atmosphere of bias, which is more present in the rural and urban poor
families. But we must not forget that 742 million Indians still live in
villages and rural hinterlands, constituting the larger part this democracy
where such bias exists.)
Gender Discrimination! Where’s the proof?
Gender
discrimination slowly reflects the ugly side when it translates into domestic violence.
The data from NFHS-3 (2005, most comprehensive national level survey on Family
and Health) is most useful to study these sad realities. 33.4% of women have
experienced physical violence (slapped,
arm twisted, hair pulled, punched, kicked, dragged, choked or burned)
majorly by their husbands, 10.4% have faced sexual violence (forced sexual intercourse, forced to
perform sexual acts she did not wanted to do) in their own households and
15.24% women have confessed being subjected to emotional violence such as humiliation in front of others, threatened
to hurt or insulted and made to feel bad about herself. Domestic violence
can lead to short term health outcomes such as unwanted pregnancies, injuries and long term serious outcomes such
as organ damage, mental disorder,
depression and vaginal-anal and urethral traumas leading to infections.
Such subjugated women are less likely to get parental care, which leads to underweight deliveries (Empirical data
suggests that there is a linear relationship between sexual violence and gynaecological morbidity).
Violence
at its extreme
Penile and
non-penile penetration in bodily orifices of a woman by a man, without the
consent of the woman, constitutes the offense of rape under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013.
Rape is an abhorrent combination of sexual, physical and emotional violence
subjected over a women. The NCRB data suggests that there were 24,923 rapes
committed during 2013 in India. Mark that these are the official figures and a gamut of cases (various estimates claim
54%-90%) never even reach the columns of official registers for the fear of
retaliation or humiliation. Large scale rapes take place invariably in times of
riots and wars. 100,000 women were reportedly raped during India’s partition,
200,000-400,000 Bangladeshi women were raped by Pakistani military in 1971.
Is
rape a sexual urge? Why does the convict do it? Is he seduced?
Rape
is certainly not about sexual urge or seduction otherwise men rapes (male victim)
would have been equally widespread. It is a reflection of power and domination
specific to the immediate surroundings. Tribal people in India treat their
women much better than caste Indians and we hardly observe rape cases in such
areas (Scheduled areas (Schedule 5 Indian constitution) not counting times of
crisis such as insurgency). Perpetuators repeatedly perform the nefarious act
over victims again and again because they do not fear the crippling justice
system. They do not fear the police. It is a way of saying that I am superior. The court proceedings surfaces
out the victim’s wounds and have exceptionally low probability of delivering justice
(around 1% as per NCRB data). The prosecutor (victim) is provided with a public
lawyer who has several other criminal and civil cases under him as often there
is only 1 public lawyer per court. The public lawyer meets the victim in the
court for the first time itself and thus ask all sorts of questions. Cases come
to pause if the perpetuator is an escapee or if the public lawyer is busy and years
pass before the next hearing if the file mysteriously gets misplaced. This does
not let the victim forget the heinous past and move on. If she decides to
fight, her life is wasted between the corridors of courts and stigmas of
society.
Why
does more women get raped than men? Is a man physically stronger than a women hence
it’s easier for a man to rape a women than the contrary?
There
is certainly a superior male machismo in the minds of a male perpetuator but he
is not necessarily physically stronger. There are indeed evidences of men
rapes, which are equally brutal and despicable. In maximum cases circumstantial
evidences show that when the women was raped, the perpetuator was assisted by accomplices
who either held down the victim or the victim was drugged or the victim was
significantly younger in age/minor than the perpetuator.
When
does a rape end?
An
act of rape does not end immediately, but it continues until it is publically consumed. It endures until it
becomes salacious gossip of the peon, the typist, the court staff and the
defence counsel. The insensitive questioning by police officers who often
refuse to even file FIR (which is in fact a mandatory job), the mistreatment in
public hospitals where doctors (often not specifically trained to handle rape
cases) frown at observing rape victims and peons make no efforts to maintain
the latter’s confidentiality, the 2-finger tests and scary instruments to scare
the victim and convince her to drop the case, are all part of public
consumption. People express sympathies and offer
condolences and at the same time remain alert enough to side themselves with
the person. This happens in a very crafty and inconspicuous manner. As put very
cogently by a friend “Will you still
marry your soon-to-be bride if she gets raped few days before the marriage?
What if a few days before the engagement?” The responses will be very
situational and subjective however the idea is to explain that a victim
requires ready acceptance into the society without any stigmatization rather
than only sympathies. Sad is the fact that we chose to call her a rape victim and him not as a rapist. What is required is
to ostracise and outcaste the rapists not the victim. The psychological
trauma of a battered woman is greater than the physical pain she undergoes in
the aftermath of her being subjected to atrocities.
The establishment of One
Step Rape Crisis Centre (OSRCC), an idea formulated by Justice Usha Mehra, has
been adopted by 2 NGOs and Jai Prakash
Hospital in Bhopal as a dedicated institution to provide support, care,
treatment, security and legal advice to women who have been subjected to such atrocities.
It is a welcome step in this field. However the real change must come from
within. It is a larger question and appeal to everyone one of us, that we must
act immediately against unscrupulous elements and have zero tolerance. To
ignore this is to support the crime as tomorrow you yourself can be at the end
of such injustice.
Rapes and lynching in Badaun
The
girls raped and lynched in Badaun Uttar Pradesh belonged to lower castes than their
perpetuators. A lower caste women has
several conflicting meanings:
·
Unclean,
forbidden, subjugated an object of vengeance.
·
Yet
desired, exploited and an object of upper class consumption.
Their
(Victim’s) parents knew that the police officers were cognizant of their
daughter’s whereabouts. But they waited, as were asked, for 2 hours in obedience
– a mark of helplessness. This inhuman act ended when they were told to look
for their daughters near the tree, where they found them hanging; it ended when
the villagers, media and the whole world noticed the horrible dehumanization.
The horror display was the final public consumption.
Teach her, love her, let her play, let her fly, she is an equal human as anyone else, she is half of India.
Teach her, love her, let her play, let her fly, she is an equal human as anyone else, she is half of India.
-YB
References:
·
The
complete Report on NFHS 3 domestic violence can be seen here
·
"Population
estimates". Government of India (2001).
Census of India. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
·
The
Press release of OSRCC: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=105674
· For
domestic violence related content: discussions
with a population scientist in Institute of Health Management and Research.
·
First-hand
information mentioned by victims in “Satyamev Jayate: Fighting
Rape”
·
Complete
report on relationship of stunted growth and open defecation can be seen here.
· More
on open defecation here: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-long-and-short-of-open-defecation/article4505664.ece
·
The
WHO and UNICEF report
on Drinking water and sanitation for open defecation figures.
·
The Criminal Law
(Amendment) Act 2013 can be read here.
Collected essays and articles from "The Hindu" and "Frontline"
Collected essays and articles from "The Hindu" and "Frontline"
