It has been two years since the Nirbhaya case rocked the country’s consciousness. 16th December this year again is an opportunity to have a look at what has happened ever since; and where, if at all, we have progressed so far.
According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) reports, there has been an overall increase of 10.5 cases per lakh women in 2013. There have been 3,09,546 total cases of crime against women of which 33,707 cases of rape and 8,083 cases of dowry deaths have been registered with the police. Experience with official records suggest that the actual number of crime is far more than what the registered data show.
A 39 years old Swiss woman cycling from Orchha to Agra in March 2013 was gang raped. A woman photo journalist was gang raped at the isolated Shakti Mills compund in Mumbai in August 2013. In the very recent case, a young woman professional in Delhi was raped by a Uber driver on her way back home. These cases are just a snapshot of much highlighted ones ever since the Nirbhaya case happened. Each day, at least once a woman feels unsafe – either at home or in office, or to and from office, in the market, in any public space and also in her private space. Something is going fundamentally wrong. And we need to address that – very soon.
After the Nirbhaya case happened, I shared my story on facebook. which went viral. In the following few months, my inbox was flooded with heart wrenching stories of rape and molestation of women and girls residing in various parts of the country that the media can never pick up. Someone from Mizoram was raped in Delhi where she came to study. She never shared it with anyone because she feared social ostracization in a largely biased city. Some woman, now a mother of two, was raped and left to die in an open field in some remote village in Bihar until her parents brought her home after a frantic search that fateful night. Her parents left the village thereafter. She is now a teacher in Ranchi. She too never quoted the incident before for the same fear of social stigma. A young girl in Mumbai was molested by her school teacher. She wished me luck and wanted more of such writings from women all across. Another woman was raped by her husband day in and day out until she took the step to file for divorce. She wished me more strength.
But the situation still stands grim. I had to explain umpteen times to my landlord and property dealer that as a single girl I will not ‘cross any boundaries of decency’ in my stay at the independent flat. That I will not have male friends coming over for night stay. I have had terrible and hard times explaining to professional acquaintances that a friendship between a woman and man does not necessarily have to have a romantic or a sexual connotation. I have had a tough time explaining to my family and relatives that it is logical and empowering to the education they bestowed on me to decide by and for myself who I wish to spend the rest of my life with.
And because all these are glaring realities in my life and in the lives of many others I know, I realise that the battle is not won. That there is lot more to be done. That there is lot more that needs to be said and each one of us will have to take the onus of saying, debating, putting our collective foot down and excelling in our respective fields to prove our points. Because the battle will be won not just by token pink chaddi and kiss of love campaigns in metropolitan cities but by taking these acts to the roots of where we belong to – 70% of Indian population which lives in the villages.
Increasingly, the incidents of rape and molestation suggest that more than a perverse mindset, it is the hunger for control and domination that translates into acts of violence against women. It is the unease with so many women out in the streets, inside office spaces, in the government, in administrative units and by and large, in positions of power that mostly propels that urge to physically dominate. But to limit the analysis of rape with just this hypothesis will be to overlook the issue in the impatience to reach conclusions.
The pathetic raillery by many ministers and police officers in the aftermath of any unfortunate incident of rape has been a continuing saga of arguments heaped on the already patriarchal construct of ‘it must be the woman’s fault’. But let us not ignore the fact that while technologically we have exposed ourselves to faster and ready to achieve means of online pleasures of the body and mind, socially we are far behind in catching up with this progression. It is this disconnect in some – if not all cases – which has led to many of these crimes.
It is alright for men and boys to salivate over a Savita Bhabhi but almost impossible to accept a practical corollary of ‘illegitimate’ sex. Sex outside the sanctimonious institution of marriage especially in a case when marital age of both women and men have increased is a natural progression which needs to be embraced than shunned and hastily brushed under the carpet. It is alright for women in the country to thrust it down the throats of boys that one day he will have to take care of that one woman in his life but impossible to fathom that these are subtle lessons in control and domination being passed on to men who shall take it on them to rule the household. It is alright for degree-ed parents to make their daughters equally degree-ed but impossible to take them as individuals with a mind and opinion of their own. It is alright for men and women alike to abuse using a woman’s name but illogical to realise that these innocent acts are seeped in a culture where women is merely a symbol and object of sexual gratification or a creature of passion. It is alright to have sex education in schools but separate girls and boys when given lessons on menstrual hygiene. Where do we expect to head to with this rootedness in hypocrisy?
Until all these gradual shifts in power equations, language politics, subtle sexualization by careful separation of genders will continue, we will continue to have sagas of Nirbhaya, Bhawana Yadav and Nirupama Pathak repeated at regular intervals. And till then we will continue to have our fashionable feminism hanging out of visible bra straps, kissing carefully chosen elite individuals in manicured lawns of urbane parks.
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