The trauma of the Delhi woman who was raped has ended with her
death. The atrocity roused middle class anger all over the country. Emotions
ran high around this atrocious act of some drunken men and the demonstrators
made demands such as death penalty for rape and castration in public. This
outburst is understandable given the cruelty of the perpetrators of the crime.
However, one can ask whether this will become one more case of reacting to a
single case without taking cognizance of the malaise that leads to such crimes.
It became a high profile case because it happened in Delhi. That does not reduce the atrocity of
the crime. But for change to occur in favour of women one has to go beyond this
single case and deal with the issues involved. One has to remember that what
happened in Delhi
is not an exception. It received publicity because it happened in the capital
but many more cases are hushed up regularly or are not reported. According to
police records during 2011 India
witnessed 228,650 crimes against women, 24,206 of them of rape and 35,565 of
kidnapping and abduction.
These are reported cases. Probably a much bigger
number goes unreported because of the stigma attached to it. Secondly,
according to police records around 90 percent of rapes are committed by persons
known to the victim, most of them family members. Thirdly, a large number of
victims belong to voiceless communities. For example, in an article in
Counter-currents, Cynthia Stephen quotes a dalit girl from a village in Tamil
Nadu as saying “ there is no girl in our lane who has not been coerced or raped
by the dominant caste men when they go to the fields to fetch water or for
work.” Men from the dominant castes threaten the dalits with dire consequences
if they dare complain to the police. So these cases go unreported. Finally,
often the police add to the trauma. For example, an 18 year old girl in
Badhshapur village in Patiala
committed suicide on December 26, six weeks after being raped by three men. Her
mother reports that when she went to complain to the police they humiliated the
girl with lewd question such as “how did they touch your breast? Did they open
their jeans or coat first?” The criminals were arrested only after her suicide.
Or take the case of the police officer in Haryana who was elevated to the
highest rank though a budding tennis star had accused him of raping her. She
too committed suicide because she was unable to bear the harassment. The
officer was given a six month jail sentence some years after his retirement.
These and other cases are symbolic of the
attitudes of our society. The middle class stages demonstration in high profile
cases and ignores the rest. Also the so called national media do the same. For
example, when on December 23, 2005 some university students got into a railway
compartment at Kokrajhar not knowing that it was a military wagon. All of them
were raped by men paid to protect the citizens. But it did not become national
news. Even in Assam
it remained a Bodo women’s issue, not of all women. In other words, crimes
against women are a result of the strong patriarchal values of our society but
are also conditioned by ethnic and caste attitudes and in many cases by a false
sense of patriotism. For example when the security forces rape women people are
told to protect their honour and not report those cases. The victims do not
matter. Even laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act protect such
criminals in uniform.
Given these attitudes, one can ask whether new
laws, even death penalty, can prevent such crimes. One does not deny that
police reforms and strong laws are required. But they alone cannot solve the
problems that are deep rooted in our culture which is visible in actions such
as a few lakh female foetuses aborted every year because women are considered a
burden. If all rapists were to be hanged, the victims would have to lose some
of their family members who are perpetrators of these crimes. Moreover, the
acceptance of the value of male superiority by most women ensures that abuses
are kept secret often on the pretext of protecting the girl’s or family honour.
Or take the case of the tribal customary laws in the North East that give all
social power to men alone. The leaders refuse to change the laws. For example,
Nagaland has not been able to hold elections to the municipal councils because
of the tribal leaders’ opposition to 33 percent reservations for women. They
claim that their customary law does not allow women to have political power.
It is clear then, that laws cannot change this
system. Dowry, child labour, caste-based discrimination are banned by law. But
they cannot be implemented without changing the attitudes that give birth to
these abuses. It is as true about women’s status as about corruption, caste and
ethnic attitudes. No law can become effective without a social infrastructure
to support it. But the temptation of the middle class that leads the
demonstrations against rape, corruption and other abuses is to take up an event
in isolation and ignore the attitudes and the social systems that cause it. For
example, this class rightly took up political corruption as a cause to fight
against but very few of them asked whether the hands of those who protested are
clean. Similarly, this class also protested against the unjust arrest and
jailing of Dr Binayak Sen and that was required. But they did not question the
Sedition Act or the middle class needs for which the tribals are displaced.
Their impoverishment is at the root of the Maoist rebellion in Central India.
One needs to ensure that also the issue of rape
does not end with one case. The gender, class and caste attitudes that cause
such abuses have to be tackled. One cannot stop at condemning the politician
and the police departments. That step is required but new laws can only give
one peace of conscience and cannot solve the problem. One has to look inwards
and examine the social and cultural values that are behind such crimes. If the Delhi rape case leads to
such self-examination, the 23 year old para-medical will not have laid down her
life in vain.
The author is a former director of North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati.