Perhaps the real tragedy we must contemplate, as we consider the story
of the young woman who now lies in a Delhi hospital bed battling for her
life after being brutally beaten and gang-raped Sunday night, is this:
in six months or less, she will have been forgotten. There will, by
then, have been the next victim, and the one after — and absolutely
nothing will have changed. Ever since Sunday’s savage crime, India’s
political leadership has been loudly engaged in what it appears to
believe is advocacy of women’s rights — in the main, dramatic but
meaningless calls for summary trials, castration and mandatory death
penalties. The same leaders will, if past record proves a guide, do
absolutely nothing to actually address the problem. For all the noise
that each gang-rape has provoked, Parliament has made no worthwhile
progress towards desperately-needed legal reforms. Even nuts-and-bolts
measures, like enhanced funding for forensic investigations, upgrading
training of police to deal with sexual crimes, and making expert
post-trauma support available to victims, are conspicuous by their
absence.
How does one account for the strange contrast between our outrage about
rape — and our remarkable unwillingness, as a society, to actually do
anything about it? For one, we are far more widely complicit in crimes
against women than we care to acknowledge. The hideous gang-rape in
Delhi is part of the continuum of violence millions of Indian women face
every single day; a continuum that stretches from sexual harassment in
public spaces and the workplace to physical abuse that plays itself out
in the privacy of our homes far more often than on the street. Nor is it
true, secondly, that Delhi is India’s “rape capital.” There are plenty
of other places in India with a higher incidence of reported rape, in
population adjusted terms — and Delhi’s record on convicting
perpetrators is far higher than the national average. Third, this is not
a problem of policing alone. As Professor Ratna Kapur argues in an
op-ed article in this newspaper today, there is something profoundly
wrong in the values young men are taught in our society — values which
bind the parental preference for a male child to the gang of feral youth
who carried out Sunday’s outrage or the hundreds of thousands of
husbands who were battering their wives that same night. Finally,
India’s society rails against rape, in the main, not out of concern for
victims but because of the despicable notion that a woman’s body is the
repository of family honour. It is this honour our society seeks to
protect, not individual women. It is time for us as a people to feel the
searing shame our society has until now only imposed on its female
victims.
Rape and the crisis of Indian masculinity
-Ratna Kapur
As women assert their identity and enter his bastions of power, the traditional Indian male is reacting with violence
Even as the world remains shocked and horrified by the gunning down of
20 little children in Newtown, Connecticut, we need to turn some of that
shock and horror toward our own selves. The gang rape in the capital of
a paramedical student, who lies in critical condition in hospital,
should more than just outrage us. Rape is not simply about law and
order, or about deranged individuals. Nor is the problem going to be
solved by more laws, more police on our streets, more CCTV cameras on
our buses or stiffer sentences for rapists. The gang rapes that are
occurring with alarming regularity must compel us to reflect upon who we
are as a society.
Just like the killing of young innocents is forcing Americans to address
the societal reasons for such violence and not just blame one
individual, Indians need to understand that gang rape is not just an
aberration committed by inhuman men. We need to address how we as a
society are implicated in producing such appalling levels of violence
against women, which is increasingly being tolerated and even
normalised. As women enter the work place and the public arena, their
boldness and confidence seem to trigger a sense of insecurity in a
society where men are used to being in charge. While it is impossible to
reduce the issue of violence to one sole cause, that is men, the fact
remains that young men are the ones committing these crimes. These
include the 2003 gang rape of a 17-year-old Delhi University student in
Buddha Jayanti Park; the Dhaula Kuan gang rape in 2005 in a moving car
of a student from Mizoram; and the 2010 gang rape of a young BPO
employee from the north-east.
Sense of displacement
We need to inquire why young Indian men are routinely committing gang
rapes in metropolitan cities against women who are just going about
their daily lives. What is the anger that motivates this level of
violence? Is the sight of a young smartly-dressed educated female
professional generating a sense of displacement in men? Over the past
several decades, women’s rights have proliferated and they are claiming
their subjectivity, asserting their identity as women as opposed to
being someone’s wife, daughter or sister. And with the opening up of the
market, women are more visible in the workplace. That they are entering
male bastions of power has challenged the sense of superiority and
entitlement of the traditional Indian male.
This idea of a woman as a fully formed human subject remains a difficult concept to embrace.
Even those who are ostensibly in favour of women’s rights such as the
National Commission of Women and the Department of Women and Child
Development, continue to refer to women as vulnerable objects and
discuss the issue of violence against women in highly protectionist
language.
Built for bias
What is required at this stage is not more protection and security, but
education. The grooming of young men to have a feeling of entitlement by
Indian parents breeds a sense of masculinity and male privilege. Son
preference simultaneously erodes the possibility of respect for women,
as girls are seen as unwanted or burdensome. Such inequalities produce
the very hatred against women in the public arena that we are witnessing
throughout the country. When women do not cower or display their
vulnerability — thereby inviting the protection of the virile Indian
male — what follows is a sense of emasculation and aggrievement on the
part of these men.
More law — or calls for the death sentence — are not the answer to what is a deeply ingrained societal problem.
More law will only serve to give a sense of something being done, when
in fact very little is being done. To confront the hatred that is now
manifesting itself in the most egregious ways is to move forward as a
society. We need to think about how we can handle women’s equality in
ways that are not perceived as threatening. That demands greater
responsibility on the part of parents as well as society not to raise
sons in a way in which they are indoctrinated with a sense of
superiority and privilege. There is also a need on the part of young men
to be actively involved in their schools and communities in advocating
women’s equality rights.
While these seem like long-term solutions that will do little to help
the young woman who lies in a coma in Safdarjung hospital, law reform or
hanging the perpetrators will not solve the problem. Law reforms in the
area of rape have been taking place over three decades but they do not
appear to have arrested the appalling levels of violence to which Indian
women are subjected. It is time for us to recognise how we as a society
are implicated in producing the very individuals who are perpetrating
such heinous crimes against women, and to start taking responsibility
for bringing it to an end.
(Ratna Kapur is Global Professor of Law, Jindal Global Law School, NCR)
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