Fill in the blanks:
Why was she wearing ____ ?
Who told her to go to _____ ?
Wasn’t she being too adventurous in ____?
The latest horror story out of Jharkhand has inflamed social media—not so much because of the violence of the crime, but because the woman is a foreign national who has spoken about her ordeal on a now deleted Instagram post, her bruised and battered face for all the world to see.
Here’s what happened. On the night of March 1, the woman travelling on a Spanish passport along with her husband, was attacked in Dumka, Jharkhand. According to the first information report (FIR), the woman has said she was gang-raped by seven men (at the time of writing all seven have been arrested along with one more) and her partner was beaten, assaulted and robbed. They were found by a night police patrol and taken to a hospital where the woman told the doctors she had been raped.
A senior journalist (male obviously) tweeted: “A single horrific assault like this can reverse a decade of efforts to talk about ‘Incredible India’ as a tourist destination.”
You can’t make this up. A woman is gang-raped and terrorised. And a man finds it appropriate to bemoan….the impact on the country’s tourism potential.
The Jharkhand high court echoed the view. Ordering financial compensation—a cheque paid to the husband amid a blaze of cameras—and a status report on the crime, the court said it would have ‘serious national and international repercussions including impacting the tourism economy’. “A sex-related crime against a foreign woman is likely to bring adverse publicity against the country and thereby tarnishing the image of India across the globe,” the court noted.
Rekha Sharma who heads the National Commission of Women decided to wade in. In response to a journalist who shared on X that the ‘level of sexual aggression’ he had witnessed in India “was unlike anywhere else I have ever been” and then went on to quote an incident in a train, she asked if he had filed ‘the incident’ to the police.
Who will tell her, if she doesn’t yet know, of the everyday aggressions and violence we face on the street, in the bus, in offices behind closed doors, in police stations and in courtrooms where those of us who seek justice must face the process as part of the punishment for daring to speak up?
So, let’s get this right. Rape itself—86 cases every day or 3.5 every hour or 31,516 for 2022, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)—does not tarnish the image of the nation. It is the adverse publicity that surrounds it that does.
Perhaps we should revisit all these instances of shame—Korean vlogger sexually harassed in Mumbai, Japanese tourist molested in Delhi on Holi and female foreign tourist groped in Jaipur.
Incredible India indeed.
Understanding rape culture
Men convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano and murdering members of her family leaving jail on remission. It took a Supreme Court order to send them back to jail (Source: Scroll)
In 2012, the year when a student’s gang-rape in Delhi led to unprecedented public protest and an eventual change in the criminal law, NCRB recorded 24,923 rape cases. So with a far tougher law on rape, we actually have more rapes being reported, not fewer.
The spike in numbers is partially explained by a greater confidence in reporting rape—that’s the good news. But, the real number is still likely to be far higher than what is reported, given the stigma and the lack of confidence in swift and certain conviction. India remains deeply unsafe for women both outside their homes and inside them. In 2018, the Thompson Reuters Foundation said we are the most dangerous country in the world for women.
Think of Manipur where women from the ‘enemy’ tribe are stripped and paraded. Think of Sandeshkhali where it takes 55 days for West Bengal police to arrest TMC’s Shahjahan Sheikh, accused of a litany of complaints including sexual assault. Think of the Dalit girls, found strung up from a tree in Uttar Pradesh.
The rot goes beyond individuals to infect the state and government at the highest levels. The men convicted of gang-raping a pregnant Bilkis Bano and murdering her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots are able to walk out of jail, feted and garlanded, on remission granted by the Gujarat government.
India’s most decorated wrestlers sit in public protest against sexual harassment by the Wrestling Federation head, a six-time BJP member of Parliament. The police file a charge-sheet only after intervention by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, under scrutiny from the international community, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s proxy wins the next federation elections; his son, Karan is pushed into the Uttar Pradesh body.
In the Delhi high court, two judges cannot agree on whether marital rape should be criminalised or not. The matter now lies in the Supreme Court, waiting to be heard since May 2022. Until then, it is perfectly legal to rape your wife, provided she is over 18.
Next month, my friend, the journalist Priya Ramani who joined over 20 women during India’s 2018 #MeToo movement in calling out her then editor M.J. Akbar’s predatory behaviour will be back in court. Akbar sued for criminal defamation, and lost. Now, the Delhi high court has allowed him early hearing of his appeal, listing the matter for April 26. Meanwhile, the predators named in #MeToo are busy making films, expounding on TV, creating art and generally getting on with their lives.
If this is not rape culture, supported and upheld by upstanding men and women of society, by the institutions and arms of the government, then what is it?
You can bring in all the laws, all the fast courts, death sentence even, but nothing can change unless there is a corresponding mindset change that will trigger a new way of thinking about girls and women.
We haven’t even begun the work of dismantling rape culture. We haven’t even lit the match that will burn down patriarchy.
Where do we go from here?
At the end of the day, decent citizens have only their anger. In December 2012, in a less polarised world, it was possible to protest without having to wave your ideological inclinations. We had a government that listened, eventually. For a one brief moment, it felt like we were making headway.
Instead we have stalled or, worse, moved backwards.
In the name of protecting women, we now have laws that virtually ban interfaith marriages and courts that refuse to grant protection to couples who fear for their lives.
The first template in independent India for what could have been a modern uniform civil code calls for the compulsory registration of live-in relationships. At every stage the autonomy and independent agency of women is being stolen.
It’s not as if the home is always a safe place. Horror stories include incest and domestic violence. In India, which has the second-highest prevalence of intimate partner violence, 46% of women deem it acceptable under certain circumstances—disrespecting in-laws or going out of the house without permission.
For as long as we can’t change those minds, we will remain doomed to bemoan India’s loss of prestige, not because we have a rape problem, but because it looks bad on the international stage.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal.
The following article is an excerpt from this week’s edition of Mind the Gap. Subscribe here.
