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The Delhi Rape and The Social Challenge
The Delhi Rape and The Social Challenge
* Former Director of North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati is at present Senior Fellow in the same Institution.
2005 some university students got into a railway compartment at Kokrajhar in Assam not knowing that it was occupied by the armed police coming from Haryana. These men who are paid to protect the citizens locked the doors of the compartment in order to molest them. The Student Union got wind of it and stopped the train in the next station and tried to free the students. The police opened fire and killed four persons from the unruly mob. The perpetrators of this crime have gone scot free and the incident did not become national news. Even in Assam it remained a Bodo womens issue, not of all women. According to a PTI report of 31st December, 2012, seventeen dalit women were raped in Haryana during November. That did not become national news. In other words, while agreeing that crimes against women are a result of the strong patriarchal values of our society one has to realise that they are conditioned by ethnic and caste attitudes too. Many victims have also to deal with a false sense of patriotism in some cases of rape by the security forces. They are told not to report the case in order to protect their honour. The victims honour does not matter. Even some laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 protect such criminals in uniform. While agreeing on the need for police and legal reforms this is what gets one to ask whether new laws, even death penalty, can prevent such crimes. The problem lies in the social system too. Its cultural roots are 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 because many perpetrators of these crimes are known to them. Moreover, by accepting the value of male superiority most women too ensure that many abuses remain secret in order to protect the girls 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 male leaders refuse to change the laws and share their power with women. 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 laws do not allow women to have political power. So elections cannot be held without abandoning the reservations. It shows, as Harsh Sadani of Men Against Violence and Abuse says, men who are part of the problem should become participants in the
deconstruction of patriarchy (quoted by Smriti Kak Ramachandran, The Hindu, December 21, 2012). But also women who accept caste, class and patriarchal values have to change. If legal changes alone were to suffice, dowry, child labour, caste-based discrimination and corruption should have disappeared from India some decades ago because they have been banned. That has not happened because no law can become effective without a social infrastructure to support it. Laws cannot be implemented as long as the attitudes that give birth to the abuses remain unchanged. Womens status too is conditioned by caste and ethnic attitudes. They have to change for women are to attain equality. Instead of that happening, today one sees the system commercialising women in the name of liberalisation in the commercials, the IPL cheer leaders and elsewhere. Also the legal system is conditioned by social pressures. According to a news item in the Indian Express, 1st January 2013, the Union Home Minister introduced the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2012 in the Lok Sabha on December 4, 2012. Its definition of crime went beyond rape to include many more forms of violence. But the political parties were preoccupied with the debate on FDI and none paid attention to this bill. Only when the Delhi rape became an issue they made new political noises to suit the mood. The middle class that leads the demonstrations against rape, corruption and other abuses does not seem to realise this social reality. The temptation of this class is to take up one event at a time in isolation and ignore the social attitudes and systems that cause it. For example, this class rightly took up political corruption as a cause to fight against but very few of them went beyond the political class to ask whether the hands of those who protested are clean. This class protested rightly against the unjust arrest and jailing of Dr Binayak Sen but very few of them questioned the Sedition Act under which he was jailed or the middle class consumer needs for which the tribals in Chhattisgarh are displaced. Their impoverishment resulting from their dispossession is at the root of the Maoist rebellion in Central India but their voice is not heard in these protests. One needs to ensure that also the issue of rape does not end with one case. The gender, class and caste
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