Rape & Rants
Last night, I went to a friend’s birthday celebration and
met a lot of new people. Everyone was in high spirits (pun intended). This
friend of a friend was an out-of-work journalist and he was worried about all
the girls reaching home safely. Then, he started ranting about the plight of a
wronged Manipur girl who lived in the city of Delhi.
Apparently, she had been brutally raped and was in a
terrible condition. Her face was disfigured beyond recognition and her lower
torso was in an unmentionable state. Despite this, Delhi Police refused to file
a complaint. That journalist friend ranted and nodded his head. He said that he
does not believe in creating divides and stressing on minorities but he didn’t
know how else to comprehend this situation.
Unfortunately, North East Indian girls are highly sort after
in child and human trafficking circuits. This region which is mostly cut-off
from the rest of India, with a distinct cultural personality of its own, is in
almost a permanent state of political turmoil. Families desperate to step out of poverty
resort to drastic measures and end up bartering women or young girls in the
bargain for a better life. This doesn’t imply that every female from that
region is a victim of this trade. But because of this well-known urban lore these
girls tend to have a dented impression when they venture out of their region to
other states.
I don’t know the real truth behind the story of this girl
from Manipur but I’m very well-aware of the social malice they face and probability
of crimes against them being unreported.
Nobody deserves to be raped irrespective of the background
they come from. No, not even if they are prostitutes. You can’t touch a woman
without her permission. Period! How difficult is it to grasp that reality?
It enrages me immensely as I have a lot of male friends who are so
chivalrous that it is borderline annoying and then there is this other set of
monsters! I fail to understand this.
Why don’t we round up every rapist on this planet and lock them up in
a concentration camp. Not to torture them to death but to grill out every line
of thought they’ve ever had that motivated them to indulge in such satanic acts
of inhumanity. Why do rapists rape?
They are everywhere and not just in our country. India doesn’t
fair very well when compared to the other G20 nations in context of gender equality.
There is no denying that fact but rapes happen in other countries too. There
was (and still persists) a lot of hue and cry about new laws being implemented,
about the lackadaisical attitude of the law enforcement and the misogyny of our
patriarchal society. Agreed, we have flaws. But this happens elsewhere too.
A man in Cleveland, USA was recently arrested after three
women were found alive, a decade too late. He kidnapped them and held them
captive in his home for that many years subjecting them to unaccountable
torture and harassment. One of them even had a daughter and all of them had a
number of miscarriages. Read full story here. That
man hoodwinked the system and society at large for 10 years! We expect a
developed nation to be more adept at nailing their criminals but the fact is
you cannot curb this anomalous behaviour no matter how many laws we put in
place.
Maybe, I’m being a bit presumptuous here. But what about
those women in Somalia
who’ve accepted their fate as sexual victims and consider it lucky if they
survive till they hit menopause? Or about those women in Hoeryong concentration
camps in North Korea where whole families are held captive and women are more
often than not subjected to rape and sexual harassment as a form of punishment?
Or about daughters
in Saudi Arabia that are always viewed as objects even if they are covered
from head-to-toe in a burqah and can still end up being victimised? These countries have
capital punishment for crimes like these and even then, rapes happen.
Sickening stories as these are a constant reminder that at the
end of the day no matter how much we progress as a civilised society, some
primal instincts will always persist. Rapes or gang rapes are a common practice in chimpanzees, gorillas and even dolphins for that matter. This urge, this instinct
is deeper than the battle between the sexes.
The only way to eradicate a disease is to get to the heart
of it. And I don’t know where this starts and how we can put an end to this.
Every time I hear a story like that of the Manipur girl, I have a hard time
sleeping at night.
I don’t want dark circles. This must end.