Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Noida rape and something even more disturbing

Ten young men gang raped a MBA student who was with her boyfriend in her car.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mba-student-gangraped-in-noida-5-arrested/407318/2
Can this news get any worse and reveal something extremely disturbing about our society? Just read the above news and last paragraph of it, one of the accused 'claimed' that he saw the girl and her boyfriend in 'intimate' and then they did whatever they did. What does this sentence in the report reveals about us as society? Is not it sickening that the rapist is making a 'claim' and this claim (irrespective of being true or false) is being considered 'worthy' of being reported by reporter, of the prestigious newspaper? By the langauge of the report, it appeared to me that the rapist meant that since the girl was being already intimate with someone so their crime is not so serious. Or who knows, he might be thinking that they will be acquitted, after all is not a girl being intimate with someone in a car a characterless woman, and they are licensed to rape her (if you do not get it, I am being sarcastic). Men of such convictions should be in the asylum or in psychiatric wards or jails and not on the streets.
This primitive thinking is still permeating in our modern India. If a woman is being fucked by someone other than her husband, we also have right to bang her- many of us may not think that way, but the roots of this thinking is deeply embedded in the psyche of most Indian women as well as men. This idea of equating the worth of a "woman" by her sexual behaviour. There is not only the excessive and unnecessary glorification of idea of sexual purity- the virginity and preserving it for the postmarried life in most of the middle class but the contrary is considered almost crime in most of the India except a few metrocultures. This is not the first case, we have been here before, I do not remember exactly where the gurads of the President raped a girl because they found her intimate with boyfriend in some garden behind Rashtrapati bhavan. At that time it was reported such cases are widespread and most go unreported because the couples were unmarried and did not want the news of their 'affair' to taint their families otherwise the female has to be branded with an additional shameful label of "characterless" too, in addition to having lost her 'worth' irreversibly to the rapists.
Why we have built a society where 'sexual purity' should be a criteria by which worth of any woman is measured, unless we are very sex obsessed decaying civilization. Why we, as a society can also respect the right of an adult woman to have sex, when we do not look down upon the men having such sex (rather they are considered macho, object of envy). Whether man or woman in a relationship be faithful to one another, is entirely a matter between the two. There they can have issues like commitment, fidelity and so on. But society should not have any say in this, at least not considered it 'criminal' or 'making a person' less worthy. And if it does it should apply the same standards to man also. Why we consider any sexual behaviour of a woman other than that dictated by typical middle class patriarchal orthodoxy the sole content of character. We can respect a village sarpanch eating mid day meals of starving children, we can respect teachers coming to schools only on the pay day and taking money to pass students, we can respect doctors killing thousands in government hospitals by sheer negeligence, we can respect babus wiping the shitty assholes of their superiors and sucking life out of every poor man, we can respect the political leaders, MLAs, MPs, who are hoarding real estate and foreign cars while next doors there are children starving and mothers selling bodies to feed husbands, we can respect policemen whose only function is to protect corrupt politicians and their family members, we can respect heartless beaurocrats for whom starving malnourished children are mere numbers, we can respect everyone who is ready to kick our behind, but by God, let any woman be caught in affectionate embrace with someone, we will fuck her and still be able to render her characterless. And that goes not only for stupid men, but our great Indian women too. Of course our Indian females will not rape her, but in their eyes and conversations too, such a woman will be termed as 'characterless' and somehow worthy of being raped.
Many modern middle class men and women are commenting that these guys should be killed in encounter or hanged or so on. This is repeated ad nauseum till there is another distraction, another terrorist attack or another hit movie, or another sex scandal.
But do we bother to ask ourselves, why should we kill them in encounter or hang, why not have a quick dispensation of justice, and legislate whatever penalty we wish to have. Personally I am against capital punishment and I think we can have any harshest punishment for these guys, and even I can suggest the confiscation of all of their property for generating funds to help victims medically, psychologically and financially.
But it is better said than done. On the same day we have this news about a woman gang raped fighting in vain for justice after two years. Renuka choudhary, minister for women and child welfare instead of making political issue out of Noida rape and asking Mayawati an explaination, should try to ensure justice is done in this and her own party ruled state. To ask for an education campaign to delink a woman's character and her worth from her sexuality will be asking for too much, until women of India come out of age to take their fair share of power in government instead of one or two exceptions like Mayawati or Renuka.