Everyone is on the roads protesting against the heinous
crime that has been committed on the young girl in Delhi an I know I too must
raise my voice through my words. I know I must participate in the protests and
show solidarity; but I am so sickened by what our men are doing and what our
country has got reduced to, that my hands are shivering while typing…not out of
fear but coz of disgust and anger. Nothing anyone can say or do will give back
to that girl and so many thousands like her what she lost in those 45 minutes.
A life of dignity, a life of freedom from fear and a life which hoped that the
future will be better.
All we can do is ensure that we never ever forget the shame of being part of
the same society which also nurtures people like Ram Singh and Pawan Gupta and
Akshay Thakur and Vinay Sharma. And perhaps that shame will force us to treat
our women with the respect they deserve, ensure their safety and enact more
stringent laws to punish the abusers!
I want to share two extremely valid points of view which
should make us reflect and ponder on what hell we have descended to as a
society and as a country which clearly and repeatedly is telling its girls and
its women that we don't want you around any longer!
The Hindu writes:
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.
And Farhan Akhtar
points a finger at the same shame…………………………….
“What is this country that I live in?
With no equality, and the quality of life differs from husband to wife boy to
girl, brother to sister Hey Mister, are you the same?
Contributing to the national shame Replacing your mothers With the bent
ideology of another’s perception that women have a particular role in society
Fills my heart with anxiety Where is all of this going? What will emerge from
these seeds that we’re sowing?
It makes my head spin But I’m not giving in Will keep asking the question What
is this country that I live in? What is this country that I live in?
That takes away her right to love Brutalises her with an iron glove Rapes her
without fear Of there being justice for her tear
We’ve demeaned our goddesses Gone back on all our promises Become a gender
distorted nation Given our conscience a permanent vacation What do I tell my
daughter?
That she’s growing up to be lamb for the slaughter We’ve got to make a change
Reboot, reformat, rearrange, and never give in No matter how much your head may
spin
Just keep asking the question What is this country that I live in?”
