And what is this country that we live in ????

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?”