A set of recent incidents involving gruesome rapes of women across the country has yet again raised several questions about Indian society and judiciary. We at The Quint believe that a rape survivor’s life doesn’t end when she is raped. And that even if our institutions - law, the judiciary, the hospitals - are failing a rape survivor, we as a society need to step up. And keep the fight going. We are publishing this article originally published on 25 November 2015 from The Quint’s archives as part of our #KeepFighting campaign.
Rs 1500 – less than a meal for one at a fancy restaurant. That was the offer on the table for an 11-year-old girl, raped in a rural area of Vishakhapatnam in 2013. The money was offered for her medical expenses. It was also the price put on her silence. The village panchayat thought it inappropriate to value her future by allowing her the dignity of justice. The rapist, according to them, clearly had more of a role in this world than a young rape victim. The fact that her society let her down was her problem. Bad luck for being born into it.
I respect differences in attitude to sex, virginity and marriage in our country. Everyone is entitled to formulate their own limits of what is acceptable and traditional enough for the family not to feel humbled by the judgmental neighbour. What I cannot get my head around is our exceptionally selfish attitude to violence. At least murder in the first degree has the possibility of a life sentence, or even death. But paying off a victim of rape amid consensual nods at a panchayat meeting is not just a mockery of our justice system, it is a mockery of our daughters. It seems the price a woman pays for being raped is directly proportional to the financial status of the rapist.
The offers can range from Rs 1500 to Rs 1 lakh. Who knows how unreported rape amongst the rich are negotiated? Some end up in marriages but that does not make for a compensation? No thought is given to what the man can do after he has married his prey out of social coercion. In any case, how can either a few bucks or being married off to your rapist count as justice? There must be something equivalent to the bodily harm and the social ostracism that a rapist will end up with, that may make the proposition of forcing himself on an unwilling female a fate worse than death.
Several ideas come to mind, but these shall remain thoughts for being unconstitutional and equally uncivilised. It is outrageous that we feel so helpless while our rapists feel no remorse.
My question is, are we fit to be called a civilised society? Reading such stories makes my heart say ‘no’.
In a more mature and educated world, conversations like ‘don’t let your girl out after dark’ and ‘don’t let her wear that’ don’t happen. Most certainly, people with public profiles do not make statements over microphones and megaphones that make growing boys even more acutely aware of the seemingly barbaric privilege of being a man. It’s the one thing he has over a woman that she can never have. The power to hurt her deeply with his own body.
Our laws allow us to let off the so called juvenile rapist in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case. This man went way beyond his hormones and used unthinkable actions to cause her grievous pain and lethal harm. What sexual pleasure could he have possibly derived through an iron rod gouged into Nirbhaya? And where had he learnt this behaviour? I suspect he had seen it done before, and perhaps even tried it before and someone in his society negotiated a fair deal on the victim, left with a bleeding body and a soul damaged beyond repair. The budding rapist probably paid his way through his ‘bad behaviour’ and came out for an encore.
If members of society condone rape as “a mistake sons make”, and believe their daughters can be bought off, married off and even disposed off at will, then the fault lies singularly with those of us who know better than to let them. Please don’t tell me that our rape laws are understood by every Indian in every language or that they even take it seriously. It’s a rape, not a piece of meat you are entitled to negotiate over.
Awareness spreads through conversations at home, education in school, what we see in movies and most certainly what we see every day on the news. When was the last time there were serial public debates in every language about the price a rapist should pay for rape?
We are publicly outraged by a censor board disallowing a kiss in a James Bond movie. It’s time we accept that neither public display of affection nor premarital sex on celluloid teach a boy how to rape. Watching other men get away with it does. We don’t need the moral police and khap panchayats and more morons for ministers. We need rape laws that can actually let a common man distinguish the value of right from the price of wrong.
(The writer is a media professional)
(Here’s a take on a spate of recent instances when paltry sums were offered as compensation to rape victims)
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