Few days back, a woman from the North-East, aged 30, was abducted and gang-raped by four men in India’s capital, Delhi. After the incident numerous discussions and seminars were held in Delhi. Various women organizations protested to the Delhi government to convict the guilty as soon as possible. Some organizations demanded a list of some special precautions to be followed by the police and the BPO authorities in case of woman employees. For many years now, Delhi has been quite unsafe for women particularly from North East and there has been a long list of incidents where North Eastern women have been victim of various sexual assaults. It is unfortunate that women belonging to the North East are often the victims of ill informed stereotypes making them easy targets for rapes and incidents of sexual violence. They are often perceived as ‘others’ and seldom considered a part of the larger ‘us’.
I will like to include here a situation of which, we are clearly aware that is of a communal riots, when a crazy mob was channelized to vandalize the lives, property of other community. But the issue is not only about the ‘women’ from the other culture or having a distant physical character but fundamentally it is of a category we call ‘woman’. Women have always been the target of clashes as a woman is seen to be representing the ‘izzat’ of whole family or a particular community. Some society leaders have time and again blamed the victim (i.e., women) itself as being responsible for the ill treatment given to them by society. Ironically, these leaders call themselves the propagators of the religious consciousness of the society. The general argument in support of this claim is that women come out of their homes at odd hours and also they don’t have the proper cloth wear sense. Here one must feel necessary to say few words in response to the preceding argument. First and foremost, these arguments take away from women their freedom of choosing their life styles, life partners and also impose restrictions on their freedom of movement. There have been many cases where two year old females, a school going girl have been abducted and raped by these delinquent elements and I don’t think that a two year can even come out of the house. It shows that women, irrespective of age, time, dress or class are harassed, molested and sexually assaulted every hour of the day. What dress did the two-year old wear, or what was the night shift that the baby worked. One should immediately sense that this is an apparent instance of corrupt consciousness which should be punished without fail.
It is high time for the society to stop blaming the women and look at what’s wrong with our society. Some have also blamed the lack modesty of woman while accounting for such incidences and this includes our own Delhi chief minister. We must understand that the modesty of women is directly related to the independence of the women. And it should not be considered the victim’s fault of being on the wrong place at the wrong time in wrong clothes, and most importantly of being the ‘wrong gender’. Basically if we think, we know exactly that this is because of particular attitude of our society towards the woman as a whole. This attitude that if women do not stay confined within the household, are not in ‘Parda’ and do not follow the behavior and norms of patriarchal society then they are not moral one and therefore these cases are the result of their immorality. These arguments are in fact a product of our patriarchal society, which treats woman as inferior, unequal and dependant on the males. These ideas about ‘women’ as a whole are enforced, influenced and propagated by the religion, caste and culture. However, to consider such thinking as only belonging to traditional or rural context would be unfair. For instance, what about an incident of sexual violence and rape in a city like Delhi, which claims it to be a world class city which is the capital of India and centre for world market. A place from where, we talk about the democracy, a place that is a hub for political activities, a place that houses the Lok Sabha as well as the Supreme Court. It is a place, where women have major participation in economic sector, a place, where large amount of defense forces exist and yet the women are not safe. Women are not in safe in Delhi, neither in India nor in the world. I want to draw attention here that a woman is not even safe in her own household where large amount of sexual violence takes place.
Sexual violence is not just a crime resulting from sexual passions, but it is more than that, it’s a crime of ‘right to life’. The irony is that a country whose president is woman, whose capital’s chief minister is woman; such a state of affairs exists. It is not about who represents you, but it more about and reflect the absence of solid political will. People who want to and are running around to build Delhi into a world class city are sleeping. No wonder that Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was consistent in his opposition to the women's reservation bill in the parliament had stated during the recent Bihar elections, “women will vote only to those whom their men ask them to”. This attitude perceives women as bereft of any individuality, self-respect, consciousness and entirely dependent on men. It is this degrading attitude towards women that makes the society insensitive to the crimes committed upon them. If a woman marries somebody with her will, this is not tolerable to the khaap panchyat. They are in hurry to kill the woman in the name of honour. But why doesn’t Naveen Jindal who raised his voice in favour of khaap panchyat, did not raise his voice when a woman is raped. Women constitute half the world’s population, then where is their participation in the political sphere? Despite the abundant cases of female feticide and killing of woman in the name of honour, when woman herself further decides to shackle her tormented life from the deadlocks of patriarchy and institutionalized oppression, similar proposition of justifying honour killings are ridiculously made by the KHAP PANCHYAAT, one of the many manifestations of the present state governance. In the light of such strident demands, one needs to understand the underlying element that the morality rhetoric is used as the last weapon to restrict the freedom and legitimize the domination of the already marginalized.
There is poem by someone which goes likes ‘to be safe is not to exist…’, but I want you to think and ask, don’t you want to exist?? My answer is,
I want to…
Tahiba Khan, Student of Sociology, DSE, DU
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