Its Time....

It is with sadness and shame that one heard the news of the Delhi gang rape victim succumbing to her injuries. It is a time for mourning and it is a time for condolences. It is also a time of introspection. It is a time to ask ourselves why this happens again and again in our society and what can be done to make sure incidents like this are reduced, if not outright eradicated.

Without question, our laws are outdated and needs change. In a country where life imprisonment is 14 yrs and where rape is generally seen as a lesser crime we need to decide what would be an adequate deterrent to it. The current punishments have proven to be inadequate and ineffective. We need to look at increasing the term of imprisonments and include the death penalty in those rarest of the rare instances. But this is not enough. More importantly, we need to see rape equally no matter who the involved parties are. Instead of the complicated mess of a law we have right now, the crime and its punishment should be made uniform.

Like in the west, we need to have a sexual offender database and make it public. The database should be for those convicted of any sexual crime with the biggest red flags assigned to child sex molesters. In crimes like these and in a society like ours social ostracism can and will be the biggest deterrent of all.

The experiences of victims at police stations have resulted in a majority of rapes going unreported. We need to have a mechanism where the first person to talk to a victim is a qualified rape counselor. That and more women officers in the police station will bring about a dramatic change in this.

More than anything our societal attitude toward women needs to change. In our society rape is the one crime where the victim is seen to be at fault as much as the perpetrators. Women are seen as the repository of familial honor. Due to which often the victim is seen as the one dishonored rather than the perpetrator. This change is the most important and possibly the most difficult to achieve. It probably will require a more communal push than any of the other changes mentioned above.

To stop these crimes from recurring again and again, there is an overwhelming amount of change that needs to happen; in our laws, in our government policies and above all in our communities. But how many more Amanaths and Daminis do we need before we make this change. If not now, then when?

Are We Civilized?

The recent event in Delhi has prompted me to question our nature as a society and a country.  The details of the crime were shocking in its nature and chilling in its brutality. It makes one want to question the very notion of living in a civilized world. Are we?

It was appalling that the perpetuators took it upon themselves to “punish” a 20 yr old by beating her with an iron before gang raping her and throwing her half naked on to the side of the road from a moving bus. And what might her ‘crime’ be; she went to a movie late night with a boy.  That she fought back when these animals began to harass her and her friend.  I wonder if even cavemen thought this way.

The reason for someone doing this may be varied. From alcoholism to mental instability to basic criminality. You can even say economic factors contributed to this crime. But to me the issue is more deep rooted than that. This is not the first incident that we have heard recently coming out of our country. It’s not going to be the last. This one has gained such significance only because the sheer brutality of it is unprecedented.
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I believe one of the best yardsticks of a civilized society is in how we treat our women.  So long as our wives are bullied and beaten into submission, we are not civilized. So long as we do feticide of our daughters we are not civilized. So long as our sisters cannot go out in the night without fearing their safety or being harassed, we definitely are not civilized.

We can debate about what the ideal punishment is for these animals. I have heard death penalty, social ostracizing and life imprisonments. But what punishment will make up for the trauma she has suffered. What will be justice if, heaven forbids, she succumbs to her injuries and passes away. Society is the biggest loser here as it will lose a medical student, someone who was getting trained to save lives.  Mind you, I am not saying that these brutes are to be left alone.  They should be brought to justice before a law that I believe is too lenient and not enough of a deterrent to crimes like these. But that’s a topic for another day.

For a country that gave the world Kamasutra and Khajurao temple we seem to have very weird notion of morality and culture. That notwithstanding, why are groups or individuals enforcing their sense of morality on others. We are a country based on tolerance. Be it for each other’s views, religion, caste or sex, we Indians are supposed to at least be tolerant of each other’s beliefs and way of life.  Sadly I see this basic tenant of our “Indianness” eroding slowly away in all walks of life. Until we get back to that we do not have any right to be referred to as civilized.