“Teen girls gang raped and hanged from a tree”. That’s the
headline that assaulted my eyes this morning on Twitter. I shrugged it aside
because I was looking for good news this bright and sunny Saturday morning. I
visited the Reuters site and came across the same headline and it hit me full
in the face in big capital letters. TEEN GIRLS GANG RAPED AND HANGED FROM A
TREE.
I was wide awake now. These were two human beings sexually
violated and murdered. Two innocent lives destroyed and extinguished. And you
know what’s surprising? While I am nauseated by the news, my initial reaction
was to ignore it. The spate of news about sexual violence in our country is
beginning to desensitize me and I’m sure a lot of you too. It scares me. Its truly
frightening. It’s scary because this is something that happens every few weeks
(We know this because its reported in our favorite paper or website or news
channel). And that is the problem. It’s reported by the media only when there
is a huge public outcry. It’s sensationalized and there are various “experts”
on umpteen news channels and everyone’s really upset and outraged for a few
days. And then we forget the victims and casualties. The crime is forgotten. And
life goes on.
NO! It does not. Not for them and their families. Those lives
have been destroyed and can never be mended. The NCRB statistics for the year
2012 are an eye opener, but I wanted to shut my eyes. 24923 cases registered
for rape in 2012 alone. That’s nearly 70 rapes a day. That means somewhere in
India, right now, a woman is being put through the most horrific and morally
degrading experience of her life. An experience that will never go away. One
that will haunt her forever. And yet our Mulayam Singh Yadav says, “Boys will
be boys. They make mistakes”. Our culture summed up aptly in one sentence. It
makes me ashamed to be a man or “boy”. It also makes me ashamed to be an
Indian.
But rape is only one aspect of the big picture. The real
problem lies with our society and our culture. The degradation of women starts
at home. The total number of cases registered for cruelty at the hands of the
husband or in laws was 49170 in 2001. In 2012 it was 106527. That’s more than a
50% increase. I shudder to think of how many go unregistered.
In retrospect we are all to blame. We are all guilty. We are
all docile and it’s just plain that we don’t care. We are Gandhi’s three
monkeys. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. As for the rapists? They are
men of action. They do only evil.
