The next moment, I was thinking about the five year old girl who was brutally raped recently in the capital. I thought, “She had had the similar innocence on her face, as the girl I just saw. The brutality she was exposed to would haunt her throughout her life.She might never be able to look into the eyes of a male. The injuries those beasts inflicted on her, would create problems for her in future also and so on.”
My face was stiff and I was boiling with anger. I wanted to cry out as loud as I could, so that the whole country could listen to me, and say “What the hell is happening in my country, are we humans or the animals”. These thoughts kept disturbing me throughout the day.
Who is responsible for all this? Neither the police, nor the politicians, nor the labourers, nor the migrants are responsible for these heinous crimes that are inflicted upon the women and children including boys in our country (The boys in India are as vulnerable as girls to being abused in their childhood, says a report).
To be honest, we, the society as whole, are responsible for this menace. Even if the police deploy a constable outside every house of the country, the rapes will still take place. In many rape cases the accused is either a relative or a person know to the victim. The stigma attached to rape, the fear that no one will marry their daughter and the thinking that how can they file a case against their relative, many a times forces people not register a case against these criminals. This works as an encouragement for such people. They scout free and continue raping as many females as they can, without the fear of getting punished.
It is us who are responsible for the discrimination between a girl and a boy. I still remember how my mother fought with my father to let me study in one of the best schools of our town. However, when it was my sister’s turn to go to school my mother, being a woman herself, hardly bothered about the quality of the school.
The ages old practice of female foeticide still exists unabated, even after several attempts of successive governments to stop this menace. Those doctors and parents who kill the female foetus in its mother’s womb are also the part of the same society we live in. Aren't these doctors and parents, who don’t even let the girls born, the violators of females?
In many parts of Haryana, where sex ratio is extremely skewed, parents pay for the brides (Who many a times are trafficked against their will) to get their sons married. If there are four brothers in the family and only one is married, there is a possibility that other three would try to molest of violate their sister-in-law (This has been clearly shown in a film named “Matrabhoomi: A Nation Without Women”). Aren't these people responsible for what the Indian women face every day in different parts of the country?
I still remember my father slapping my mother for an avoidable mistake. My mother hid her face in her lap and sobbed for the whole evening. This incident still disturbs me. Domestic violence, which is very prevalent in our society, is also one of the major factors behind atrocities against women.
Moreover, if we go by the facts, a study on domestic violence, conducted in North India, argues that domestic violence is transmitted like a disease from one generation to another. The report also notes that the husbands who witnessed domestic violence as children were 4.7 times more likely to physically assault their own wives than a man who did not witness domestic violence.
All such people, who indulge in domestic violence, need to introspect before abusing and holding police, politicians and the system responsible for every crime against women.
Those who burnt their wives, or tortured their wives or daughter-in-laws for dowry have also contributed significantly in forming this formidable devil in our society.
Therefore, asking a commissioner to resign because a rape took place in the city during his tenure is completely ridiculous. (Though, we can definitely ask for his/her resignation if his/her men fail to deliver results in such cases or try to hush up such cases by giving money. Because, the onus lies on the Commissioner for the inaction of his subordinates.).
Hanging or castrating a rapist wouldn't help either. If that had been a case then there had not been any murders in the county, since it has the provision for death sentence.
Recent outrage over rape cases has definitely brought this issue to the forefront. This has also helped bringing a tougher law to address crime against women and has encouraged more and more people to report such cases to police. There is no doubt that 24*7 media coverage to the protests across the country would help in sensitising people towards women.
However, the battle is still half won. If we really want to bring the change, we will have to be the change we want to see.
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