generalspeaking

Desecration of Humanity

"We are in the 21st Century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate and they have to wait for darkness to fall. Can you imagine the number of problems they have to face because of this?"
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

"If CPI [Indian Communist Party] tries to kill and intimidate our workers here, I will not spare them. I will ask our boys to go and rape CPI-M women if necessary."
Tapas Pal, Trinamool Congress party

India's new prime minister has a lot to contend with as the national leader of a country with 1.2-billion people represented by various ethnic, religious and political groups and a multitude of languages, further complicated by cultural diversities and the resistance of the orthodox against loosening up of social-cultural mores that traditionally oppressed women. Add to that India's caste system of the privileged versus the disentitled.

As India modernizes and moves steadily into a newer social-cultural-political era, women assert themselves, demanding equality with their male counterparts. In a country like India, ossified with male domination and female submission, such cultural changes are hard to come by. But a number of horrifyingly brutal rapes and murders have come to the public eye in the country and Indians are increasingly outraged at the gruesome violations of vulnerable girls and women.

Yet even while public protests have become increasingly visible and voluble, and with new, tough legislation, the media daily carries reports of women and young girls being raped and often killed to restrain them from identifying their rapists. In the past two decades either reportage has increased in volume or the numbers of rapes have doubled. It is estimated that a rape is committed every 20 minutes according to India's National Crime Records Bureau.

But that's a low-ball figure because of fear of public shame and under-reportage associated with rape and violence against women. In New Delhi alone, the capital, the number of reported sexual attacks rose in 2013 to 37,707, 35.2% higher than the year before. Now the prime minister has addressed the situation by calling on local governments to make certain that separate toilets are available for girls and women.

Girls drop out of schools simply because of a lack of private toilets in their schools leading to harassment and sexual violence. And in rural India there are few toilets, either public or private, leaving women and girls no choice but to go out at night to relieve themselves in fields, hoping they will not be seen, not attract male attention. It was just such a scenario that brought rape and torture to two young girls from a lower caste, kidnapped from a field at night, their bodies left dangling from a tree.

RYOT

Attitudes among the Brahmin class that girls and women from the Dalit community are there for the taking, and any sexual violence committed against them is irrelevant must change. Attitudes by police that are disinterestedly lax in responding to reports of sexual attacks must also be addressed. The entire society must undergo a profound reversal of popular cultural mores to respect women rather than prey on them.

Starting with politicians such as Tapas Pal, threatening to instruct his Trinamool Congress party males to attack and rape women associated with an opposition political party.

Labels: Atrocities, Crime, Gender Equality, India, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 17, 2014