Rape culture of India !!

  Hello readers, and welcome back to Indiasm. From the title, you must have got an idea about today's topic. It's about the vital part of the society, women.

Once a great person stated, 

“You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.” 

It means the status of women depicts the social, economic, and intellectual condition in a nation. It means women are the indicators of a country's development. But what if we relate this to India?

In India, women had been seemed as a symbol of spirituality in our scriptures. We are in a country wherein we had ancient traditions like 'swayamvar', which was basically a practice in which a girl of marriageable age chooses her husband from a group of suitors. We live in a country where epic wars like Mahabharata and Ramayana were have fought only for the honour and dignity of a female, Draupadi, and Sita respectively.  A country wherein women had been worshipped as goddesses. Yes, we stay in a country that itself is personified as a female figure, named 'Bharat Mata' and still needs 34 separate laws simply to ensure the protection of a woman!! A country that is now taken into consideration as the most unsafe place for women, with the highest range of rape instances. A country with a record of  88 rape cases registered every day and overall of 32,033 reported cases withinside the entire year. A country in which each 16 minutes, a woman is raped.

Those who were responsible to stop it, ignore the matter by simply saying, that India promotes gender equality. Yes, the Indian system promotes equality in gender however also promotes equality in every way, cause from a infant of 10 months, to 70 years aged female, from a physician to an uneducated village girl, from Brahmins to Dalits, not a single women is safe. Isn't it shameful? But ever questioned why?

Let's have a look at the cause !!

The low status of women: 

Perhaps the biggest issue, though, is women's overall lower status in Indian society. For poor families, the need to pay a marriage dowry makes daughters a burden. India has one of the lowest female-to-male population ratios in the world because of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Throughout their lives, sons are fed better than their sisters, are more likely to be sent to school, and have brighter career prospects. 

Experts point out that violence against girls and women usually takes place in their immediate surroundings. According to the National Crime Records Bureau data from 2017, 93% of all rapes in India are perpetrated by people known to the victim. These could be family members, friends, neighbors, employers, and even online friends.

This is also followed by the acceptance of domestic violence. The Reuters TrustLaw group named India one of the worst countries in the world for women this year, in part because domestic violence there is often seen as deserved. A 2012 report by UNICEF found that 57 percent of Indian boys and shockingly, 53 percent of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 think wife-beating is justified. A recent national family-health survey also reported that a sizable percentage of women blame themselves for beatings by their husbands.

“When a boy grows up seeing his father assault his mother, he starts to accept such a behavior and repeats it,” Anuradha Gupta, mission director for India’s National Rural Health Mission, was quoted as saying.

A lack of public safety: Women generally aren't protected outside their homes. The gang rape occurred on a bus, and even Indian authorities say that the country's public places can be unsafe for women. Many streets are poorly lit, and there's a lack of women's toilets, a Women and Child Development Ministry report said recently.

Women who drink, smoke, or go to pubs are widely seen in Indian society as morally loose, and village clan councils have blamed a rise in women talking on cellphones and going to the bazaar for an increase in the incidence of rape.

India has historically had a much lower percentage of female police officers than other Asian countries. In New Delhi, just 7 percent of police officers are women, and they are frequently given inconsequential posts that don't involve patrol duty, according to the Times of India Of the 161 district police stations in Delhi, only one has a female station house officer. Studies show that women are more likely to report sex crimes if female police officers are available. When women do report rape charges to male police, they are frequently demeaned.

“The police refused to file a complaint. Instead, they asked my sister such vulgar details, it was as if she was being raped all over again,” Charanjit Kaur, the sister of another recent rape victim who committed suicide, told .

“There was no lady police officer, they were all men. My sister cried in front of them and kept asking, ‘Would you still ask such questions if I were your daughter?’

Moreover, there aren't enough police dedicated to protecting ordinary citizens, rather than elites, a Brookings article argues, and the officers that are available often lack basic evidence-gathering and investigative training and equipment.

Delhi, for example, is home to one of the largest metropolitan police forces in the world with some 84,000 officers. But only one-third are involved in any kind of actual “policing” at any given time, while the rest provide protection services to various politicians, senior bureaucrats, diplomats, and other elites. According to the Times of India, there is one officer for every 200 citizens and about 20 officers for every VIP. Many of those who do perform police duties can be found shaking down motorists, participating in protection rackets, and simply looking the other way as crimes take place.

In a recent separate rape case, a 17-year-old Indian girl who was allegedly gang-raped killed herself after police pressured her to drop the case and marry one of her attackers.

Not only that, when verbal harassment or groping does occur in public areas, bystanders frequently look the other way rather than intervene, both to avoid conflict and because they -- on some level -- blame the victim, observers say. Male politicians contribute to the problem, making statements that make light of rape or vilify rape victims' supporters.

One regional policymaker, Anisur Rahman, recently asked a female minister what "her fee" would be for getting raped. The son of India’s president also recently apologized after calling those protesting against the Delhi gang rape “highly dented and painted” women, who go “from discos to demonstrations,” the AP reported.

A sluggish court system: 

India's court system is painfully slow, in part because of a shortage of judges. The country has about 15 judges for every 1 million people, while China has 159. A Delhi high court judge once estimated it would take 466 years to get through the backlog in the capital alone.

For rapes that do get reported, India’s conviction rate is no more than 26 percent. There is also no law on the books covering routine daily sexual harassment, which is euphemistically called "eve-teasing." The passing of a proposed new sexual assault law has been delayed for seven years.

Lack of sexual education: 

Another reason is the lack of sex education. Adolescent boys have an urge to explore. A skewed sex ratio, lack of accessibility, and negligible interaction with people of the opposite sex play havoc on impressionable minds fed with easy access to porn. Also, the profanity of using vulgar lyrics in songs needs to be curbed. There are item numbers where the woman is projected as no more than an object of desire. This causes women to be viewed as commodities, meant to be consumed and ravished. Sexually obsessed rapists don’t consider women as human beings but as an object that can be violated with impunity.  

Blaming provocative clothing: I know this might hurt some of the readers who believe in freedom of clothing and fashion irrespective of gender, but there's a tendency to assume the victims of sexual violence somehow brought it on themselves. In a 1996 survey of judges in India, 68 percent of the respondents said that provocative clothing is an invitation to rape. In response to the recent gang-rape incident, a legislator in Rajasthan suggested banning skirts as a uniform for girls in private schools, citing it as the reason for increased cases of sexual harassment. It's not at all the problem of the victim's clothes, but it's a result of a cheap mentality. 

“She shouldn’t have worn body-hugging clothes.”

“That short skirt looked inappropriate.”

These are common statements used while blaming a victim. But the truth is, it is the rapist’s mindset, his sense of entitlement, toxic masculinity that prompts him to rape. 

Now, what can be done to stop sexual harassment towards women?

Strict and quick actions: 

The sentence for rape in China is death, which some might laud for their swiftness. However, execution without a proper trial is just as savage. Proof of their autocratic leadership shows in the fact that some convicted rapists who were executed were later found innocent. Castration is also used in some cases.

The punishment for rape in Saudi Arabia is a public beheading after administering the rapist with a sedative. The fact that they hand down the same punishment for drug trafficking as well proves that something very wrong is ingrained in their system.

In North Korea, the dictatorship sentences rapists to death by firing squad. Their lines of justice are so blurred that for all we know, they just use this as a cover-up to execute dissidents.

Convicted rapists in Afghanistan, are shot in the head within 4 days or hanged to death depending on the judgment handed out by the court.

In comparison to it, the Indian laws are quite weaker as well as slow. After the Anti Rape Bill of April 2013, culprits are liable to life imprisonment (which is actually 14 years), imprisonment for the entire life, and even the death sentence in the rarest of rare cases. The amendment also expanded to include a lot of other kinds of sexual assault that amount to rape.

Giving proper moral as well as sex education: 

A rapist rapes because they feel they can rape and get away with it. In maximum cases, the sexual urge is not the reason behind rape. The reason is hatred for the other gender or a specific person. The reason is a sense of entitlement.

A rapist rapes in an attempt to prove that one gender is superior to and more powerful than the other.

“Sexual assault is a form of sexualized violence, that is, violence enacted in a sexual way. Like many other crimes, sexual assault is about power and control. Sexual assault happens because perpetrators put their desires over the survivor’s agency to consent. The survivor is never to blame,” Sexual Assault Prevention And Awareness Center, University of Michigan, says.

Indian education system lacks sex education. Young men in India mature and develop in a male-dominated environment, with little or no sex education. And in rural areas, with very little contact with female peers after puberty. Together, this leads to misdirected masculinity, characterized by male sexual dominance and unequal gender attitudes and behavior. Moreover, youngsters start using erotic contents like pornography to satisfy their thirst for sex education which misleads them towards a completely different concept. Among survivors at a rape crisis center, 28% reported that their abuser used pornography and that for 12%, pornography was imitated during the abusive incident. Surprisingly, India comes in the 3rd most porn consumer globally after the USA and UK. Genres like forced sex, BDSM are some of the biggest contributors to fantasize of sexual violence. 

Sex education is more than just talking about sexual intimacy. It includes reproductive health, sexually-transmitted diseases, contraceptives, consent, gender identity, gender equality, and self-worth—all of which are important themes when addressing sexual violence.

Conclusion :

Rape along with other sexual harassment is one of the biggest social evil in modern day society. And it is surely shameful for a country like India which has such a strong historical background promoting feminism, to be the most unsafe place for women. It's not only the problem of a single man or woman, it's not about only the one who is the sufferer or the only who does the crime, certainly we all are someplace associated as well as a part of this whole scenario. A rapist does not emerge as a rapist in a single day, however it is a slow process resulting from a lack of ethical sense and mutual appreciate towards the opposite gender. Stop your that friend who use to pass comments at the body parts of girls, who use to eye tease. Think twice before blind trusting a man, irrespective of whoever he is, speak up before it is too late, be aware about your surroundings, realize the actual motive of the people close to you, look ahead to signs,  address the potential rapist and take actions in case you find any, realize that majority of rapes are committed by someone the sufferer knows, start raising awareness amongst people who lack ethical sense about the alternative gender.