Standing Tall
Why women need to fight for their safety and rights
In Kathua, a group of Hindu men decided to ‘teach a lesson’ to the nomadic Muslim community of Bakarwals, by raping and murdering an eight-year-old girl. In Unnao, a 17-year-old girl has accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Senghar and his men of rape, and her father has died in custody. In 2018, it seems pointless to look back at December 2012 as a remarkable event in the history of women’s struggle. The young and naïve like me had thought that the women shouting on the streets would grab spring by the ear and drag it in. Today, I’m preparing for a really long winter. It is not new to see our elected government openly
accepting of patriarchal violence. The Prime Minister follows and affords private audience to men who tweet rape threats and misogynist slurs at women. Uttar Pradesh is governed by a Hindu religious leader who has been recorded on video leading a crowd of men to cheer hateful and misogynist remarks, “agar woh ek Hindu balikaa le jayenge to hum sau musalman balikaayein le aayenge.” The unchecked misogyny of these elected officials in the country sends out a clear message—this is what normal looks like.
THE ARSENAL
As we fought to change our rape laws, we didn’t quite question the foundations of the Indian State. The State is essentially upper caste Hindu, male, and violent. Every woman is served a different combination of these components, depending on her social status. A privileged woman like me has to fight mostly its maleness and violence. A woman without any caste or class privilege has to face the entire arsenal. All women in this country grow up under the weight of patriarchy’s foot and some, like Asifa, are not allowed to grow up at all. The men who raped and murdered her were enabled by a system that allows convictions in only 25 per cent of rape cases nationally, and an even smaller percentage—seven percent—in her state of Jammu and Kashmir (Source: National Crime Records Bureau).
The survivor in the Unnao case has had to go into hiding. The man accused of raping her walked into the Chief Minister’s office with a puffed chest and a million dollar smile on his face. In Jammu, a group of lawyers (men of course) has issued an official statement, and are protesting freely in support of the perpetrators. It is only in an actively misogynist State, that a woman seeking justice for her rape has to hide to save her life, while men can freely express and celebrate their misogyny.
QUANTIFYING VIOLENCE
The rape of Asifa had not shocked people enough before the exact details of her suffering were made public. Looking at the way rape cases have been sensationalised recently, I wonder if people know that rape, is violence by itself. Instead of obsessing over the heinousness of the crime, we need to ask how the State has emboldened men to believe that they can rape an eight-year-old girl and get away with it. Two Special Police Officers (SPOs) and two Head constables have also been named in the chargesheet filed in the case. The SPOs were an active part of the conspiracy hatched by the prime accused, Shubham Sangra. The Head Constables helped in destroying evidence. Ministers of the J&K government, as well as leaders from the Congress took to the streets to support the rapists. This is the State that our little girls are up against— where the government and its functionaries normalise violence against women, commit violence against women and protect those who commit violence against women.
CHALLENGE THE STRUCTURE
Men have not started committing violence against women only recently. Neither have they just started enjoying impunity. I have every right to expect better from my government that functions via the authority granted by the constitution—a constitution which promises me equal rights per se. But the State is actively taking away the rights of those not a part of this powerful political structure, and women are the first casualties.
Today, many are outraging against Asifa’s rape in the name of humanity, ignoring that Asifa was not targeted for being just another human. She was targeted specifically because of her gender and her religion. Until we address this underlying context, our protests are meaningless. It is a hate crime of the most violent nature, and in a Hindu majority country with a history of persecuting Muslims, it needs to be seen as such. Another stringent law against rape—like the one Mehbooba Mufti is advocating and the DCW chief is fasting for—is not what we need. If these laws could protect women, we would not have seen another rape after December 2012. We need to question our social and political structures, along with their toxic masculinity and upper caste Hindu hegemony that facilitate men to commit such horrific acts against women, the most vulnerable of them standing at the intersections of gender, caste and religion. And we can start by holding our elected governments accountable.