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Business News/ Opinion / Views/  Opinion | As the worldwide protest song goes: The rapist is you
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Opinion | As the worldwide protest song goes: The rapist is you

In India, almost all power operates with impunity; male power over women is part of that pattern

Men will oppress and injure women as long as those with power, usually other men, tolerate it.Premium
Men will oppress and injure women as long as those with power, usually other men, tolerate it.

Two weeks after the horrific rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in December 2012, news anchors announced with outrage that Delhi still wasn’t safe for women. Despite the protests, security cameras, a ban on blacked-out vehicle windows, two weeks later, nothing had changed. How do you fix an age-old problem in two weeks?

Nirbhaya’s rape sparked a long overdue conversation about gender in India, but it was largely miscast as a conversation about “women’s safety" and “swift justice". Laws were revamped. Public figures talked up the duty to “protect" women. Television channels ran women’s safety campaigns. Apps came up to track location and signal distress.

All this was helpful, but there was too little talk about the root cause.

The many violations that women face globally are intractable because they are built into the social fabric. Violence cannot be demarcated in a box labelled “women’s safety". It does not begin with poorly-lit streets and bad policing, nor does it end with CCTV cameras and fast-track courts. The ways in which women are oppressed, under-represented, humiliated, trafficked, enslaved, demeaned, tortured, maimed and murdered are incredibly far-reaching. However, these injustices can be summed up in one word: Impunity. No punishment, no penalty, no serious consequences for the perpetrator.

Men will oppress and injure women as long as those with power, usually other men, tolerate it. In India, almost all power—class, caste, political, religious—operates with impunity and male power over women is part of that pattern, one of the many battlefields upon which men joust with men.

The law is relegated to a bit player. As many as 97% of abusers and rapists are either a friend or family member of the victim, who is stigmatized. Thus, gender crime is rarely reported. Of the cases reported, only 3% result in convictions because of shoddy police work and a grindingly slow judicial process. At the end of that, too many women get told to just marry their rapists.

Why, then, the constant shrieks for the death penalty and ugly celebrations, including by lawyers, influential sportspeople, and parliamentarians, when the Telangana police murdered four men accused of the rape and murder of a young veterinarian doctor in Hyderabad? Why such bloodlust, from the very society that disembowelled Nirbhaya, threw acid on the Unnao woman on her way to fight her rapist in court, defended the politicians who marched in support of the rapist-murderers of the 8-year-old child in Kathua, and venerated rape-accused godmen such as Aseemanand and Nithyanand? How is a society so endemically bigoted, so unfamiliar with consent, apparently so outraged on behalf of women?

Perhaps it is because men find it too hard to give up their privilege, power, and acceptability to other men to make equal space for women. It is easier to hide collective responsibility behind collective vengeance. Maybe, if you just cheer loud enough to kill the accused dead enough, soon enough, you can continue with your own behaviour and habits. You do not want to let overcompensation outweigh privilege entirely, however, so you celebrate the custodial murders of four inconsequential men, but do not call for the same instant “justice" in the case of upper-caste, politically connected criminals who threw acid on the Unnao woman.

It is like the air pollution problem: implementing odd-even schemes and building air purification towers is so much easier than making the structural lifestyle changes required to uproot the problem.

To think that barbaric retribution constitutes penalty and consequence is delusional. It just undermines justice without addressing the problem.

Far from decreasing, I’d bet my last onion that violence against women is likely to increase because power structures are becoming increasingly violent, with increasing impunity, and increasing social sanction. This government has arguably done little to prevent the perversion of justice. It appears to be in a rush to pass laws that large numbers of people consider intimidating (the National Register of Citizens, for example, and the Citizenship Amendment Bill), and doesn’t seem very well disposed towards democratic protest and dissent, including women protesting violence against women. Embarrassing numbers of our parliamentarians are accused of crimes and pay little or no price for it.

Revenge Telangana-style is a similar perversion of justice. Revenge may feel good, but it cuts the legs out from under justice and allows even well-meaning men to ignore their own responsibility. So please do not say it is to protect and honour women. Bloodlust only feeds the same power structures that put women down. Our honour is our own to handle.

How about not forwarding jokes on rape, standing up to sexist peers, teaching children about consent, not telling daughters whom to marry, and not dominating or raping anyone? That would help check impunity and serve women better.

The justice system should be a bit player, as the last-resort check on impunity. Else, we will keep tolerating rape culture as we do corruption: Everyone understands that it happens; just don’t get caught.

As the international protest song goes: The Rapist Is You.

Mitali Saran is an independent columnist and writer based in Delhi

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Published: 10 Dec 2019, 09:10 PM IST
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