December in Delhi and we are dealing with the horror of one more woman raped in the National Capital Region. The latest incident took place in a private app-based taxi service, seen these days as the most viable and secure option to other standing or flagged-down taxis.
The woman was on her way home from an office party, fell asleep and was beaten up and raped by the taxi driver. The time was between 9 and 10 at night.
It has escaped no one that we on to the second anniversary of the gangrape that shook the nation and the world. The woman called “Nirbhaya” by a certain section of media never recovered from the brutalities she was subjected to. But before she died, she gave the police as much information as she could. Unlike usual court cases in India, the accused have been tried and sentenced.
But justice is one of those words which can mean so much and so little at the same time. Although the rapists and murderers in the December 16, 2012, case have been put through the judicial system, the issue of women’s safety still hangs in the balance.
Are women any better off at all since 2012? When that young woman and her male friend were beaten up and she was raped and brutalised on that bus by six men, after the initial shock died down, India’s women were subjected to the worst regressive patriarchal lectures. Women should know how to dress, know not to be out at night, women should not have male friends, know their limits, not watch movies, not use cellphones, beg the rapist to be nice and call him “brother” and recite some special ancient mantra to protect themselves. Not one of these panegyrics applied to men. In 21st-century India, in the minds of some, the onus for their security and safety lies solely on women.
The state machinery, particularly the police, found itself at sixes and sevens as various authorities attempted to deal with public outrage and a failure of its own systems. The bus where the rape happened was illegal, some of the accused had prior records of sexual assault and the family — as ever — had to beg the police to register the first information report. To rub salt into the collective wound, police misbehaved with protesters asking for safety.
So what have we learnt? That an international app-based taxi service does not do proper background checks on its drivers, that a man who has a police record for sexual assault can get a fake police clearance certificate and that the police does not keep track of him. And that a woman who travels alone is evidently fair game. Earlier, a woman who travelled with a man was also fair game.
The state has behaved as inexplicably as before. Its kneejerk reaction has been to ban the company in this case — Uber cabs — and other app-based taxi services. How this helps anyone is mind-boggling. It leaves more women in Delhi open to assault, because they’ll be scrambling for transport. It does nothing at all to increase safety because there is no evidence that only rapists become taxi drivers. No one banned buses after the 2012 rape. What activists did was to try and get the police to crack down on unauthorised, unlicenced buses.
Just before the Uber cab rape case, the media was full of videos of two sisters in Rohtak, Haryana, beating up a couple of men in a bus after they were molested. They were immediately dubbed “bravehearts” and were made eligible for awards and money from the state. It then turned out that these two rather slight young girls were serial bashers of men in Rohtak. Some raised eyebrows at the gender discrimination, other felt that the sisters were only reciprocating in kind. Some, undoubtedly, sniggered.
But the skewed standards are visible here also. We have allowed the gender discourse to become so one-sided that women who go out at night are frowned upon and women who beat up men are celebrated. As people have pointed out, rape has not stopped in India since 2012 and we have read the most stomach-wrenching stories of children being raped and molested in schools in Bengaluru. Six-month-old babies, 80-year-old grandmothers have not been spared either. These are not clichés. This is the truth.
And since the rapes have not stopped since 2012, is public outrage enough? It is true that rape happens everywhere in the world and prevention is not always possible. But our outrage is always focused on prevention, as if there’s nothing beyond that. That is why we remain obsessed with female behaviour and forget just who is doing the raping. We also forget about the legal system and the pressure it places on the rare woman who has dared to complain. Today’s women are loath to call them “victims”, they are “survivors”. But whatever you call them, they are put through hell from the first visit to the police station to the doctor to the courts. And then there are men who are sexually assaulted and raped but are not on our radar, condemned to remain solitary, silent sufferers.
We also ignore rape and sexual assault that is committed at home. Family and friends are some of the biggest perpetrators. But since our social structure is beyond reproach, all such crimes must be and are swept under the carpet. It is much easier to get angry with bus conductors, cleaners and taxi drivers. To ban taxi services. To blame the police, the state, the laws. To ask for the death penalty. The Verma Committee made some changes in the law but then we didn’t like the way Tarun Tejpal was charged under the new laws.
What we cannot do is to improve sensitivity training for the police. We cannot have medical staff who understand and have empathy for the rape victim. We cannot check patriarchal attitudes. We cannot tell men how to conduct themselves. And we cannot stop blaming the victim. So what have we learnt since 2012?
Indeed. Any answers?
The writer is a senior journalist who writes on media affairs, politics and social trends
