O Stree, Raksha Karna - The Reality of Rape in India

It horrified me. When the Kolkata rape case first came to light, I was scared to my bones. I mean, they were talking about a person who had spent her life studying to treat patients, for the betterment of the world, and she hadn't been spared.
My mom was a little shaken too.
But our househelp wasn't. 
Eita toh hoteyi thaake. Kono notun kotha noye, didi.
This is not new, Didi, this keeps happening.
And this was when it hit me. Rape in India is so prevalent because it has been normalized.

And Didi is right. It is not new.

Aruna Shanbaug suffered. 

Bhanwari Devi suffered.

Nirbhaya suffered.

The little girl in Jammu, the teenage girls in Badaun, the woman in Hathras, in Unnao, the 250+ girls in Ajmer, they all suffered.

In fact, Aruna Shanbaug's rapist went to jail, but not for rape, because in 1973, sodomy was not considered rape at all. He was convicted of assault and robbery. People comment that she is the one who served the lifetime sentence, because in Sohanlal's attempt to choke her, he put her into a coma that lasted until 2015, when she died of pneumonia. She was a nurse.

Bhanwari Devi was gangraped when she tried to prevent the child marriage of a nine-month-old baby girl. She herself had been married as a child, and was a social rights activist who stood up against rape and child marriage. The father of that nine-month-old, with some other men of his family, gangraped her. The men were acquitted.

These are not the only stories. When we refer to them as cases, we turn these women and the heinous crimes that were committed against them into statistics and worse, parables. They were human beings with their entire lives in front of them, snatched away by the itching egos of violent men.

Why has this violence become so deeply ingrained in our society?

It stems from a culture that has historically silenced women, where honor is placed above justice, and speaking out means social ostracization. It is reinforced by victim-blaming, where the burden of safety is placed on the victim, not the perpetrator. "Why did the doctor choose to sleep in an open Seminar Hall? Why did Nirbhaya get on a bus late at night? Why did she wear those clothes, tie her hair like that, or look at him that way?" This collective desensitization to such brutal acts has allowed rapists to walk free, sometimes literally, and has perpetuated a cycle of violence that seems unbreakable.

But it doesn't have to be this way. The stories of these women and girls are tragic, and they are a call to action. They remind us that while rape may be normalized, it can never be acceptable. And it is our responsibility to fight this normalization at every level—starting with how we speak about and respond to these heinous crimes.

Some people believe that every rapist should be given phansi ki sazaa. I used to agree. But then, someone changed my mind.

Capital Punishment may not be the answer

Recently, I was asking one of my friends about their opinion on the current situation in Kolkata. He said very little but something stood out to me. He said he believed that capital punishment for all rapes should not be brought into the law. 

I was shocked. 

Are you siding with the rapists? 

He shook his head. Then, he reminded me of a statistic so jarring it makes me nauseous. Almost 90% of rapes in India are perpetrated by someone close to the victim. This means that holding capital punishment as the per defaltam punishment for all rapists may deter people from reporting rapes in the first place. This may be true in cases of marital rapes or rapes where the victim is a minor under the charge of someone close to the perpetrator. With our already high rate of under-reporting, that's definitely a chance we don't want to take.

We need to ascertain punishment case by case, and although rape in itself is a crime worthy of capital punishment, the ripples of that decision could lead to these rapists not facing any repercussions at all.

Consent - Their Clothes, Their Actions, Their Location Their "Yes"

Consent means an enthusiastic, affirmative, and voluntary agreement to engage in any activity—be it physical, emotional, or verbal. Without it, there is no ambiguity: it is a violation. In our society, where patriarchal norms often dictate that a woman’s voice is less important than a man’s desires, the concept of consent becomes blurred. This is why so many cases go unreported - victims are made to feel that their boundaries don't matter, that their "no" can be overridden, or worse, that their silence is taken as an implicit "yes."

And this misunderstanding of consent is not limited to strangers. In fact, it is within close relationships - between husbands and wives, partners, even family members - that consent is most frequently violated. The idea that marriage or a relationship grants perpetual consent is not just flawed; it’s dangerous. Consent must be ongoing, it must be clear, and it must be respected.

Tara Kaushal wrote a book titled "Why Men Rape" in which she discusses the testimonies of nine Indian sex offenders and the insights they provide into the psychology of rapists. Herself a victim of childhood sexual violence, she interviewed these men and found that none of her subjects understood the meaning or the necessity of consent from a female partner. One of them, a serial gang rapist, even refused to accept the idea of rape. 

This is why the issue of consent is so critical in the fight against rape. Until we as a society understand and respect the importance of consent, we will continue to see these crimes go unpunished, and the cycle of violence will persist.

Back to the Point

I am part Bengali. In just another month or two, the streets of Kolkata will be alive with people clad in white saris with red borders, golden kurtas, puja thaalis in hand, ready to worship our Goddess, Durga Maa. It is a sight like no other. 

Durga Maa is the embodiment of the idea of women in religious history. She is demure, she is calm, but she is also brave and powerful, and ultimately she is the goodness that evil cannot defeat. And we worship her for protecting us with all our might.

In the day, they'll worship a woman. The most powerful woman, who saved them from doom. In the night, they rape the rest of them because they're too weak to protect themselves. This hypocrisy is further reflected in the ways society responds to survivors of rape.

When I brought up the Nirbhaya case, someone said, "She shouldn't have gotten on a bus alone. That's the problem, you women have no survival instincts." 

Nirbhaya did not get on the bus alone. She got on the bus with a male friend, who was beaten up by the six men who gangraped her. She was not unafraid then, but let me remind you this. The man who got beaten up was also beaten up by a man. Even as a man, your biggest danger in this country is another man whose ego needs to be satisfied. Remember that in this fight, it was never women versus men. It was women versus the people who believe that women are only good for cooking, cleaning and warming beds. They just happen to most often be men. 

We aren't asking for much, my friends. We're asking for peace. For safety. India's streets are not safe for the women and men who live on it. This is our motherland. To feel unsafe, to not be able to walk some distance to my house in the night because someone is catcalling us and threatening to rape us in loud, explicit words, to not be able to walk the streets of my country as freely as dogs do in the night, it is shameful that we've come to this. 

We understand that it is not all men. But you have to understand that we can't tell which of you aren't in that category. And as far as it goes, telling us that it's not all men solves nothing. It only shows that you would rather push the blame onto someone else than actively try to solve a problem your fellow citizens are facing. If you really believe it's not all men, show us, don't tell. Earn our trust, and be a decent human being. 

This is your call to action. 

Stop the problem where it stems. 

If you have friends who joke about rape, stop them. 

If your friends think it is funny to catcall/harass another person, stop them. 

If your friends spread lies about men and women to widen the gap between us, stop them.

If you see a person being followed or harassed, help them. 

One of my friends asked me to add this to this post,

"I once had a completely random woman come up to me and pretend to be my friend and walk me to my gate. She whispered to me that some men had been eyeing me while I walked down the street. I'm forever grateful. While I appreciate that good-willing men cannot do this without causing more harm, there are other ways to help. I see your efforts, and I thank you for them."

 It doesn't take much to be a terrible person in this world, but it takes guts and courage to stand up for your brothers and sisters. So stand up, my friends. Be the change you wish to see!

Thank you for reading this far.

Note:

If you want to help when you see something wrong on the streets, there are multiple ways to do so. 

https://righttobe.org/guides/bystander-intervention-training/

https://rainn.org/articles/practicing-active-bystander-intervention