Indians’ attitudes towards women have come under intense scrutiny following the brutal gang-rape and death of a 23-year-old female student in New Delhi last month.
The paramedic student, who was severely tortured and thrown out of a moving bus, has galvanised India. Vigils and protest marches are being held in her name.
People are asking how such a heinous crime could have occurred in the nation’s capital. Many are demanding stiffer penalties for crimes against women.
The rape and murder of the young student has led to a lot of soul-searching, particularly among India’s elite and middle classes, who have tended to view violence against women as a problem mainly afflicting the lower uneducated classes.
Soutik Biswas, the BBC ’s Delhi correspondent, is among those who see gender-based violence as being common among the less-privileged sections of the population, particularly in northern India, a region which, he says, harbours “a stiflingly patriarchal social mindset”.
He also blames Delhi’s “deracinated generation of migrants” and a “broken justice system” for the rising incidence of rapes in the capital city.
Honour killings and sexual harassment are common in northern India. (This is despite the fact that northern Indians worship a plethora of female goddesses.)
In highly patriarchal societies, men tend to view women as their personal property.
This sense of entitlement fosters the commodification of women and girls. Girls are viewed as economic burdens whose only value lies in their labour and in their ability to produce sons.
That is why the burning of brides for dowry is common in India, as is female infanticide. Some say that Bollywood’s portrayal of women as sex objects has only made things worse for women.
Statistics show that nearly 40 per cent of Indian women have experienced some form of domestic violence. Many of them are middle-class professionals, such as journalist Nita Bhalla, who recounted her own abuse at the hands of her husband in an article published on BBC News in March last year.
Bhalla says that Indians’ high tolerance for violence against women makes it difficult for victims to get justice.
“When he pulled my hair and kicked me as I lay on the pavement, there was a deafening silence from my neighbours who heard my screams but were reluctant to intervene,” she wrote.
Bhalla says that modern educated women are particularly threatening to Indian males, who lash out at these women because of their own insecurities.
Men’s loss of power and control over women has made professional women particularly vulnerable, especially in male-dominated work environments and in public spaces. Sexual harassment and rape are men’s responses to this loss of power and control.
The rape and death of the student last month is not just a tragedy for the victim’s family but is also deeply embarrassing for the Indian government, which has superpower ambitions and which views itself as a progressive, modern democracy.
Economic growth and liberalisation may have lifted millions out of poverty, but they have clearly not had a significant impact on the status of women in Indian society. This needs to change. A society may be economically successful, but its success will be meaningless if half its population lives in fear.
Economic success has also not assured the safety of women in countries such as Kenya, South Africa and the United States – where incidences of rape are particularly high.
Rape is the most cruel form of torture and leaves permanent scars. A woman who works with Somali refugee women recently told me that the rape of women in Kenyan refugee camps by police and male refugees is so common that most women don’t even bother reporting it.
Starving refugee women are even being raped while standing in line for food! What level of depravity makes men do such things? Some refugees are even trafficked to Nairobi and made to work in brothels. Evil knows no bounds, it seems.
Last week, we heard the story of the four-year-old girl in Mombasa who was defiled and killed. Such incidences are becoming alarmingly common in Kenya. India and the world need to examine why rape – the vilest of crimes – continues unabated in the 21st century.
