India is currently in the grip of a gathering storm over sexual violence. Mass protests (pictures, pictures, pictures) have taken to the streets to protest police complacency, justifiably, after a 23-year-old gang rape victim died from horrific wounds just days ago. Met with water cannon and police violence protesters set up burning barricades and organised more mobilisations – resulting in the death of one police officer and a number of arrests.
The six men responsible for the attack, including the driver of the bus they were on when the attack took place, have been charged with murder (which can lead to the death penalty). Why the rape of this young woman has caused public outrage when so many others have taken place in the last few days is a mystery that we should be thankful for – at least now the outrage is not confined to small pockets of progressives but is shaking society.
Arundhati Roy claimed that this crime hits the headlines because she was a “middle class girl” and the media is ignoring the way rape and assault is used to “repress” women. She says “That when the police themselves burn down villages and gang rape villages… [when] the army and police use rape as a weapon… women at the top, the middle and the bottom are going to pay the price for it – though not so much at the top.”
Public pressure has been so great that even the BJP said that “The government needs to come quickly with a proper structured response and to reflect upon the serious concerns of the country, it is imperative that a special session of parliament be called at the earliest which we have been demanding for some time,” before finding room in its heart to criticise the bereaved family. It’s clear that even on this specific case some are yet to be persuaded.
For example the President’s son, Abhijit Mukherjee MP, attacked the protesters describing them as women who were “highly dented and painted” and saying their concerns had “very little connection with ground realities”. Understandably provoking outrage, although for those to publicly condemn his remarks to include his sister must have come as a bitter blow.
Dinosaurs aside, there does appear to be a wider recognition that there is a problem with anti-woman social attitudes in a society that mixes urban and rural, conservative and progressive traditions. The head of India’s ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, condemned the “shameful social attitudes and mindset” that led to the attack that appears to have combined assailants that did not know each other prior to the attack (video).
Counterfire’s Lindsey German has written that “Campaigners are demanding tougher sentences and better policing. Many will realise, however, that such demands will do little to stop rape and that there need to be fundamental changes in society if women are to be able to move freely around the streets and to have the right to live, work and study without the threat of sexual violence.”
Indeed, while many are calling for the death penalty and harsher policing (for example systematic stop and search powers) others recognise that there is no simply law and order solution to a problem with such deeply embedded social roots. In particular campaigners will need to be careful where they allow these protests to lead them. Some are simply calling for chemical castration or changing the definition of rape when the first step is surely for rape victims to be taken seriously by the police when they report it. Without a cultural shift that will not happen.
Feminists India have felt able to condemn the attack and call for and an end to the death penalty. In a statement on the rape and murder they say “We also reject voices that are ready to imprison and control women and girls under the garb of ‘safety’, instead of ensuring their freedom as equal participants in society and their right to a life free of perpetual threats of sexual assault, both inside and outside their homes.”
They then add that the “Death penalty is often used to distract attention away from the real issue – it changes nothing but becomes a tool in the hands of the State to further exert its power over its citizens. A huge set of changes are required in the system to end the widespread and daily culture of rape.”
Coming from a perspective with a foot in India and the West Erinn Dhesi says “India is a very patriarchal society in which equality laws do little to break staid traditional and religious cultures, especially in the more rural areas. It’s more of a complex mix of contradiction than it is in the western world”.
In a country where foetuses are aborted and infants are killed by their parents simply because they are girls (possibly eight million in the last decade) the country’s endemic bias misogyny will not dissolve through better policing – although that would be welcome. The Hindu describes the current protests as “a battle for equality, not just a fight against rape”.
As Rashmee Roshan Lall argues: “Against such long odds, Delhi’s protests of the moment may do little to make it safer to be a woman in India. That would require a sexual revolution. And that may be a long time coming.”
Update – further reading:
- BBC: thousands march in Delhi.
- Orientalist feminism rears its head in India: from Jadaliyya
- Sunny Hundal on why it’s right to take on India’s problem with women in response to Owen Jones who wrote, to my mind, a well intentioned but ultimately incorrect article on why we shouldn’t focus on India’s sexism when we have problems of our own.
- Nilanjana Roy on “for anonymous” a powerful polemic on not forgetting the victims.
- An old NYT piece from 2010 on India’s rape laws.
- The fight for women’s rights must continue: Priyamvada Gopal
—
This post is part of my occasional “request a post” series where I ask people to suggest subjects they’d like me to write about I had a request to write about India. This was the result.