Safe in India?

I am from India. It’s a land famous for many things, its rich culture & heritage, the Taj Mahal, the exotic spicy food to name a few. But it’s also an infamous land in some ways. Infamous for what you ask? For petty and not-so-petty crimes, violations ranging from burglaries to rapes. And as women’s day comes up, I would like to talk about this, clarify exactly why we should be blamed.

If you say that India is a lawless country, you would hear many Indians protesting, and rightly so. While criminal activities are all too frequent here, the figures are often inflated unjustly. I agree that we might not be the safest nation to set foot in, but we still rank better than several African and even some European countries in terms of total number of crimes and crimes committed per capita. Despite being a nation still in the process of development, we even perform better at this metric than United States itself. So then what exactly is the problem?

To illustrate exactly what my contention is, I would like to cite the Nirbhaya case as an example. For those who are unaware of the incident, it revolves around a 23-year-old girl who was brutally assaulted by six men in a bus. As if the gang rape wasn’t horrifying enough, her assailants also tortured her monstrously with an iron rod, eventually ditching the barely alive girl on the road. After 13 days of struggle, she finally gave in and died. Today, four of her attackers are awaiting execution; one was found dead in his prison cell and the only minor among them is serving sentence in a reform facility. Justice has been served now, or has it?

Recently, BBC interviewed Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus in which the victim was molested. Singh has quite a different take on the entire situation. According to him, the victim had it coming because she wasn’t a “good” girl, which he argues is clearly evidenced by the fact that she was roaming out of her house past 9 pm. The man also feels that her death was entirely her fault. In fact, Singh states that he and his comrades would have graciously left her alive if she hadn’t struggled as they attempted to violate her.

In addition to all this, Singh also has choice pearls of wisdom to impart regarding his death sentence. In his expert opinion, his execution will only worsen the situation as the molesters would now kill the victims instead of letting them escape alive. They wouldn’t want to take the risk of the raped girl reporting to the police after all. Finally, Singh concludes that boys and girls are just not equal and women are responsible for their own safety.

These were the views of a rapist who does not feel the tiniest smidgen of remorse even after two and a half years have passed. He is not alone in this thinking however. There are many others like him in our country, men who may not be rapists but share his opinions. Contrary to popular assumption, these are not always uneducated men present in poor pockets. From rickshaw pullers, chai wallahs, bus drivers and blue-collar workers to teachers, doctors, engineers and leading politicians; these men may be anywhere. And all I want to ask is this: In a country where the lawmakers themselves feel that it’s a woman’s responsibility to ensure her safety, how safe can a woman really feel?