Protesters on the street- several thousands of them; candlelight marches, unprecedented outrage on social media; the influential discussing it, and the common, flabbergasted by it. Not a single media channel in the country wants another story. Sonia Gandhi sheds tears; the story evokes tremors on the floor of the Parliament.
Nirbhaya, Amanat, and Damini- she’s acknowledged by different names, none of them her actual name; but every single soul of the country knows her. I wince at a mere reference to the egregious incident. The mob wants the perpetrators hanged. Some want them castrated, and some others have come up with other creative penalties as well. Security has been stiffened in the national capital. The generation as we know it has ‘awakened’.
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| Candlelight vigil near India Gate |
The reactions, to say the least, are justified. The mass outrage, by all means, is within limits of rationalism. The only question I have is, is this what it takes?
Will we get out on the streets only when an innocent girl is gang raped by six men, bludgeoned, nearly to death, and thrown on the road? Is this the degree of criminality that will get us on our toes? What about the hundreds of other girls in remote areas who don’t even have the means to report such a heinous crime? Will we not stand up for them? Will it not appeal to the Samaritan in us just because a girl was not beaten and she did not run to the authorities?
While I surfed through countless news channels ripping this one story apart, I came across another isolated incident on one channel. For a moment, it seemed eerily out of place.
An 18 year old girl was raped by three men on the night of Diwali, i.e. a month ago, in a village in Punjab. She did not report the case for two weeks, and when she eventually did, she was forced to withdraw it. The policemen she approached, when she wanted to open a formal inquiry, tried to coax her to back off. It is also believed that the accused themselves tried to threaten her. On the 26th of December, she committed suicide by drinking poison. She mentioned names of the rapists in her suicide note, deeming them responsible for her death. Two police officers were fired, and one was suspended, following the incident.
A girl, my age, raped violently, and then driven to suicide. This sickens me. As do the numerous other stories that have emerged in the aftermath of the Delhi incident. But what appals me is the fact that the mob might not have taken to the streets had the Delhi case not happened. It is this resilience that we need to uproot from our lives. We hear of a sexual assault case every minute. Why does it take such a huge boulder of an event to awaken us? Why can’t we stand up for all our women?
Shoma Chaudhury, the managing editor of Tehelka, said in a discussion, “Why does this concept of bearable rape and unbearable rape prevail? Just like murder is murder, rape is rape! One cannot sit back just because a girl in inappropriate clothing was raped. Any kind of rape should be protested with a similar ferventness.”
My only appeal to the people is, show some sensitivity. The girl, may her soul rest in peace, is in a better place now. Think about the other victims who have to live with the scars. Show some compassion. We need to make their lives better, help them live peacefully. Like I said, the outrage is justified, but what is needed more, is responsibility.
Stand up for all victims. In such times, what’s to stop your loved ones from being one of them?
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