Misogynist Responses to Badaun Gang-Rape Case

On May 27, in a gruesome manner, two young girls aged 14 and 15 who went out at night to relieve themselves were gang-raped and killed in Katra Saadatganj of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh. Had the police reacted on time, the girls would have been alive. The police station is not far away from the place where this horrendous attack took place. A little later after the girls went out, a relative who went to the fields, heard them screaming and tried to look for them but could not see them.  He immediately came back and told others what he had heard.  The parents of the two girls got worried and the fathers went to the police chowki which is there in the village itself. As the report of a delegation of the All India Democratic Women's Association, who visited the village, points out,

“The policemen on duty pretended to be sleeping.  When they were woken up they pretended to be very angry and started shouting at the poor fathers.  Finally, they said that they knew where the girls were and that they would be 'returned' after two hours.  The poor, desperate men felt that they had no other choice but to go home and wait for their daughters to be 'returned'.  It seems that little has changed in rural India in the last thousand years. When the girls did not return, their family members hired a jeep and left for the district headquarters at 4.00 am.  They were chased by a policeman on a bike who told them to look for their daughters in the mango orchard. When they reached there, they saw the horrible sight of their daughters hanging dead from the tree. The families of the girls are convinced that the policemen were also part of the gang that raped and killed their daughters.”

Such "inaction" by the police, instead of being punished, gets a further fillip by the misogynist responses of the political leaders who head the government. When a reporter asked Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav about the rapes in the state, he responded: "You haven't been harmed, have you? No, right? Great. Thank you. You should propagate this." Babulal Gaur, the Home Minister of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, equally infamous, for attacks on women, said, “ Rape is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. It is a social problem which no government can prevent. It is not possible for any government to ensure that rape is not committed.” He further added, “Unless the person wants, no one can dare touch her.”

A college going girl reflecting on a recent shooting incident in California, where a spurned boy took out his gun and shot down many dead, and sharing her experiences writes: “We live in a culture where men feel entitled to women and it's so engrained in us, that women, like me, fall victim to the system every day”. She continues, “Every time we tell women it's their fault that they were assaulted or raped, we are to blame. Every time we let another rapist go free, we are to blame. Every time we let cases of domestic violence get swept under the rug, we are to blame. Every time a person stands by as a woman is harassed on the street, or not taken seriously as a human being, we are to blame. And every time we do not put women or victims first, we are to blame. We should ask how instead of why. How can we help them. What can we do as a culture to make them...me.. you...feel safer”. And the 'we' here is a collective noun used for society as a whole.

It is this 'culture' – where men feel entitled to women – that we are seriously trying to perpetuate. What else explains the remark, “Boys will be boys... they make mistakes...” made by one of the senior most politician, who also wanted to be the prime minister of our country? Should we be thanking our fate that Mulayam Singh Yadav did not become the prime minister, or rue over the fact that a much greater fanatic has become one? Modi, for one, proudly represents the ideology that treats women as second-rate citizens, ever dependent on the patriarchal men. One should not forget that RSS supremo, Mohanrao Bhagwat after the Delhi Nirbhaya rape of December 16th last year, claimed  that 'Rapes occur in India, not in Bharat'. Is Badaun in India or Bharat, Mr. Bhagwat?

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick