Is Our Outrage Against Sex Crimes Being Used as a Political Tool ?

India, although a land of the most ancient civilization, has been lately struggling to prove that it is indeed a place where people worship god in the form of a female (Mother Durga). If we keep aside the Durga Puja festival, in which goddess Durga is primarily worshiped and a few other traditions related to this festival, the ground reality suggests that a considerable proportion of the females living in our country have to face conditions which suppress their freedom and motivate the men to deprive them of their dignity as a Human being. The most brutal and shameful thing among all the other forms of injustice done to women are rape and molestation.

Sadly, it took something as horrific and brutal as the Nirbhaya gang rape case to awaken our conscience. It was only after the news of this brutal crime spread that the citizens, for the first time since Independence, took to the streets in such large numbers only to organize a nationwide protest against sex crimes. Our country had seen other instances of mass protests earlier but they were targeted at economic and political problems like corruption and inflammation. Though we are yet to see any significant change in the law and order situations in the crime sensitive areas, we can at least say that many people, who earlier thought that rape is “sometimes accpetable”, have realized that it is a most brutal and shameful crime and that the perpetrator should be severely punished at all costs.

Since the Nirbhaya incident, several politicians have expressed their views regarding the existing “rape culture” in India. Some condemned the situation in the country while others chose to stick to their barbaric mindset and asked women not to “get raped”. But what truly baffles us is the “double standards” shown by many of those political figures who had been very vocal at the time of the Nirbhaya incident and had rightly condemned the indifference of the society and the authorities. There is way too much evidence in the form of media interviews, video footage of their rallies and passed legislation which all prove that one thing they ever cared about was an opportunity to attack their political opponents.

Let us start with the most recent development in which the Central government gave it’s nod to impose death penalty as the maximum punishment that could be given to those guilty of the rape of a girl under the age of 12. Now the apparently the centre is going to make it gender-neutral and death sentence could be given to the rapists of a child under the age of 12, irrespective the child being a boy or a girl. The minimum death penalty of all rapists would be raised to 10 years from the existing term of 7 years.The minimum punishment for rape of a girl under 16 has been doubled to 20 years. Also, the judge has been given a free hand to order that the convict can never step out of jail for the rest of his life.

Now, if you have a sound mind and are reading this don’t you think that is this is discriminatory. The age of the accused can be a basis of discrimination as the Supreme Court norms does not permit the hanging of any minor, irrespective of the crime he/she committed. But how could the age of a rape survivor be of any consequence. Yes, we feel a little more disgust when we hear that a child has been raped, but that is only because of our prejudice. This prejudice, which was born when the whole world followed the patriarchal system, asks us to question the innocence of a woman who has survived rape.

We are not saying that increasing the punishment is wrong. The punishment must be raised as the existing punishment has proved itself to be quite ineffective in preventing rapes and other forms of sexual assault. This move from the government is appreciable but only partially. We are asking that if you could arrange for the death penalty of the accused in the case of child sexual abuse, a minimum of 20 years in the case of rape of a girl who is below 16 , what on earth is stopping you from making the same law for rape survivors above the age of 16.

Why didn’t the government decide to act earlier since it has been a very long time since child rapes started being actively reported in the media. It requires no rocket science, but only some common sense to suspect that this move was aimed at keeping the name of the ruling party clean after a couple of ministers from the same political party held a rally in J&K in support of the accused of the alleged Kathua gang rape case. After the alleged rapists of the 8-year-old girl were defended by minsters of the state, the whole country was fuming in anger. Since the anger was over the increase in the number of child rapes in the country, the government might have played a psychological trick to calm down the people of India. If the two ministers hadn’t cause humiliation to their party, it is not evident that they would have introduced this amendment. Also merely increasing the punishment won’t help.

The statistics suggest that in most of the rape cases in India the police personnel don’t even register an F.I.R. If the culprits are not tried properly, what is the use of such laws. The governments, both at the centre as well the states need to issue warnings to the local authorities and pressurize them to work properly. In India, if the issue of safety of women is resolved, several other problems would also be resolved automatically. For instance, the per capita income of many families could be increased if their women also went to work, which they might fear to because of the law and order situation. Many village people fear to send their daughters to distant places for education or work because they fear their daughters’ safety.

It seems like we are particularly targeting the government but whoever constitute the government, directly affect us through their actions. Hence, they automatically become the subject of criticism,above other parties, when they do not perform their duties properly. Earlier, ruling parties like the Congress had shown the same indifference to the safety of women but they become quite vocal when they get a chance to attack the opposition on such matters. An instance of this is the Sonepat-Murthal gang rape case where the opposition completely ignored the failure of the government simply because they did not see an opportunity to meet their own ends. At one time, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee had claimed an infamous gang rape case to be fake but it later turned out that the she was blindly defending herself, with no grounds for such allegations. Also, she refused to answer a section of university students, who raised the issue of women security and the government’s insensitivity towards rapes, on the national television and called those students CPI agents. But at other times she becomes quite concerned about the safety of women when the ruling party accused of negligence is her political rival. There are several instances of nearly all the political parties using rape as a political tool. May good sense prevail among them.

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