'Rape Culture' in India

2800 Words.

5th Dec 2019. The rape survivor from the Unnao case was set ablaze on her way to court hearing of her own rape case trial. After reading this news, I was furious and slightly disheartened. What triggered my furor the most was, how men with power try to suppress the voices of the victims by bending the law at their own will. Like most of us, I took it to the social media, vented out my frustration and sympathy for the victim. Days before this news, there was another unfateful incident which made it to the international news. A 26 year old vet, Priyanka Reddy 'Disha' was gang-raped and burnt to death in Hyderabad which sparked fresh outrage and countrywide protests. Last year, there was the Kathua case (An 8 year old Asifa was raped for days and later murdered as a pre-planned conspiracy against the Bakarwal community), and few years ago, the infamous Nirbhaya case happened (the case which shook our nation's conscience). Unfortunately, this list is endless. On 6th Dec, all 4 accused in 'Disha' case were shot dead in a ‘police encounter’. I was actually relieved by the news and thought that the justice was delivered to those fiends and there would be one less trial which would have been dragged for years. But, as my anger was calmed, I realized that it was probably done in an extra-judicial manner, bypassing the judicial channels, which once again ripped open the Band-Aid off of our diminished faith in our painfully slow judicial system. The focus was shifted from finding the real root causes of the social malaise to delivering immediate retribution to the accused. Besides, I can't stop thinking about the fact that the accused belonged to weak economical section. Had they been from a powerful section, would they have been treated the same by the law enforcement? This whole incidence just revealed how deep rooted this issue actually is in our social fabric.

I decided to get to the roots of this social epidemic. As a starting action, I wanted to know how exactly 'rape' is defined by various institution or the etymology of the word itself. What is a rape anyway? A stereotypical notion of a rape involves a stranger, mostly a man or group of men, forcefully and often violently having sexual intercourse with the victim, chiefly a young attractive women. It's also a widely held belief that only 'certain' type of men rape 'certain' type of women thus other-ing of both, rapists and the victims from the healthy functioning society. I think, this is just a feeble attempt to deny the social responsibility of the crime. From 2015 NCRB's (National Crime Report Bureau of India) data, 95% of the rapists were people known by the victims. And, from 2 year old infants to an 80 year old lady, everyone is vulnerable against sexual assault in our 'culturally rich' society. 

The legal definition of Rape varies across the jurisdictions. Most common definition involves two main elements which are penile penetration of vagina and absence of consent from the victim. Many nations, including India, in last few years have expanded their legal definition to include intrusion of any object into the bodily openings irrespective of gender of either perpetrator or the victim, without victim's consent. In many cases, Consent is acquired through coercion and or physical threats or victims is simply unable to consent as in case of being intoxicated or belongs to person below legal age of consent. All of these aspects are critical to the legal definition of rape. Although, same-gender rapes exist, Men are the perpetrators while women are at the receiving end of the sexual violence in most of the cases. Rapes are also used as a tool with a specific agenda as we saw in Kathua case. Rape carried out systematically can also be employed during ethnic cleansing most recent global example being Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar. War rape has also been an instrument for psychological warfare during wars of with known records dating back to the times of Romans and Mongols. But these variants of rapes are not the focus of this post. Instead, I was keen on studying ‘the rape’ within the context of our times and the Indian society. Many legal experts agree that rapes are highly underreported due to victim’s fear of bringing shame and dishonor to the family, fear of reprisal from the rapist, fearing adultery charges, honor killings and in many cases victims are often confused about whether they were ‘raped’ or not. In a bizarre instance from Afghanistan, the rape victim named Gulnaz, was charged with adultery, was tried then imprisoned who was later pardoned when she gave birth inside the prison and was forced to marry the rapist. I can't even imagine the emotional travails she must have went through.

***

This year, during my sojourn in china, few of my Chinese friends, with quite some hesitation, enquired about why the ‘rape-problem’ was so bad in India. I deflected the question with some vague answers such as the most perpetrators belong to a specific class of deviant uneducated men (the ‘other-ing’ of rapists I mentioned earlier). For most parts, I was reticent about the issue, living in partial denial, hoping that this all was a nightmare and would miraculously go away someday. I was clearly wrong. I Remember, while I was in China, I often used to get 'the look' from the strangers, especially women, which, I thought, was a common experience among the people of color who were alien in the country. I used to think that the over publicity is few rape cases by the international media and the generalization which normally followed about sexual aggressiveness of Indian men, was at fault for blowing the common perception of a normal Indian guy, totally out of proportion. But soon, I got a reality check. I was talking a connecting flight to shanghai and I actually witnessed two Indian passport holding men eve teasing a flight attendant, who rightfully created a scene mid-flight. Never before in my life, I had felt so embarrassed about my origins and finally, I realized that we really have a much serious problem than I had imagined. I shared this experience in one my WhatsApp statuses, in response, some my friends sent me the link of global rape statistics, pointing that India (1.6 per 100,000) has much lower rate of reported rapes per capita in the world in comparison to many other nations with south Africa topping the list (136 per 100000). It's just that the rise of social media and increased attention on this issue of domestic and international media in recent years, is causing this distortion of perception. So, by the logic of this argument, should we be relieved for not topping the list? And does it actually matter? What about unreported cases? Because, different nations have different socio-cultural settings and different legal frameworks which can influence number of rape cases reported per year. And as per many estimates, the number of reported cases might be much lesser than the actual figure in reality. By the way, India was ranked lowest, even below Saudi Arabia, in an index of 'worst place to be a woman' among the G-20 nations in a poll conducted by ‘TrustLaw’, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation in which 370 gender specialists voted. So obviously, the ‘defamed by the media’ argument is fallacious.

Let me further explain with an analogy. Suppose there are couple of houses, of different shapes and sizes, in a neighborhood and all of them have caught fire up to various extents. Some have caught a small fire while others are caught with a raging one. Imagine that your own house has caught a small fire but your family members are crying out the loudest for whatever loss of the property which probably held some sentimental values, attracting attention of your neighbors. Judging from the wailing of your family members, If some of the neighbours ask you, “is your fire really that bad?” what would be your reply? "Hey, our fire is not that serious, go look over there, they have got a bigger fire than we do". Okay, this may silence your neighbour for now, but nonetheless, your house is still on fire and it would burn down to ashes if you don't intervene. On the other hand, if you acknowledge the problem and try to find a viable solution addressing the core issues which can later be shared with other house owners whose houses have caught much bigger fire than your own.

Now that we are at it, let's take a look at the latest stats on the topic under discussion released by NCRB,

Infographic from Reuters.

Every year around 38000 cases have been reported since last 5-6 years, which roughly translates to, by the time you finish reading this piece, someone somewhere in India would have been raped. If we look closer, states in southern India appears to be safer for women except for Kerala, which is quite surprising, given its reputation in high literacy rates and perception as progressive society. So I decided to check literacy rates of the Indian states. 

On contrast, Bihar with the least literacy rate and its notoriety pertaining to absence of law and order, was fairing much better in official records compared to its peers. One of the possible explanation could be that educated and progressive women tend to speak up against sexual assaults in comparison to illiterate and socially repressed ones. Also, level of education can't be an indicator of who might or might not sexually assault someone. In a latest case from UK, a doctor of Indian origin, has physically abused 23 female patients under the alibi of 'Physical assessments', breaching the professional ethics. It is much complicated than it seems, isn’t it? When I set off to find the motivation behind sexual crimes, I came across number of atrocious incidents of sexual crimes throughout the world. I also found myself in the middle of an abyss staring at a hodgepodge of social issues. The things which were hidden underneath, the reality which I finally discovered, has rendered me ‘vicariously traumatized’ upto some degree.

***

Madhumita Pandey, a Doctoral student at criminology department of Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, interviewed 100 rape convicts as per IPC 376, for her thesis in 2013. She realized, most of the convicts were clueless about concept of consent and many of them were in total denial that they had committed a crime as such while very few of them were actually remorseful. She noted that, these men were not monsters, they had ‘power to make you feel sorry about them’. Also, they were not aliens, they were the part this very society. Findings of her thesis were in conformance with numerous scholarly studies conducted in the past. Primarily pointing towards Male sexual entitlement, Gender inequality, and prevalence of 'Rape Culture', a concept developed during second wave of feminism. The last one is a sociological effect in which the crime is normalized by the means of victim blaming (blaming girls for wearing provoking clothes or invoking just-World philosophy such as you get what you deserve), slut-shaming (she was behaving out of the way and she deserved it), denial of widespread rapes, sexual objectification of women (strengthened by easy access to porn) and acceptance hyper masculinity (stereotypical aggressive, power assertive, sexually promiscuous image of men) as a social norm etc. These symptoms exist in our society too. Most ostensible one is the stereotypical plot of many Bollywood movies, in which hero practically harasses and stalks the hell out of the heroine, forcing her into submission and apparently calling it 'romantic'. There was even a case from Australia, when an Indian man named, Sandesh Baliga, was on trial for stalking two Australian women who walked free after blaming Bollywood movies. His lawyer argued that it was quite 'normal behavior' for Indian men and even the judge accepted the argument as Baliga's 'cultural background' influenced his behaviour.  It's quite ridiculous how doggedly chasing a girl, taking her 'no' as 'keep trying' and conflating her submission for her consent have become part of 'our culture'. Not only men, in some cases, I have observed conformity from my female friends to these toxic notions. Besides, '3 idiots', the film loved by Indians (and Chinese alike). Remember the 'Balatkar' comedy scene from '3 idiots'? While watching the movie for the first time together with my family, during that scene, I was awkwardly confused, unsure if I was supposed laugh or not. As I saw all of them were cool with it, I thought, maybe it was not so big a deal and enjoyed that scene like everyone else. Even though the message of the comic scene was different, it unknowingly destigmatized the taboo around the word ‘rape’ but in totally wrong sense, "Are, iska toh balatkar ho gayi" ( "ohh look, he just got raped") was comically used to describe Chatur's public humiliation. Critics of ' Rape Culture' argue Rape culture theory shifts the blame from convicts towards the society and individual motivations are responsible too.  Indeed, Individual motivations are factors needed to be accounted for which includes misogyny (general hatred towards women which resulted in the Incel movement), desire to dominate and control women, power assertion via punishing the woman, sexual gratification, evolutionary proclivities (!) or just pure sadomasochism. In a 1975 book titled 'Against our will' by Susan Brownmiller, claimed that ' rape is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear'. I believe, both social and individual factors have cyclic causal relationship with each other. Apart from the social markers of 'Indian rape culture' I have mentioned so far, our society has long struggled with Gender inequality. Genders roles are inculcated from early childhood and strict adherence is expected. Any behavior falling outside of this script is termed as 'against the Indian culture'. Sex-Ed is shunned by the 'protectors of culture' fearing that it would ‘corrupt the youth’. When there is so much taboo around human sexuality imposed by our society itself, how can we expect that everyone understands what the consent is?

I tried to imagine myself in a place of a rape survivor (assuming female victim and she was lucky enough to survive). I personally don't even like someone touching my stuff without my permission, let alone someone intruding my physical boundaries. As per the statistics, most of the rapes are committed by someone we know. So when that someone forces himself onto her, she resists with all her might, when she is finally overpowered, emotionally fazed and physically frozen, she finally submits to the rapist so that he wouldn't hurt her afterwards. She is confused and even frustrated over the loss of her own sense of agency. If she doesn't comply then then there is the risk of getting physically hurt. Her body might biologically release the sensation of pleasure which will be the source of her eternal shame by which she is going to be haunted for the rest of her life. After she is through this ordeal of physical, emotional and psychological breach, she finally grasps the reality that she was raped but she is afraid of getting physically harmed from the rapist and also worries about loss of her self-esteem and honor of her family. She will be treated as the 'damaged good' by the society. Even if she does decide to speak up, she is asked to prove that she was actually raped. Then, she might have to go through the '2 finger test' which further supplements to her humiliation. She might even get blamed for the rape or be accused of framing the rapist with the fake rape charges. She will often experience nightmares and episodes of PTSD. She will have hard time trusting someone, especially men, distancing herself from everyone and feeling contemptuous of her own sexuality. The trial would continue for years and as in most rape cases the rapist will get away with little or no comeuppance. There is no way for her to get completely healed. The event has scarred her for life. 

After all the discussion, about rapes and the reasons behind it, it feels like, it's not a problem which can be solved by 'fixing' the law or awarding death sentences, it's a social problem affecting everyone and it needs shift in fundamental levels of our social hierarchy of genders. The state or judicial institutions cannot completely solve this issue. ‘We the people’ need to work collectively. The magnitude of this task is deterring but till we achieve what we are set out for, world in general, would be a much better place if we just practice empathy for any living soul.

- The.Lazy.Philosopher