Jay Mazoomdaar - How the Violation Continues (2012)
I happen to know a few victims of molestation, possibly rape; some of them did not specify. Barring two, these victims are women. I do not know why they confided in me. Not all of them were friends. Not all of them were violated by strangers and at least two still maintain more than a functional relationship with the violators. I also know a few sexual offenders. I brought up the issue with two of them. One soon got abusive in denial and the other answered me patiently before breaking down. Since the victims refused to press charges, the offenders had no real reason to be fearful of me. But they were.
It was almost 10 years ago when I last spoke to some of them. In 2003, a spate of rapes—including the much-reported assault on a Swiss diplomat during the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Delhi’s Siri Fort complex—had pushed me to seek a few answers. From chatty crime reporters to wary sociologists, everyone was busy offering theories. Some blamed “a cow belt mindset”, some spoke of new money and narcotics. In a sudden spurt of sensitivity and outrage, terms like trauma-care and summary trial became household terms. Activists took to the streets against what they termed a “culture of rape”.
The same outraged righteousness was manifest in the media and the shrill demonstrations following the public molestation of a young woman in Guwahati last week. The footage was run 24x7 across channels and, to highlight the enormity of the crime, breathless anchors went into every detail of the “barbaric violations” the victim suffered. Some doubted her age and marital status, others questioned her purpose outside a pub (the crime spot) late at night. Activists hit the streets with placards demanding that ‘the rapists’ be hanged—casually branding a molestation victim as raped.
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We haven’t overnight created a ‘culture of rape’. One of our most popular deities is worshipped in the phallic form because he was cursed by the sage woman he raped. The Greek myth of Callisto—a river goddess and a member of Diana’s band of virgins who was raped by none other than Zeus, exiled by Diana, transformed into a bear by Hera and finally enshrined in the sky as the Great Bear constellation by her violator—tells us how ancient the practice is.
Data from the US National Institute of Justice classifies rape as one of the three most frequently committed violent crimes in the US, with an estimated one million victims every year. That, when the National Crime Victimisation Survey indicates that only 30 per cent of the cases are reported. The under-reporting is worse in India—no more than 20,000 rapes are reported annually—but the Indian male is no worse than the male anywhere else.
Through history, rape comes across more as a means than an end in itself. While there have always been enough instances where the sexual urge alone drove men to force themselves on women, it might be safe to hazard that women would have felt much safer if sex was the only impetus for rape.. read more:
