Crime as punishment

What I have learnt about rape from political leaders across the world

There isn’t a day that goes by in India when you open a newspaper and don’t see a news item (or four) about rape. There’s the 16 year old Dalit girl who is gang-raped by upper-caste men in her Haryana village. There is the Mumbai professional who is raped by an acquaintance because she dared say no. There is the Bangalore student who is dragged away from a parked car and raped by a group of men who believe that because she is making out with one man she must be ‘up for it’ with them as well. There’s the girl who set herself on fire because she couldn’t live with the stigma of being a rape victim. And then, there’s the father who kills himself when he is shown video clips of his daughter being molested by a group of men.

Given the staggering number of rape stories that emerge from India every day, there really isn’t much more than we can learn about this crime, is there? We know that it is not so much about sex as it is about power. We know that such is the aura of shame that surrounds the crime that the victim ends up feeling much more at fault than the perpetrator. And we know that society plays into that feeling of guilt by effectively telling the woman that, in one way or the other, she asked for it.

But that doesn’t stop political leaders across the world from giving us the benefit of their wisdom on the subject of rape. And here, in no particular order of importance is what I have learnt about rape from these worthies.   

1)   Marrying late causes rape. Young men and women have sexual desires; so as soon as they reach puberty, they should be married off so that they do not ‘stray’. In other words, the best way of ensuring that rape does not occur is by making sure that girls and boys are married off as minors. Because, as we know, married women never get raped, and married men only ever have sex – consensual or forced – with their wives.

Source: Sube Singh, Khap Panchayat leader in Haryana. This view was later endorsed by Om Prakash Chautala, a former chief minister of the state, who weighed in to say that crimes such as rape did not occur in the good old days (he went all the way back to the Mughal era to mine his example) when girls were married off as minors.

2)   Around 90 per cent of rapes occur when women go along willingly with their rapists. When what starts off as consensual sex goes wrong, these women start crying rape (the naughty trouble-makers!).

Source: Dharambir Goyat, Congress party spokesperson, Haryana.

3)   Eating fast food like chow mein (or presumably Maggi noodles) causes rape. The consumption of this kind of food – burgers and pizzas for example – creates a hormonal imbalance in men, makes their animal instincts veer out of control, and their increased sexual desire manifests itself as rape.

Source: Jitender Chhatar, Khap Panchayat leader, Haryana.

4)   If you go to nightclub, drink too much and talk to men who are strangers, then you really shouldn’t complain when you are raped. Honestly, what were you doing there in the first place?

Source: Madan Mitra, minister in the Mamata Banerjee government of West Bengal (a view never repudiated by the woman chief minister herself, who later categorised the rape cases in her state as a ‘criminal conspiracy’.)

5)   If you get raped, and the rape is ‘legitimate’ (as in you are not making this stuff up to make yourself sound more interesting) then the body has a way to ‘shut itself down’ and you will not get pregnant. (All those women who do get pregnant after being raped? Whose bodies didn’t ‘shut down’? Well, we know what to think about them, don’t we?)

Source: Todd Akin, US Congressman who is running for the Senate as a Republican candidate.

6)   If you do get pregnant as a consequence of being raped (you dirty slag, you!) then abortion is not an option. Because even if it is conceived in an act of rape, a child is still a ‘gift from God’. Yes, this is what God himself intended.

Source: Richard Mourdock, US Senate candidate (“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”)

7)    Some rapes are more serious than others. In the case of an 18 year-old man having sex with an underage girl, or in cases of date rape, the crime is less serious than other rapes and deserves a lesser punishment.

Source: Kenneth Clarke, Justice Secretary, United Kingdom.

Yes, this is what political leaders across the world – not just in backward, obscurantist Haryana but in such developed, enlightened countries as the USA and the UK – believe about rape.

Honestly, what can you do but laugh? Because if you didn’t laugh, you would have to cry: at the ignorance; the insensitivity; and the sheer stupidity of it all.

Pink or blue

A new test makes it possible to tell the sex of foetus at seven weeks – but should we be using it?

All of us in India are familiar with those signs that hang in ultrasound clinics and hospitals and warn expectant parents that it is illegal to enquire about the sex of their baby. Sex determination – either through ultrasound or amniocentesis – is illegal in India, where the practice of female foeticide is endemic.

But clearly, many people manage to get around this little legal hurdle, or else the male:female ratio in so many areas of our country would not be so skewed. Some of them go to fly-by-night operators who have no ethical problems with telling them the sex of the baby; or organising an abortion if it’s a baby girl that’s gestating in Mummy’s tummy. Some go to otherwise reputable clinics that use code words to convey the sex: Jai Mata Di if it’s a girl and Jai Shri Ram if it’s a boy, according to one account. And yet others have a ‘family doctor’ or a doctor in the family who can tell them whether it’s ‘pink’ or ‘blue’.

Whatever the methods adopted, the end is invariably the same. The female foetus is aborted. Sometimes this happens in the second or third pregnancy, when the parents are desperate for a boy to ‘complete’ their family. And on occasion, it even happens in the first pregnancy with families who don’t want to be ‘burdened’ with a girl child. And shockingly, this kind of sex selection takes place even among educated, middle-class or even upper-class families who really should know better.

Well, these people are in luck because a new medical test now makes sex determination even easier. A test has been developed which can tell you the sex of the foetus with about 95 per cent accuracy at seven weeks. A blood sample of the expectant mother is taken at the time and tested for the presence of the Y chromosome. If it is present the baby is a boy. If it isn’t then the baby is probably a girl (though it could also mean that there was no fetal DNA in the sample).

In the West, this test is used when there is a danger of a gender-specific disease being passed on the baby. For instance, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy only affects boys, so a girl foetus would not be at risk and further intrusive testing is not required. But tellingly, some companies refuse to sell this test in India and China for fear that it will be misused in countries where there is a strong cultural preference for a boy.

I have no doubt that were this test readily available in India more people would end up aborting female foetuses rather than end up being ‘stuck’ with a daughter. In the view of people like these, a daughter is nothing more than an endless strain on their resources. You first spend money bringing her up, educating her, making her presentable enough to make a good marriage – at which point you have to liquidate all your savings to give her a grand wedding and a spectacular dowry. It’s a mug’s game, isn’t it?

How much better to have a son, who will repay the investment you make on his education by supporting you in your old age? Not to mention, the nice, big dowry he will score when he finally gets married – and brings a girl into your home to play general drudge, baby-making machine, and additional source of income all rolled into one.

Well, that’s the theory, at least. It’s another matter that these days it is difficult to find a bride in such communities because, by some remarkable twist of fate, everyone just has sons in the family. And that many of these sons have little time or money – or even the inclination – to support aged parents either financially or emotionally.

Which brings me to my question for today: should we allow Indians to use this test to determine the sex of the foetus, given that anyone who asks for such a test would likely abort a girl child at the earliest?

Well, at the risk of sounding heartless and incurring the wrath of many, I have to admit that my answer to that question is, tragically, yes. Before the brickbats start in earnest, perhaps I should explain why I feel this way.

Let’s assume for a moment that you deny such sex-determination tests to expectant parents, thus ensuring that they had daughters whether they liked them or not. What kind of a life do you suppose this little girl would have to look forward to, with parents who would have gladly killed her in the womb?

Do you think she will loved and cherished? I think not. Do you believe that she will be valued for herself? No, she will probably be reminded at every turn that she is not that longed-for son. Will she be raised with every advantage that money can buy? On the contrary, every expense incurred on her account will be grudged.

Will she be resented as an extra drag on the family’s resources? You bet she will. Will she be mistreated and regarded as a burden? Without a doubt. Will her parents make it clear that they wish she’d never been born? All the time.

Now why would you wish that kind of life on anyone? I know I wouldn’t. What I would wish for is a cultural change in our society so that we value all children, regardless of gender, equally. And I wish that change comes about sooner rather than later.