The silence of shame

There are many reasons why women don't come forward to complain about sexual abuse; don't judge them for it

As I sit down to write this column, around 25 women have come forward to accuse Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, of sexual harassment and abuse. And among the ladies who have gone on record to charge Weinstein with being a sexual predator are such A-list stars as Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Somewhat predictably, the reaction on social media has been: hey ladies, what took you so long? After all, both Jolie and Paltrow are from influential Hollywood families. What did they have to fear from a man like Weinstein? Why couldn't they come right out and condemn his behavior the moment it happened?

But I am not here to hold forth on Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood today. What I really want to focus on are the many Harveys that every woman comes up against as she makes her way through the world. And how difficult all of us find it to speak up about their behavior no matter how grown-up, mature, rich, famous and powerful we get.

I am sure that all the women who are reading this column will have their own stories, but I'll go first. Though now that I have said that, I really don't know where to begin.

Do I start with the 'Uncle' who routinely pulled me on to his lap in a show of affection when I was a pre-schooler? I was too young then to even know why it felt so wrong but it makes my flesh crawl now every time I recall it. Do I begin with the neighbor who would 'jokingly' press himself against me in the staircase if he ever found me there alone? I still can't forgive my 10 year self for never saying a word about it to anyone else.

Do I mention the many times I was groped on public transport as I made my way to and from college? And how I don't remember ever calling out the men with the grasping hands, for fear of escalating the situation further. I didn't want them following me off the bus and targeting me on a deserted road instead. So I told myself it made more sense to move away, get a different bus, choose another route. I convinced myself it was better to stay quiet rather than give voice to the scream rising within me.

Was that the wrong way to handle these situations? Perhaps it was. But that is how I felt best equipped to handle them at the time. Speaking up, making a scene, standing up for myself, none of it even occurred to me. I just wanted whatever this was -- harassment, molestation, abuse, call it what you will -- to end. I wanted to draw a discreet veil over these awful episodes in my life and move on. Maybe if I could ignore them, brush them aside, in time I would forget that they ever really happened.

So, I pretended that none of this was real and went on with my life, blocking out these traumatic memories as best I could. Not very brave, was it? No, it was downright cowardly. All I can offer in my defence is that I was scared and, yes, ashamed.

In fact, I was consumed by a sense of shame so acute that it rendered me speechless. And even today, decades later, the words stick in my craw as I try to articulate the hot mess of feelings that engulfed me in those fleeting encounters: helplessness, panic, embarrassment, the feeling that I had somehow brought this upon myself. And yes, of course, those old companions of every woman who had ever had such an experience: humiliation and mortification.

Those feelings accompanied me as life-long friends, as I went through my teenage years, passed through college, started working in journalism, and stayed close as I negotiated my 30s and my 40s.

They surfaced when the first politician I was sent to interview as a cub reporter asked if we could continue the interview while he went for his usual walk around India Gate. Alarm bells started going off the moment he tried to hold my hand and tell me how his "wife doesn't understand" him. And from then on, matters only got worse.

To my eternal shame, though, I didn't call him out on his behavior. Instead I engineered an argument -- on the Shah Bano case, of all things -- to ensure that he lost his temper and whatever sexual interest he had in me in the bargain. I felt that he would take this better than outright rejection. Because I still needed that story. I didn't want to be that girl who went off for her first interview and came back crying sexual harassment. And I certainly didn't want to enter the territory of he said-she said controversy.

Now that I am much older and wiser, I often look back on that day and wonder if I would handle things differently if that happened to me now. Perhaps I would. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself. It's always easier being wiser and braver in retrospect.

But I write this today to try and explain to people why women who are sexually harassed, molested, abused, or even raped, often don't come forward to confront their abusers. Sometimes they are ashamed. Sometimes they feel they will be blamed (what was she wearing; how much was she drinking; was she asking for it?). Sometimes they fear losing their jobs or their careers. Sometimes their self-image of being strong women prevents them from admitting (even to themselves) that something like this could happen to them.

They are a hundred different reasons why women stay silent about the abuse they suffer. Don't judge them for it. Judge the men who actually abuse them.

The Big Ban Theory

If banning stuff is the new ‘in’ thing, then here’s my own wish list

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the season of bans. Beef has been banned in Maharashtra; anyone found in possession of it or selling it will be jailed for five years and fined Rs 10,000. The Central Board of Film Certification issued a list of all the ‘bad’ words that would henceforth be banned in the movies (though there has been some furious back-pedalling on the issue since). The movie, Fifty Shades Of Grey, based on the best-selling erotic novel of the same name, has been banned as well, in case it corrupted our morals. And, most famously, the Government of India has banned the documentary, India’s Daughter, made by Leslee Udwin, on the December 2012 gang rape in Delhi (though a defiant BBC went ahead and aired it anyway, and millions have since seen it on the Internet).

On a visceral level, I am opposed to the banning of anything, whether it is The Satanic Verses or M.F. Husain’s nude portraitures of Hindu goddesses. Freedom of expression is meaningless if it does not come with the right to offend. That is why even those who did not necessarily agree with the views of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists chose to march the streets with placards proclaiming Je Suis Charlie. The fact that you disagree with a point of view – as expressed in a painting, a cartoon, a book, a movie, or a documentary – is not reason enough to ban it. Look away if it offends you; but defend the rights of those who choose to do otherwise.

But given that bans seem to be the flavor of the month, I decided to follow that old maxim: if you can’t beat them, join them. So here, for the kind consideration of the Government of India, are just some of the things I would like banned. I would be much obliged if the same could be taken under its kind consideration (that’s proper bureaucratic-speak, in case you’re wondering, so that the babus can do the needful!).

• Let’s ban all netas from commenting on rape. That way we would be spared such gems as: “How can you hang someone for rape; boys make mistakes sometimes” (Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP leader). Or “rape cases are on the rise because men and women interact with each other more freely now” (Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal chief minister). Or “If a girl is dressed decently, a boy will not look at her in the way wrong way. If they (women) want freedom, why don’t they just roam around naked” (Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana chief minister). I could go on, but this is depressing enough.
• A ban should also be imposed on all those who would interfere with women’s reproductive rights. So, no more Sakshi Maharajs telling us that Hindu women should produce at least four children. Or Shymal Goswami (BJP leader from West Bengal) increasing the count to five. And certainly, no raising the limit to ten kids, as the Shankaracharya of Badrikashram, did recently. How many kids she has is up to every individual woman; whether the count is 0 or 10 is entirely up to her.
• If you are going to ban beef then you have a moral obligation to ban tofu too. It’s Chinese in origin, tastes of nothing, destroys every dish it comes into contact with, and did I mention that it is Chinese? No good can come of tofu; let’s get rid of it from our shops, our tables, our restaurants, our shores. Let’s give paneer a chance, instead.
• Ban cell phones in movie theatres. No, turning on the silent mode is not enough. The odds are that some self-important sod will neglect to do so, and his phone will emit a shrill ring just as a crucial scene of the movie is playing. Then, he will take ages to answer, ignoring all the baleful looks cast in his direction, until he finally picks up to stage-whisper, “Sorry, can’t talk now. Am watching a movie.” And sorry, but even phones that have been silenced are a complete nuisance. They flash incessantly through the movie, with new messages and calls coming through, quite ruining the theatre-going experience.
• High heels must go. They are just instruments of torture, inflicted on women for centuries now. And alas, we are such suckers for punishment that we have clasped them to our soles and refuse to let go, never mind those aching backs and painful knees (not to mention the bunions). If you tried to sell men shoes that made walking – let alone running – an exercise in pain, they would laugh in your face. So, why don’t women just say ‘no’ when it comes to high heels? Well, never mind. Just ban the horrid things already. 
• Ban all fairy tales that teach young girls that they need rescuing. That their only salvation lies in a handsome young prince who will come riding up on a shining white horse and save them from an unhappy fate. And that they will then live happily ever after. Stop telling them these stories; you are just setting them up for disappointment.

Sex, lies, and the threat of 'rape'

It can’t be ‘sex’ when you think he will marry you; and turn into ‘rape’ when he doesn’t

All of last week, we have been entranced by the TV appearances of a model/actress (face dutifully blacked out to preserve her anonymity) who claims that she was raped by BJP minister Sadanand Gowda’s son, Karthik. Her story is as follows. She met Karthik in May 2014 and the two of them became close. He began courting her, and soon tied a mangalsutra around her neck with his driver acting as witness. When she discovered she was pregnant and told Karthik, he told her not to blame him and stopped taking her calls. Then one day, she woke up to the news that Karthik had become engaged to another woman.

At this point in the narration, the model/actress breaks down and insists that all that she wants is to be accepted by Karthik as his wife, and by his parents as their daughter-in-law because she ‘cannot live without him’. But this touching display is rather ruined by the TV ticker running underneath it, which informs us that she has filed a case of rape against Karthik, and that the police have registered a case against him. As of this writing, Karthik has not been arrested, but by the time you read this, I would not be at all surprised if he was, indeed, behind bars, facing a charge of rape.

Rape? Seriously? By what definition is this rape? By her own account, the lady concedes that she was in a consensual sexual relationship and that she hoped to marry Karthik (or had married him in some sort of symbolic ceremony) and that even now she would like to be accepted into the Gowda family as a daughter-in-law. So how does a consensual sexual relationship miraculously turn into rape just because the man in question has dumped her for another woman?

It can’t be sex when you think the guy will marry you; and rape when it becomes clear that he won’t. If, like many women, you equate sex with marriage, then for God’s sake, keep it off the table until you are married (and in a legally-binding ceremony, not some faux exchange of garlands or rings, or by the tying of a mangalsutra). And if you can’t do that, then take some responsibility for your decision instead of playing the victim and crying rape.

Not just because this is something we expect of grown-up women with minds, hearts and brains of their own but also because this propensity to cry rape when no rape has occurred is a slap in the face of every woman who has ever had to face real sexual violence in her life. Every time a woman levels such a frivolous charge of rape, it makes it that much more difficult for actual rape victims to be taken seriously.

And what of the men who have been falsely accused and besmirched in the court of public opinion in the process? Remember the case of Hindi film director, Madhur Bhandarkar? A little-known actress lodged a complaint with the Versova Police in 2004, alleging that the director had ‘raped’ her 16 times between 1999 and 2004 on the pretext of giving her a role in one of his forthcoming movies. There is a word (or words) that could describe the behavior of an actress who sleeps with a film director in the hope of getting a role (hint: it does not begin with ‘r’). But if you are sleeping with someone in the hope of profiting from the act, then the fact that you don’t actually profit doesn’t turn you into a victim, let alone a rape victim.

If you choose sex as a transactional tool to get ahead in the world then you have to be prepared for both good and bad outcomes. And if you end up with a bad case of ‘seller’s remorse’ that doesn’t mean that all your previous consensual sexual encounters must be re-categorized as ‘rape’. It simply does not work like that.

But even though this may seem self-evident which looked at through the prism of common sense, it took Bhandarkar nine years to have the case closed. The trial continued in the High Court even after the Mumbai Police filed a report that the case against Bhandarkar was ‘maliciously false’. It took a bench of the Supreme Court to quash the proceedings, noting that the actress no longer wanted to pursue the case and that the Mumbai Police report had exonerated him.

No doubt, the case against Karthik Gowda will also drag on in a similar manner, unless some sort of out-of-court compromise is affected. But these are just two high profile cases. There must be thousands of others in which men have been falsely accused of rape and have no option but to struggle through our complex and slow legal system to prove their innocence.

Which is why I feel that this is as good a time as any to codify all those instances when a rape is not a rape. Breaking up with a long-time boyfriend? No, your sex life cannot be re-categorized as rape. Sleeping with someone with a view to profit in some way? If you don’t succeed, the sex doesn’t turn into rape. The man you slept with refuses to marry you? Still not rape.

Each time we cry ‘rape’ when a relationship goes wrong, we insult the real victims of sexual violence. And in recasting our sexual experiences as something they are not, we let down our own sex.

It's My Fault

Why do women who survive rape end up blaming themselves?

It’s My Fault. That is what the video is titled. And with dry, even dark, humour it tells us about the many ways in which rape is a woman’s fault. She went out alone. She went out with boys. She wore a short skirt. She wore an astronaut suit. She cooked chowmein in the kitchen. Whatever she did, it was her fault that she got raped. The satirical depiction of a societal truth – that it is the woman who is always at fault if she gets raped – was sharp, searing, and made the short video (created by Rohan Joshi, G. Khamba, Tanmay Bhatt and Ashish Shakya and starring Kalki Koechlin and Juhi Pande) go viral in record time.

But even as we in India were raising a wry smile at the It’s My Fault video, there was another website making waves in France. Called Je Connais Un Voileur (I Know A Rapist), this invites women to write in anonymously to share their experiences of rape. What is most frightening about this site is that most of the women who write in have been raped by someone they knew well, a brother, a father, a cousin, a neighbour, a boyfriend, a doctor, a colleague. As Pauline, the creator of the site explains, she wanted to show that rapists are not ‘The Other’ but men we know and interact with every day. And the intention is not to name and shame the men (anonymity extends to the rapists as well) but to allow victims to share their experiences so that they know that they are not alone.

The site makes for very uncomfortable reading even though the more lurid details of the rapes have been edited out. But what is truly astonishing is how many of these women still believe that it was somehow their fault that this happened to them. Some feel guilty because they had worn revealing clothes, others blame themselves for having drunk too much that night, others believe they put themselves in dangerous situations.

It’s My Fault…that line plays in their heads incessantly as they relive the experience in their minds (and in their stories on the site).

But then, that seems to be a recurring theme with rape victims. Take the recent memoir of Samantha Geimer, The Girl, A Life In The Shadow of Roman Polanski, which recounts her experience of being raped by the famous film director. Samantha was 13 at the time; Polanski was 43. He gave her champagne, a Quaalude (a sleeping pill), and then raped her. No, it wasn’t just statutory rape because she was a minor. It was rape; she said no, but he went ahead anyway. The second time around, when he realized that she wasn’t on the pill, he sodomised her instead.

And what does Geimer, now 50, say about her 13 year self who was drugged, raped and sodomised by a man more than double her age? “I felt foolish. Gosh, why didn’t I stop this? Why did I drink? Why did I take that pill? What is wrong with me? And now look what happened?”

In other words, It’s My Fault. Honestly, you being to wonder, why does the rest of the world need to indulge in victim blaming when the victim is all too willing to do so herself?

But let’s listen closely. What are these women actually saying? Are they really saying ‘It’s My Fault’? Or is that just a simplistic, even erroneous, interpretation of their statements and feelings?

What if all that these survivors of rape are trying to do is wrest some retrospective control over a situation in which they felt utterly and completely helpless? What if they are just desperately trying to see what they could have done differently to get a different outcome to the one that left them reeling with shame, anger, and a deep and abiding feeling of loss?

Think about it. These women are not stupid or delusional. They don’t really believe that they invited rape upon themselves by doing a, b, or c. But when you have been left feeling horribly helpless and perfectly powerless, how do you wrestle back some control into your own hands?

You do so by telling yourself that you can prevent something like this from ever happening again by making some different choices.

That is what makes women beat themselves up over what they wore, what they drank, how late they were out, how they made their way back, which man they allowed into their house or indeed, into their lives. Because they are thrashing about, trying to find answers where none exist. They are flailing in the wind, grasping at straws, struggling to understand why this happened to them. And in that moment, they need to believe that they can stay safe in the future if they learn lessons from what happened.

Do they blame themselves in the process? Of course they do. But is this victim blaming? Of course not. It is just their way of trying to make sense of a world that seems to have gone completely mad; and of clinging on to their own sanity in the process. It is their way of transitioning from victim to survivor.

Behave!

There’s plenty of advice out there for how women should stay safe; here are a few handy pointers for the men as well

Over the last month or so, Indian women have been inundated with gratuitous advice on how we should conduct themselves in public so as to keep themselves safe from sexual harassment and violence. Politicians, religious heads, media commentators, women’s rights activists, and well, pretty much anyone with a voice to be heard, has come up with new and innovative ways to keep the women in our society ‘safe’ from sexual crimes.

Right off the top of my head, these are some of the suggestions that have been offered in all seriousness. Women should not be allowed access to mobile phones. Co-education should be banned. Girls should be married off the moment they reach puberty to keep them safe from predators. Schoolgirls should wear overcoats over their uniforms to save them from the gaze of perverts. Teachers should wear lab coats to prevent male students leching at them. Working women should not be so adventurous as to travel back home alone from work late at night. Women should not wear skirts or other ‘revealing’ outfits because that just excites the men and provokes them into attacking them sexually. And certainly, women should not complain about being ‘raped’ if they willingly go out with men, because honestly, what were they expecting?

That is, by no means, an exhaustive list. But I guess you get the general drift. The message is clear and simple: stay covered up; stay at home; stay silent; and if you’re lucky, you may stay safe.

So it is in the same spirit that I now offer my own two bits of gratuitous advice to men as to how they should live their lives.

·  * First off, don’t ever venture out into the night alone. And most certainly, don’t head out with a group of male friends. If you are seen prowling the streets late at night, we will assume that you are up to no good. That you are, in fact, ‘asking’ to rape someone. So, be a dear and get home by 9 pm. If you do have to venture out after this ‘curfew’, then ask a woman – your wife, sister, mother, aunt, any other female relative – to accompany you. If you fail to do that, then be prepared to face the consequences. If you are out late at night and ‘cross’ that ‘Lakshman Rekha’ we will assume that you are Ravana and treat you accordingly.

·  * Be warned. If you dress in an ‘immodest’ manner, we’ll be judging you. Put away those shorts you wear to the beach/mall/gym to show off those hairy legs. Don’t wear those tight, crotch-hugging jeans. And button up that shirt while you’re at it; nobody wants to see that provocative expanse of chest. What kind of message are you sending anyway by flashing all that flesh? Cover up already. Don’t you know how to stay within your ‘maryada’?

·  * When it comes to socialising or making friends, stick to your own sex. It’s much safer that way. If you hang out with girls; go to the movies with them; party with them; or, God forbid, drink and dance with them, things will get tricky very quickly. So, don’t risk going out with a girl unless she is your sister or you intend to marry her (not if she is your sister, of course). If you do, then we will know just how dodgy your ‘morals’ are. And that may well destroy your marriage prospects. Nobody wants to get hitched to ‘that kind of guy’, you know.

·  * While we are on the subject of marriage, do try and enter the holy state of matrimony as early as possible. It’s best if you are hitched by 21 but we will allow you some leeway till around 25. If you hit the age of 30 without acquiring a wife then we will assume that there is something seriously wrong with you. And if you are still single at 35, or worse still, at 40, it will be taken as a given that you are either sexually depraved or morally deviant.

·  * Don’t rock the boat. If someone passes a snide comment, makes a personal remark, invades your personal space, touches you inappropriately, makes unwanted sexual advances, just ignore it. If the harassment persists, submit meekly. Don’t make a scene. Don’t raise your voice. Stay silent and pray that it goes away. But never – no matter what the provocation – retaliate or even react. Just go with the flow. Because if you stand up for yourself, there is every likelihood that you will be ground into the dust.

Okay then, that’s my five-point ‘advisory’ to all men. And now here’s a question for all the men who have persisted in reading thus far: how offended are you by all the ‘suggestions’ listed above? Very offended indeed, I’m guessing.

Good. Now you know how every woman feels when she hears people holding forth on how she needs to do a, b, and c (and avoid e, f, and g) to keep herself ‘safe’. And maybe that will teach all of you ‘experts’ out there to shut the hell up.

Zero tolerance

Put away a man who gropes a woman; and the odds are he won’t grow up to be a rapist

By the time you read this, I am sure you will know all the details about the Sanjay Nirupam-Smriti Irani controversy. But even so, what Nirupam said about Irani during a TV show bears repeating. And not the sanitised English-language translation of what he said, but his actual words. During a debate on the Gujarat election results, Nirupam dismissed Irani as someone who “kal tak toh paise ke liye TV pe thumke lagati thi” (till yesterday you used to dance on TV for money).

The sub-text was clear. As was the image that Nirupam was trying to conjure up: that of a nautch girl who is paid to dance for the amusement of men. How could such a woman expect to taken seriously in a discussion about electoral politics? She really should know her place.

But after the storm of condemnation that followed, there were many who asked just how seriously we should take this. After all, you can take the lout out of the Shiv Sena, but you can’t take the lout out of the man. And in a week when we are all grappling with the rage and sorrow evoked by the brutal gang rape of a young woman in a Delhi bus, did this throwaway comment merit so much attention?

Well, the short answer is: yes, it does.

Why? Because the fact that a woman member of Parliament can be belittled, demeaned, and dismissed as a ‘thumke lagane wali’ on national television shows just how deep sexism runs in our society. And it proves that no matter how high you rise in the world, no matter what you achieve, and no matter what the subject of the debate, at the end of the day, if you are a woman you will never be safe from being attacked by sexual innuendo.

Misogyny is so commonplace in our world that we have become inured to it. It starts in the family where husbands treat their wives as their property, where brothers regard their sisters as second-class citizens, where daughters are seen as liabilities, and all women are treated as beasts of burden.  

It manifests itself in our public places, where no woman is safe. She is leered at as she walks the streets. She is groped in buses and trains. She is sexually harassed at work. And if she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she is brutally gang-raped and left for dead.

But it all starts with the macho arrogance that Nirupam displayed so tellingly on television. And his contemptuously-curled lip as he spewed his vicious poison is an image that shows us just how terrible things are for women in our society. There may be a vast distance between the TV studio in which Sanjay Nirupam abused Smriti Irani and the Delhi bus in which the gang-rape survivor was so brutally assaulted.  But both are the result of the same mindset: which regards women with derision and views them as sex objects. The same rage that is expressed in contemptuous comments on TV debates also lies behind the innumerable instances of sexual violence against women that are reported every day.

As women, we are used to being treated this way. We are routinely whistled at, jeered, groped, pawed, and worse, as we negotiate our daily lives. And we are routinely told to ignore all this, not to make an issue of it. Move on, is the message we get. Don’t sweat the small stuff. How does it matter if someone calls you ‘achha maal’ on the road or brushes against your breast as you board a bus? There are bigger problems in life.

Yes, there are. But they all start from that one comment that we ignore; that one whistle that we pretend not to hear; that one hand groping our bottom as we walk along a crowded street.

It all starts with this belief that women are nothing more than bodies to be exploited and ends in the brutalisation of attitudes to women. And if we ignore those first stirrings of misogyny, the rage and violence escalates until it explodes in a vicious attack on a 23-year-old woman who boards a bus at 9.30 pm. The men who raped her didn’t see her as a human being. She was just a receptacle for these bestial desires. A disposable thing who could be abused and then dumped on the side of the road.

 Through my school and college years when I travelled by public transport I don’t remember a single day when I wasn’t sexually harassed in some way. (And this was in Calcutta, which is supposed to be safe for women.) Every time I challenged my harasser, there was one heart-stopping moment when I didn’t quite know how things would go: whether he would back away or escalate his attack. But it wasn’t bravery that propelled me, it was a visceral rage that anyone could dare to assume that he could violate my body and get away with it.

It is the same visceral rage that every woman feels when she is confronted by sexism or sexual violence. And it is that visceral rage that both Sanjay Nirupam and the Delhi rapists inspire within us.

So, let’s shame a man who makes sexist comments. Let’s have summary punishment for all those who harass women, either by word or by deed. Put away a man who gropes a woman and the odds are that he won’t grow up to be a rapist.

If we want to make the world safe for women, zero tolerance is the only way to go.

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.

Marking the day

We may well acknowledge the first International Day of the Girl Child in India – but let’s not dare assume that we have the right to celebrate it

On the 11^th of October the first International Day of the Girl Child was celebrated across the world. In India, too, we had the usual suspects releasing statements, attending functions, organising events to mark the day. But surely the irony of celebrating a day dedicated to the girl child could not have been lost on any of us. Not when more than 500 women have been raped since the beginning of the year in Haryana alone (and that’s just the cases that have been reported); when the figure for women being married off before they turned 18 stood at an astounding 60 per cent in Bihar; and when female foeticide is believed to have killed at least 10 million girls in the womb all across the country.

Yes, the girl child doesn’t really get much of a break in India. If she escapes being aborted, she arrives into a world that regards her as a burden. She is much less likely to finish her primary education than her brothers. She will probably be married off even before she attains majority. And when she gets pregnant, the likelihood of her dying in childbirth is astonishingly high (more than 65,000 women die giving birth in India every year – or, in other words, every 8-10 minutes a woman dies in childbirth), assuming of course that the pregnancy is not terminated because she is carrying a girl child who needs must die before she can born.

And thus the vicious circle continues, sucking each successive generation of women into its vortex of despair.

I know what you’re thinking. Why paint such a bleak portrait of Indian womanhood? After all, there are plenty of women among us who are valued and cherished by their families, who are brought up as valuable members of society, who are educated, who go on to have worthwhile careers, and are both financially independent and socially secure.

Yes, of course, there are. And I number myself among them. But we are the lucky ones, the minuscule minority who were fortunate enough to be born into the right families and the right social class. If it wasn’t for an accident of birth, we could just as easily be among the 35 per cent of women who are not literate, the 47 per cent of women who are married off as minors, the 212 women in every lakh who die in childbirth because they don’t have access to medical facilities, the 7,00,000 girls aborted every year because they are simply the wrong sex.

When you think of the sheer numbers involved – considering that our population stands at 1 billion and counting – it’s clear just how bad things are for women in India.

It doesn’t really matter that we’ve had a woman President in Pratibha Patil or that the UPA is headed by Sonia Gandhi or that the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha is Sushma Swaraj. It is of no consequence that five states of the Indian Union – Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh – have (or have had) women chief ministers (in Jayalalitha, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Vasundhara Raje and Uma Bharati). Or that the world of finance has seen such power women as Chanda Kochhar and Naina Lal Kidwai running large institutions with aplomb. Or even that we have produced such world-class sportswomen as Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal and Sania Mirza.

All of these are achievements that must be celebrated – as indeed they are – but there is no ignoring the fact that these are exceptions that provide a stark contrast to the trials and tribulations that ordinary Indian women have to suffer every day of their lives. And that they mean nothing to the mother living in a remote village who has to trek for miles every day to get drinking water for her family; to the women who have no access to sanitary napkins let alone comprehensive health care; to the new bride who is harassed to death by the dowry demands of her husband and in-laws; to the young girl who is first raped and then told that she ‘asked’ for it; to the widow who is forced out of her family home and sent off to Vrindavan to await death.

And it is particularly ironic that the UN is marking the first International Day of the Girl Child by drawing attention to the problem of child marriages at a time when the khap panchayats in Haryana have announced that girls should be married off at a young age so that they do not get raped (apparently, a mangalsutra also serves as a rapist-repellent in their strange, convoluted minds), a position that was rapidly adopted by such obscurantist political leaders as Om Prakash Chautala.

So, let’s not celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child just yet. Not until we have ensured that every girl in the womb gets a chance at life. Not until we have made the education of every young girl possible. Not until we have made provision for her health care through menstruation, pregnancy, child-rearing and menopause. Not until we have ensured that she gets paid the same wage for the same job as her male co-worker. And not until we have made sure that she has the liberty to make her own life decisions.

Until then, we can mark the International Day of the Girl Child in our calendars – but let’s not dare to assume that we have any right to celebrate it.