Rapes  have become daily news, strict though may be the law,

  The  malady is deeper and begs a question: where lies the real flaw?

  Worse, even holy sites are becoming the haunts for crime

  A rape near Palampur was one such near a place- holy and sublime

  I vent my spleen on this, this week in a post just short and brief

  We all need to address the evil rather than sitting idle in plain grief

                  Rape in Palampur's backyard

                 

The Kathua and Unnao incidents stunned and singed us. The (as yet unresolved) Gudiya rape-murder incident in Kotkhai continues to fester as a sad, haunting memory. And now there is a rape case right in our backyard. In April, this horrific incident occurred at a breathing distance from our own town Palampur: a forest wilderness around ‘Garh Mata’ near Paraur. When bad things start happenings closer home, obviously, the shock and horror feel sharper…as this one does.

Not being a great idol worshipper, I have not been to this popular shrine. But I have driven through the link road and am aware of the point from where a track leads to this pilgrim spot. The landscape along this entire stretch is lovely beyond words. How sad that such idyllic sites and places of worship and faith should also become the scenes of ugly, ghastly crimes.

Well, rapes now are a daily headline- an inescapable morsel of our news feed as if to ensure that we start off the day on a note of anxiety, pain and depression. What is most alarming is that it is not just the cities, big towns or the badlands of Haryana, UP, Bihar and Rajasthan notorious for gender bias and misogynist mindsets, but even the peaceful states like ours too are succumbing to this virus, this scourge, at a rapid rate. And then these are not merely plain rapes emanating from some pathological sexual frustration or insane lust. But the violence and brutality of the worst kind, leading to murder, is becoming increasingly frequent and integral part - a 'new normal', as the popular expression goes - of such crimes. It is this aspect that sends a chill of horror and shock down one’s spine.

How can any human being - even if totally depraved, perverted and deranged - can turn so beastly and cruel is simply beyond my comprehension. Then another disturbing aspect is the increasing involvement of teens in such heinous crimes: both the victims as well as the perpetrators. The Kathua girl was a minor (her innocent, bewitching smile haunts me still); and the ‘Garh Mata’ rape victim was a minor too and so were two of the accused who have already been arrested. Equally worrisome is the fact of 'gang' rapes becoming more frequent than ever before. Is it the poor law enforcement or something else that despite making new and more stringent laws, there is still no let up or abatement of violence against women and the girl child?  Why has the fear of punishment not been able to deter the criminal minds from such dreadful acts? There are no easy or simple answers. Laws howsoever deterrent alone cannot prevent crimes. In fact  the malady lies in the general  rot in our society, faulty grooming of our children, eroding value system, the mess that our school education has become,  and the caste, gender and other such prejudices and biases that run deep in our psyches and are fostered by the politicians for grabbing votes.

We need to adopt holistic, multi-pronged strategies with proactive participation of the enlightened and committed do-gooders in our midst to make our society healthy, happy and vibrant where every woman and  girl child can walk free, play, smile, laugh, dream, and grow and live without fear.

                                   

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 ...The malady is 12000 years old and deep

 The gender bias which is the root cause of crimes against women is old and has been flowing in our veins right from the era of ‘Agricultural Revolution’ 12000 years ago. It afflicts all societies and all nations in varying degrees. A  book  'Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind’ that I am reading these days says  that as of 2006, there were still fifty-three countries where a husband could not be prosecuted for the rape of his wife. Even in the developed Germany, rape laws were amended only in 1997 to create a legal category of marital rape.

I reproduce below a para from the book to give you an idea about how bad the gender discrimination has been in human society:

In many societies women were simply the property of men, most often their fathers, husbands or brothers. Rape, in many legal systems, falls under property violation- in other words, the victim is not the woman who was raped but the male who owns her… The Bible decrees that ‘If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife’ (Deuteronomy 22:28-9).

Hmmm… Shocking...isn't it?

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