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It was pop culture at its defiant best when the Nirvana band sang in 1993: Rape me, Rape me again/ Hate me, Do it and do it again/ Waste me, Rape me, my friend. Kurt Cobain who wrote the lines described it as “a life-affirming song... like she is saying. ‘Go ahead, rape me, beat me. You’ll never kill me. I’ll survive this and I’m going to **ing rape you one of these days and you won’t even know it’”.
For the pop stars of America, it was one more jab of fashionable militancy. For a lost generation of women in Manipur in 2004, it was a question of survival when a bunch of them marched to the gates of an army camp, stripped themselves naked and shouted, “Indian army, rape me!” They had been reduced to impotent anger by the rape of a local woman, Thangjam Manorama, by animals in uniform.
As always, it was with honourable intentions that army and paramilitary units assigned to the disturbed areas of Kashmir and the Northeast were given special powers and operational freedom above and beyond the penal code. But, as always, honourable intentions quickly turned into utterly dishonourable conduct on the ground. The Indian Army, of which all Indians are proud, allowed itself to be maligned by its own excesses.
A 24x7 reminder of its atrocities and an astonishing phenomenon of our times is Irom Sharmila, described variously as the Iron Lady of Manipur and as Mengoubi, the fair one. Provoked into a protest fast in 2000, she is into the 13th year now, with her rather pathetic nose-feeding photograph becoming familiar in all countries of the world.
Her ordeal began with ‘The Malom massacre’, the shooting down by Assam Rifles of 10 civilians waiting for a bus. Among those killed was an 18-year-old girl who was a National Child Bravery Award winner. Her bravery was of no use before cowards with guns.
Outraged but helpless, Sharmila did the only thing she could: Deny herself food. The government never tackled the basic problems behind her protest, but simply resorted to farcical ways to ensure that she did not die. She received support from political parties, youth organisations and international associations. Awards came, as did books and songs and plays. In her honour, Pune University started scholarships to enable 39 Manipuri girls to take degree courses.
What is a blot—yet another blot—on our democracy is that despite the non-stop protest by Sharmila and her supporters, and despite the continuing killings that trigger mass demonstrations in Kashmir, nothing is done to address the issue. Army bosses often say that their operations against militants in the border areas cannot go on without the protective shield of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. Even if we accept that argument, does it follow that abuses of the Act should be condoned? Most ironically, despite all these many years, the Army’s operations in the border areas have neither put down the militancy nor improved India’s position in the troubled areas. In fact, the operations have demonstrably generated hatred among the local peoples against India whom they see as a different country. So what is the point of AFSPA?
This is why the Supreme Court’s anguished strictures against the government have not come a day too soon. An expert committee had found that seven persons were killed in Manipur in fake encounters in six cases. That this committee comprised three men of exemplary credentials —Justice Santosh Hegde, former Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh and retired Director General of Police Ajay Kumar Singh—gave its findings rare authority.
The Supreme Court said, “We can’t tell you how sorrowful we are. What is the use of sitting here? Everything appears meaningless... How many times this court laid down guidelines. We want to proceed further and these things should not happen in future.”
A lame-duck government will not proceed further. The people’s only hope is that the Supreme Court will. The Hegde committee recommended the withdrawal of the AFSPA. That would be a welcome starting point. Enough is enough.
Army's right to rape and kill must go if Northeast is to be part of India -The New Indian Express
Fear of rape: The experience of women in Northeast India
Nonibala Devi Yengkhom & Meihoubam Rakesh, Advocate, North East Network, India
Justice J S Verma, former Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (India) has said that the law enforcement agencies are the biggest violators of human rights in the country. His statement is highly relevant to what is happening in Manipur and the other neighboring states of Northeast India, which are subject to an exceptionally high level of militarization.
Women everywhere, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, wealth or age, have faced various forms of violence. Northeast Indian women are no exception. Of all forms of violence, rape is considered the most cruel and inhuman form of torture. The fear of rape is common to all women, however, among Northeast Indian women this fear is heightened by the situation in which they live. It stems not merely from the horror of physical assault, but from the subsequent social stigmatization and many other inexpressible feelings. In fact, in Manipuri the literal meaning of the word to describe rape is "elimination of one's esteem". In a single act of wild sexual aggression the victim loses her esteem forever. Not only does she suffer from this social stigmatization, but also from the mental trauma of potential pregnancy, lost virginity, possible physical injury that may render her unable to bear children and the prospect of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. The survivor of such violence is never the same person. Many victims complain of headaches, general weakness, lost appetite, nightmares, insomnia, restlessness and anxiety.
In this part of the country the rapists are typically members of the Indian armed forces deployed to curb insurgency. Most of these men hail from the strictly patriarchal societies of mainland India, which are extremely prejudiced against women. Coupled with this, in Northeast India they enjoy elated status as security forces. They usually carry out rapes during combing operations in residential areas, when they compel the males to come out of their homes and gather them at one place, while women are forced to stay indoors. Anyone who tries to intervene is severely beaten. Generally, the perpetrators go completely free, as they acquire immunity from prosecution under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958, which has been imposed in the whole of Northeast India for decades. It has become a common practice among the security forces engaging in the counter insurgency operations to do away with the safeguards accorded to women by the Criminal Procedure Code. After the crime, the army also always tries to cover it up by using any available means. In some instances, rapists have been deliberately left out of the line up for the purpose of identification. In others, the identification parade has not been done at all, or after a lengthy period since the crime.
Most of the rape cases go unreported for obvious reasons, implied above. The victims typically fear being stigmatized, losing marriage opportunities, revealing lost virginity, or are reluctant to talk about a sexual act in public. Under any circumstances, the perpetrators are almost never found guilty, the victims receive no compensation and are liable to be harassed, while their families are also traumatised and at a loss as to what steps to take. Proper steps for treatment and rehabilitation have also not been adopted by the state, in spite of directions to this end by the Supreme Court of India. Although a few organizations have taken up humble initiatives, a lot more needs to be done.
Out of the rape cases from the northeast that have been brought out into the open so far, only in one case were the rapists tried and punished, that too in their own military court. This was a case from August 1996, when two army personnel raped a woman in front of her disabled son during the course of a combing operation. Overcome by a sense of humiliation, she came out into the open. The general population and human rights activists joined her in seeking justice. It was only because of the public outrage and the intensity of the movement that the army authorities were compelled to initiate court martial proceedings against the two personnel. They were found guilty and punished for their crime in 1997. Although the case was a turning point in public attitudes, it was an exception to the norm. In other reported cases, the military tribunal has decided against the victims, and there is then little the women can do. On 4 April 1998, for instance, Pramo Devi - then aged about 27 and pregnant - was raped at gunpoint inside her own house by a soldier of the 6th Btn J K Rifles, while on patrolling duty. The military court ruled that it was only a case of molestation and not rape.
While dealing with suspects, male security personnel routinely arrest, interrogate, torture and sexually abuse women. For instance, the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) picked up two sisters - Laishram Bimola Devi, aged about 32 years, and Laishram Manishang, aged about 29 years, of Pukhao Ahallup Awang Leikai - at around 11am on 14 January 1999, falsely accusing them of sheltering underground activists. The all male team took them to their camp located at Pangai, allegedly stripped them naked, and inhumanely beat them with iron rods and sticks on their hips, buttocks, thighs, calves and feet. They were released on the same day, as nothing incriminating was found against them, and were hospitalized for the next two weeks. In a different case in January 1999, a 17-year-old innocent girl, Oinam Subhashini Devi of Thanga Island, was detained and interrogated on suspicion of being an insurgent sympathiser. In spite of the psychological pressure Subhashini's life continues, but in another case a girl took an extreme step. On 25 March 1999, following the investigation of a murder case, the 32nd Assam Rifles stationed at Yairipok took Chabungbam Jamini Devi, an 11-year-old girl, into custody, alleging that she was the girlfriend of an underground activist. She was interrogated in their camp and a recorded version of her statement broadcast in a public meeting convened by the Commanding Officer of the Assam Riffles on March 29. Two days later, on April 2, the girl committed suicide.
Women themselves are now being forced to take responsibility to prevent rape. The Maira Paibi (Women Torch - Bearers) have been at the vanguard of this movement, and are present in all localities. But the Maira Paibi are now also becoming a target of abuse for their human rights work.
* This is a revised and edited version of a paper presented at the National Conference on Human Rights, Social Movements, Globalization and the Law held at Panchgani, Maharastra, India, from 26 December 2000 to 1 January 2001.
Fear of rape: The experience of women in Northeast India — Asian Human Rights Commission
The Alarming Violence against Northeasterners and Women in India
By Karen Ma
When I first arrived in Delhi two years ago, I noticed a rather disturbing tendency among most waiting drivers, street salesmen, or household guards. They would leer at my Asian women friends and me when we strolled past them on quiet residential streets. Male shopkeepers and auto-rickshaw drivers would smile insinuatingly or make snide remarks when I visited local markets. I had trouble understanding the source of this unwanted attention, especially given that I’m a middle-aged mom with a teenage son and also dress conservatively. Okay, I’m a Chinese-American, have slanted eyes and look visually different from the locals. But is this enough reason to draw such reactions?
I did become self-conscious about my attires: could it be that I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, or that I was wearing shorts—the long version cut just above the knees that would hardly raise an eyebrow anywhere in the West or East Asia? Delhi, after all, is among the more conservative cities of India where in some parts strict rules prohibited anything less than fully-covered dresses for women, even in temperatures as high as 45 degree Celsius. It’s true that Kama Sutra was a part of the Indian culture, but I was also told that in most parts of northern India, sexuality continues to be very repressed. So when I modified the way I dressed further, I noticed the “looks” were less—somewhat–, but still, the stares persisted.
Then I read in Anita Jain’s memoir, Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India, that some Indian men prefer fairer-skinned women from the North East—the eight states connected to Mainland India through a narrow corridor that includes Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim—where people look no different from the Chinese, the Japanese or the Koreans. Was this about the weird sexual fantasies of some men obsessed with skin colors? Had I inadvertently become a case study in people’s prejudice toward Northeastern women, I wondered aloud.
It was only after I started scanning the local papers more closely in recent weeks that I realized, the negative attention I was receiving dovetails with systematic racial discrimination and stereotyping here against Northeasterners, who in recent years have poured into the capital to study and work.
The Times of India on April 16 ran two articles about women from Manipur being regularly molested or assaulted by groups of men in their neighborhood of Munirka in south Delhi, for instance, with some leading to gang rapes or even murder. One woman who was touched inappropriately by a group of five drunken men recently in the same neighborhood said the men called her a prostitute and threatened to give her a “good time, better than the other men you’ve seen” as they encircled and grabbed her. She was able to free herself only after screaming and throwing a brick at one of the men.
In another news article published in the Mail Today on April 18, a report on a project by the North East Support Centre & Helpline (NESCH) says up to 78 percent of the 200,000 North-East population living in Delhi is subject to various kinds of humiliations, including sexual harassment, molestation, human trafficking, beating, rape and murder, largely because of their appearance, with the women bearing the brunt of the abuse for the past six years. This began with a heinous crime, the gang rape of a 19-year-old girl from Mizoram while in a moving car in central Delhi six years ago. The assaults kept getting worse, culminating in the 2009 gang-rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl from Nagaland, the attempted rape and murder of a 19-year-old Manipur girl at Murnika, and in the gang-rape in 2010 of a 30-year-old Mizoram woman. Thus far, some 96 criminal cases against the North-East community have been filed since 2005, according to the NESCH.
Mandu Chandra, an activist and spokesperson for NESCH, says the cause of the racial discrimination, attacks and sexual violence against Northeasterners, especially women, is ‘social profiling.’ “The majority of North East India residents is ethnically from the Mongoloid race and fall out of the caste hierarchy. This is the reason they are discriminated against,” he said.
Chandra was referring to the general stereotyping among conservative Delhiites, which tends to believe that women from the North East have loose morals and are sexually available because they’re from a part of India that hasn’t been “Sanskritized,” thereby supposedly making them more willing to engage in sex and illegal drugs for profit or a good time.
An NGO worker who worked in Assam once told me women from the backwater Northeastern states have the reputation of engaging in sex work once they arrive in the capital. In fact, one report in the BBC last September said thousands of women from the North East may had been trafficked or duped from their hometowns to Delhi and other big cities to engage in prostitution work during the Common Wealth Game last fall, after being promised lucrative jobs. Many more of the minority women, however, are educated and have found work in the central government, or are employed in such sectors as retail, IT, the call-centers and hospitality. Yet the fact that some of these women choose to dress in jeans and non-Indian attires, or sometimes imitate the socialites by wearing skimpy dresses further perpetuates the derogatory image of them as sex objects.
Worse, the violence and stereotypes against the Northeastern women are aggravated and amplified by Delhi’s law enforcing agencies’ prejudices. They routinely refuse, deny, or delay to entertain complaints filed by victims from this region. In fact, victims say many in the mostly male police force in Delhi typically taunt them by asking inappropriate questions, though admittedly this problem is not unique to Northeastern women, but all women victimized by sexual crimes. Sadly this attitude is also among many conservative males in India –the common perception is that if the women were violated, then they must have done something to deserve it. The end result is that many victims refuse to speak out about their abuse to avoid being humiliated the second time. This makes them easy prey for attackers and exposes them to even greater violence, completing a vicious cycle.
My immediate reaction to this horrendous discrimination and violence against a regional people in their very own country was disbelief, anger and sadness given that India holds out so much hope given its international standing as a country that embraces and tolerates cultural diversity. The problem, on a second look, however, is a lot more complex. It’s also about a fast-changing metropolis leading to renewed tension, with the values of new inhabitants from all parts of India on collision course with each other. In the past five, six years, more migrants have been moving to the capital en mass, including those from extreme conservative parts of the far north rural communities and the more liberal from the far-east and the southern states. They are drawn to Delhi`s promises of better paid jobs and educational opportunities. Yet as more women are migrating to the city, society is still not accustomed to women on their own or with men who are not their fathers, husbands or sons.
Gamma Sharma, a writer for e-pao.net—an online forum about gender and racial discriminations in India—pointed out in an essay: “Indian males, coming from the rural parts of the country, are the most desperate ones regarding sex, as exposures to the opposite sex has been kept at a minimum at their youth, and the sudden exposure to a more open culture of the North East (proved) too much for them to handle.”
In Delhi, sadly, it is the women who pay the steepest price for these social changes. Almost daily, the newspapers report on more rapes, molestation, violence and murders of women. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Delhi accounts for over 47 percent of rapes and abduction of women in urban India. The streets of Delhi have become so unsafe, especially at night, that working women who can afford it hire female chauffeurs to drive them home after late night shifts. While more and more Indian women have the opportunities to work and be educated, their ability to enjoy their economic and social independence is impaired by their need to defend their own safety in a society that still, at its deep core, has trouble accepting women wielding more power and asserting their freedom.
The Alarming Violence against Northeasterners and Women in India | IPS – Communicating MDG3 – Giving voice to gender equality
=====================================================
What's wrong with Indian and Rape?
I really can't imagine the Horror living in "The Land of Rape"
For the pop stars of America, it was one more jab of fashionable militancy. For a lost generation of women in Manipur in 2004, it was a question of survival when a bunch of them marched to the gates of an army camp, stripped themselves naked and shouted, “Indian army, rape me!” They had been reduced to impotent anger by the rape of a local woman, Thangjam Manorama, by animals in uniform.
As always, it was with honourable intentions that army and paramilitary units assigned to the disturbed areas of Kashmir and the Northeast were given special powers and operational freedom above and beyond the penal code. But, as always, honourable intentions quickly turned into utterly dishonourable conduct on the ground. The Indian Army, of which all Indians are proud, allowed itself to be maligned by its own excesses.
A 24x7 reminder of its atrocities and an astonishing phenomenon of our times is Irom Sharmila, described variously as the Iron Lady of Manipur and as Mengoubi, the fair one. Provoked into a protest fast in 2000, she is into the 13th year now, with her rather pathetic nose-feeding photograph becoming familiar in all countries of the world.
Her ordeal began with ‘The Malom massacre’, the shooting down by Assam Rifles of 10 civilians waiting for a bus. Among those killed was an 18-year-old girl who was a National Child Bravery Award winner. Her bravery was of no use before cowards with guns.
Outraged but helpless, Sharmila did the only thing she could: Deny herself food. The government never tackled the basic problems behind her protest, but simply resorted to farcical ways to ensure that she did not die. She received support from political parties, youth organisations and international associations. Awards came, as did books and songs and plays. In her honour, Pune University started scholarships to enable 39 Manipuri girls to take degree courses.
What is a blot—yet another blot—on our democracy is that despite the non-stop protest by Sharmila and her supporters, and despite the continuing killings that trigger mass demonstrations in Kashmir, nothing is done to address the issue. Army bosses often say that their operations against militants in the border areas cannot go on without the protective shield of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. Even if we accept that argument, does it follow that abuses of the Act should be condoned? Most ironically, despite all these many years, the Army’s operations in the border areas have neither put down the militancy nor improved India’s position in the troubled areas. In fact, the operations have demonstrably generated hatred among the local peoples against India whom they see as a different country. So what is the point of AFSPA?
This is why the Supreme Court’s anguished strictures against the government have not come a day too soon. An expert committee had found that seven persons were killed in Manipur in fake encounters in six cases. That this committee comprised three men of exemplary credentials —Justice Santosh Hegde, former Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh and retired Director General of Police Ajay Kumar Singh—gave its findings rare authority.
The Supreme Court said, “We can’t tell you how sorrowful we are. What is the use of sitting here? Everything appears meaningless... How many times this court laid down guidelines. We want to proceed further and these things should not happen in future.”
A lame-duck government will not proceed further. The people’s only hope is that the Supreme Court will. The Hegde committee recommended the withdrawal of the AFSPA. That would be a welcome starting point. Enough is enough.
Army's right to rape and kill must go if Northeast is to be part of India -The New Indian Express
Fear of rape: The experience of women in Northeast India
Nonibala Devi Yengkhom & Meihoubam Rakesh, Advocate, North East Network, India
Justice J S Verma, former Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (India) has said that the law enforcement agencies are the biggest violators of human rights in the country. His statement is highly relevant to what is happening in Manipur and the other neighboring states of Northeast India, which are subject to an exceptionally high level of militarization.
Women everywhere, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, wealth or age, have faced various forms of violence. Northeast Indian women are no exception. Of all forms of violence, rape is considered the most cruel and inhuman form of torture. The fear of rape is common to all women, however, among Northeast Indian women this fear is heightened by the situation in which they live. It stems not merely from the horror of physical assault, but from the subsequent social stigmatization and many other inexpressible feelings. In fact, in Manipuri the literal meaning of the word to describe rape is "elimination of one's esteem". In a single act of wild sexual aggression the victim loses her esteem forever. Not only does she suffer from this social stigmatization, but also from the mental trauma of potential pregnancy, lost virginity, possible physical injury that may render her unable to bear children and the prospect of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. The survivor of such violence is never the same person. Many victims complain of headaches, general weakness, lost appetite, nightmares, insomnia, restlessness and anxiety.
In this part of the country the rapists are typically members of the Indian armed forces deployed to curb insurgency. Most of these men hail from the strictly patriarchal societies of mainland India, which are extremely prejudiced against women. Coupled with this, in Northeast India they enjoy elated status as security forces. They usually carry out rapes during combing operations in residential areas, when they compel the males to come out of their homes and gather them at one place, while women are forced to stay indoors. Anyone who tries to intervene is severely beaten. Generally, the perpetrators go completely free, as they acquire immunity from prosecution under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958, which has been imposed in the whole of Northeast India for decades. It has become a common practice among the security forces engaging in the counter insurgency operations to do away with the safeguards accorded to women by the Criminal Procedure Code. After the crime, the army also always tries to cover it up by using any available means. In some instances, rapists have been deliberately left out of the line up for the purpose of identification. In others, the identification parade has not been done at all, or after a lengthy period since the crime.
Most of the rape cases go unreported for obvious reasons, implied above. The victims typically fear being stigmatized, losing marriage opportunities, revealing lost virginity, or are reluctant to talk about a sexual act in public. Under any circumstances, the perpetrators are almost never found guilty, the victims receive no compensation and are liable to be harassed, while their families are also traumatised and at a loss as to what steps to take. Proper steps for treatment and rehabilitation have also not been adopted by the state, in spite of directions to this end by the Supreme Court of India. Although a few organizations have taken up humble initiatives, a lot more needs to be done.
Out of the rape cases from the northeast that have been brought out into the open so far, only in one case were the rapists tried and punished, that too in their own military court. This was a case from August 1996, when two army personnel raped a woman in front of her disabled son during the course of a combing operation. Overcome by a sense of humiliation, she came out into the open. The general population and human rights activists joined her in seeking justice. It was only because of the public outrage and the intensity of the movement that the army authorities were compelled to initiate court martial proceedings against the two personnel. They were found guilty and punished for their crime in 1997. Although the case was a turning point in public attitudes, it was an exception to the norm. In other reported cases, the military tribunal has decided against the victims, and there is then little the women can do. On 4 April 1998, for instance, Pramo Devi - then aged about 27 and pregnant - was raped at gunpoint inside her own house by a soldier of the 6th Btn J K Rifles, while on patrolling duty. The military court ruled that it was only a case of molestation and not rape.
While dealing with suspects, male security personnel routinely arrest, interrogate, torture and sexually abuse women. For instance, the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) picked up two sisters - Laishram Bimola Devi, aged about 32 years, and Laishram Manishang, aged about 29 years, of Pukhao Ahallup Awang Leikai - at around 11am on 14 January 1999, falsely accusing them of sheltering underground activists. The all male team took them to their camp located at Pangai, allegedly stripped them naked, and inhumanely beat them with iron rods and sticks on their hips, buttocks, thighs, calves and feet. They were released on the same day, as nothing incriminating was found against them, and were hospitalized for the next two weeks. In a different case in January 1999, a 17-year-old innocent girl, Oinam Subhashini Devi of Thanga Island, was detained and interrogated on suspicion of being an insurgent sympathiser. In spite of the psychological pressure Subhashini's life continues, but in another case a girl took an extreme step. On 25 March 1999, following the investigation of a murder case, the 32nd Assam Rifles stationed at Yairipok took Chabungbam Jamini Devi, an 11-year-old girl, into custody, alleging that she was the girlfriend of an underground activist. She was interrogated in their camp and a recorded version of her statement broadcast in a public meeting convened by the Commanding Officer of the Assam Riffles on March 29. Two days later, on April 2, the girl committed suicide.
Women themselves are now being forced to take responsibility to prevent rape. The Maira Paibi (Women Torch - Bearers) have been at the vanguard of this movement, and are present in all localities. But the Maira Paibi are now also becoming a target of abuse for their human rights work.
* This is a revised and edited version of a paper presented at the National Conference on Human Rights, Social Movements, Globalization and the Law held at Panchgani, Maharastra, India, from 26 December 2000 to 1 January 2001.
Fear of rape: The experience of women in Northeast India — Asian Human Rights Commission
The Alarming Violence against Northeasterners and Women in India
By Karen Ma
When I first arrived in Delhi two years ago, I noticed a rather disturbing tendency among most waiting drivers, street salesmen, or household guards. They would leer at my Asian women friends and me when we strolled past them on quiet residential streets. Male shopkeepers and auto-rickshaw drivers would smile insinuatingly or make snide remarks when I visited local markets. I had trouble understanding the source of this unwanted attention, especially given that I’m a middle-aged mom with a teenage son and also dress conservatively. Okay, I’m a Chinese-American, have slanted eyes and look visually different from the locals. But is this enough reason to draw such reactions?
I did become self-conscious about my attires: could it be that I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, or that I was wearing shorts—the long version cut just above the knees that would hardly raise an eyebrow anywhere in the West or East Asia? Delhi, after all, is among the more conservative cities of India where in some parts strict rules prohibited anything less than fully-covered dresses for women, even in temperatures as high as 45 degree Celsius. It’s true that Kama Sutra was a part of the Indian culture, but I was also told that in most parts of northern India, sexuality continues to be very repressed. So when I modified the way I dressed further, I noticed the “looks” were less—somewhat–, but still, the stares persisted.
Then I read in Anita Jain’s memoir, Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India, that some Indian men prefer fairer-skinned women from the North East—the eight states connected to Mainland India through a narrow corridor that includes Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim—where people look no different from the Chinese, the Japanese or the Koreans. Was this about the weird sexual fantasies of some men obsessed with skin colors? Had I inadvertently become a case study in people’s prejudice toward Northeastern women, I wondered aloud.
It was only after I started scanning the local papers more closely in recent weeks that I realized, the negative attention I was receiving dovetails with systematic racial discrimination and stereotyping here against Northeasterners, who in recent years have poured into the capital to study and work.
The Times of India on April 16 ran two articles about women from Manipur being regularly molested or assaulted by groups of men in their neighborhood of Munirka in south Delhi, for instance, with some leading to gang rapes or even murder. One woman who was touched inappropriately by a group of five drunken men recently in the same neighborhood said the men called her a prostitute and threatened to give her a “good time, better than the other men you’ve seen” as they encircled and grabbed her. She was able to free herself only after screaming and throwing a brick at one of the men.
In another news article published in the Mail Today on April 18, a report on a project by the North East Support Centre & Helpline (NESCH) says up to 78 percent of the 200,000 North-East population living in Delhi is subject to various kinds of humiliations, including sexual harassment, molestation, human trafficking, beating, rape and murder, largely because of their appearance, with the women bearing the brunt of the abuse for the past six years. This began with a heinous crime, the gang rape of a 19-year-old girl from Mizoram while in a moving car in central Delhi six years ago. The assaults kept getting worse, culminating in the 2009 gang-rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl from Nagaland, the attempted rape and murder of a 19-year-old Manipur girl at Murnika, and in the gang-rape in 2010 of a 30-year-old Mizoram woman. Thus far, some 96 criminal cases against the North-East community have been filed since 2005, according to the NESCH.
Mandu Chandra, an activist and spokesperson for NESCH, says the cause of the racial discrimination, attacks and sexual violence against Northeasterners, especially women, is ‘social profiling.’ “The majority of North East India residents is ethnically from the Mongoloid race and fall out of the caste hierarchy. This is the reason they are discriminated against,” he said.
Chandra was referring to the general stereotyping among conservative Delhiites, which tends to believe that women from the North East have loose morals and are sexually available because they’re from a part of India that hasn’t been “Sanskritized,” thereby supposedly making them more willing to engage in sex and illegal drugs for profit or a good time.
An NGO worker who worked in Assam once told me women from the backwater Northeastern states have the reputation of engaging in sex work once they arrive in the capital. In fact, one report in the BBC last September said thousands of women from the North East may had been trafficked or duped from their hometowns to Delhi and other big cities to engage in prostitution work during the Common Wealth Game last fall, after being promised lucrative jobs. Many more of the minority women, however, are educated and have found work in the central government, or are employed in such sectors as retail, IT, the call-centers and hospitality. Yet the fact that some of these women choose to dress in jeans and non-Indian attires, or sometimes imitate the socialites by wearing skimpy dresses further perpetuates the derogatory image of them as sex objects.
Worse, the violence and stereotypes against the Northeastern women are aggravated and amplified by Delhi’s law enforcing agencies’ prejudices. They routinely refuse, deny, or delay to entertain complaints filed by victims from this region. In fact, victims say many in the mostly male police force in Delhi typically taunt them by asking inappropriate questions, though admittedly this problem is not unique to Northeastern women, but all women victimized by sexual crimes. Sadly this attitude is also among many conservative males in India –the common perception is that if the women were violated, then they must have done something to deserve it. The end result is that many victims refuse to speak out about their abuse to avoid being humiliated the second time. This makes them easy prey for attackers and exposes them to even greater violence, completing a vicious cycle.
My immediate reaction to this horrendous discrimination and violence against a regional people in their very own country was disbelief, anger and sadness given that India holds out so much hope given its international standing as a country that embraces and tolerates cultural diversity. The problem, on a second look, however, is a lot more complex. It’s also about a fast-changing metropolis leading to renewed tension, with the values of new inhabitants from all parts of India on collision course with each other. In the past five, six years, more migrants have been moving to the capital en mass, including those from extreme conservative parts of the far north rural communities and the more liberal from the far-east and the southern states. They are drawn to Delhi`s promises of better paid jobs and educational opportunities. Yet as more women are migrating to the city, society is still not accustomed to women on their own or with men who are not their fathers, husbands or sons.
Gamma Sharma, a writer for e-pao.net—an online forum about gender and racial discriminations in India—pointed out in an essay: “Indian males, coming from the rural parts of the country, are the most desperate ones regarding sex, as exposures to the opposite sex has been kept at a minimum at their youth, and the sudden exposure to a more open culture of the North East (proved) too much for them to handle.”
In Delhi, sadly, it is the women who pay the steepest price for these social changes. Almost daily, the newspapers report on more rapes, molestation, violence and murders of women. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Delhi accounts for over 47 percent of rapes and abduction of women in urban India. The streets of Delhi have become so unsafe, especially at night, that working women who can afford it hire female chauffeurs to drive them home after late night shifts. While more and more Indian women have the opportunities to work and be educated, their ability to enjoy their economic and social independence is impaired by their need to defend their own safety in a society that still, at its deep core, has trouble accepting women wielding more power and asserting their freedom.
The Alarming Violence against Northeasterners and Women in India | IPS – Communicating MDG3 – Giving voice to gender equality
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What's wrong with Indian and Rape?
I really can't imagine the Horror living in "The Land of Rape"
