New Delhi police fire water cannon at India rape protest

[A.Rafay]

Another woman gang-raped by seven men in India

New Delhi - In a case similar to the gang-rape of a medical student in New Delhi, a 29-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by seven persons in Gurdaspur, Punjab.
The victim was on her way to her village in Ghukla-which falls under Kahnuwan police station-in a bus when the driver and conductor kidnapped her and took her to an undisclosed location where they, along with five accomplices, gang-raped her on Saturday night, Gurdaspur Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Raj Jeet Singh told reporters.
He said five of the seven accused had been arrested while two others, who are yet to be identified, were still absconding. Based on the interrogation of the five accused, efforts were underway to arrest the remaining persons, he added.
The victim, in her complaint, said she was coming back from her parent’s village in Jagatpur in a bus when the driver, Daler Singh, did not stop the vehicle at the bus stand in Ghukla.
Her request to the conductor, Ravi, to ask the driver to stop the bus went unnoticed, she said.
They took her to a place near Gurdaspur, where five of the duo’s friends joined them and gang-raped the woman in a house, the police official said.
The driver dumped the victim at a place near her village in the morning, he said. The woman first went to her house and then came to the police station to file her complaint, he added.
A case of rape under section 376 of the Indian Penal Code was registered against the seven accused, Singh said.
The five arrested have been identified as Daler Singh, Ravi, Jaswinder Singh, Jagpreet Singh and Satwant Singh, he said.
Teams have been have been formed to nab the absconding men, the SSP said.
The woman would be sent for medical examination, the police said, adding the accused had confessed to their crime during preliminary interrogation.

Another woman gang-raped by seven men in India | Pakistan Today | Latest news | Breaking news | Pakistan News | World news | Business | Sport and Multimedia

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtytLmTRokE

^^^wow but not suprising considering its india.

 

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A Brutal Gang Rape, and India's 'Purdah' Problem

My first sense as a young girl of sexual menace came from my Indian grandfather. Let me be clear: He never even remotely sexually threatened or molested me. But he made sure I knew that the world in which I, a girl, was growing up was innately perilous to women.

Screaming reproaches at my dress or my uppity talk, he made it clear that the only way to protect myself from the ever-present danger of men was by conducting and dressing myself with impeccable modesty, by making myself as invisible as possible. He also made me understand that, in the way of a wolf pup, my survival in the world of the alpha male depended on avoiding eye contact or any other sign of a pretense to equal status.

My grandfather was a conservative patriarch who ruled over a household overflowing with women and children: My grandmother, my two then unmarried aunts, my uncle’s wife and their three children. Every one of these individuals literally jumped at his command, fearful of his quick and unpredictable temper. The fear he wanted me to feel — the best way he knew to protect my vulnerable young female self — was confused in my mind with the fear I felt of him, his temper, and his unchallengeable authority.

Arriving in Mumbai at age 9 from California, I was innocent of the traditional joint-family protocol that reigned in my grandfather’s house. I remember being profoundly perplexed and faintly amused by the daily ballet that occurred between my grandfather and my aunt. A daughter-in-law who had come to live with her husband in the home where he lived with his parents, she was never to be in the same room as my grandfather. If my grandfather began moving out of his back room or arrived after his daily walk at the front door, someone in the family would hiss her a warning: “He’s coming!” She would quickly cover her head with her sari and slither away as fast as she could. When there was some rare need for her to communicate with my grandfather, she would ask one of her sons who would ask my grandfather.

I understood from this a horrible revelation: My grandfather's obeisance to a rigidly traditional non-relationship between father-in-law and daughter-in-law came from a fear that familiarity would open the door to sexual attraction, or worse. This fear was not unfounded: India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2011 indicates 94.2 percent of rapists are known to their victim. My aunt’s invisibility and the modest dress and comportment I was supposed to adopt were designed to protect our virtue. In effect, we women were to maintain a kind of purdah. The word, of Persian origin, means “curtain” and defines a state where women are concealed from the view of men. A woman exposed to male view was a woman, I learned, in danger.

It is clear in the wake of the brutal gang rape of a young paramedical student in Delhi on December 16 that a purdah mentality still dogs Indian society. A woman who can be seen is seen as a woman available for violation. Rapid modernization and urbanization in India have made women, especially young women, visible as never before. More and more women are seeking education and employment. They go out to school, to work and to socialize with friends. They, like the young woman who was gang raped in Delhi, go out to movies. Increasingly, they go out with men, and, increasingly, they, instead of their parents, choose their life partners.

The young woman who was attacked had come to Delhi from a small village where her enlightened parents had scrimped and saved to educate her. She was studying to become a physical therapist. She was making her own life on the new exciting terms offered by India’s changing society. While these opportunities have increased, they can’t meet the volume of raised aspirations. Competition for slots in the better schools and for jobs remains fierce. The competition for women is also fierce.

In India, girls are too often seen as temporary members of their families who will one day marry and join a new family. Male children are preferred, and sex-selective abortion, female infanticide and the sheer neglect of girls have made for a growing gender gap. Too many young men simmer with aspirations and desires that are simply not likely to be realized.

India’s purdah mentality permeates every level of Indian society, as remarks made after the gang rape by members of Delhi’s police force and political leaders make abundantly clear. Rapists and sexual assailants also know they are likely to get away with their crime: While the NCRB reported a 112 percent increase in reported rapes between 1990 and 2008, three-fourths of accused perpetrators remained in 2011 at large and only 26 percen were convicted in 2012. The vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults remain unreported: Victims fear reprisals, humiliating treatment on the part of the authorities and reputations indelibly stained.

In the wake of this brutal attack, Indian citizens have taken their outrage over their government’s failure to reform antiquated laws and a creepingly slow judicial system that abet rapists to the streets. The lid on India’s deep-seated culture of misogyny has been blown; the pretty curtain of the virtuous because modest Indian woman torn aside to reveal the hypocrisy of the country’s purdah mentality. If there is hope in grief and outrage, it is hope for real reform now of laws that fall far short of defining rape and sexual assault as crimes, but also of attitudes that blame the victim and excuse the perpetrator.

In this, Indian citizens who have demonstrated en masse in recent weeks have joined movements against government indifference and misogynistic attitudes that feed a culture of rape in even the world’s so-called advanced economies. The “slutwalk” movement was launched in Toronto, Canada in April 2011 after a policeman, sounding alarmingly like my Indian grandfather, remarked that women who dress like sluts shouldn’t be surprised if they are sexually attacked. The slutwalk march has been replicated across the United States and Europe, where rape rates remain high and convictions of rapists low.

I recently felt again the kind of fear of men I’d learned from my grandfather in Mumbai so many years ago. Coming out from a subway station in Brooklyn, New York, last month, I saw a sign taped to a nearby light pole warning women against a brutal serial rapist on the loose in the neighborhood. On the sign was a phone number women could call if they wanted a volunteer bicycle escort home. I looked around nervously, and hurried on my way, head down, hunched over a little. Don’t look at me, my body language said: I’m invisible.

A Brutal Gang Rape, and India's 'Purdah' Problem | Asia Society

 

[RIMPAC]

India is full of rapists. What are they doing to prevent this?

 

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India’s Rape Culture: Urban versus Rural


By Ram Puniyani

17 January, 2013
Countercurrents.org

While the horrific rape of Damini, Nirbhaya (December16, 2012) has shaken the whole nation, and the country is gripped with the fear of this phenomenon, many an ideologue and political leader are not only making their ideologies clear, some of them are regularly putting their foots in mouths also. Surely they do retract their statements soon enough. Kailash Vijayvargiya, a senior BJP minister in MP’s statement that women must not cross Laxman Rekha to prevent crimes against them, was disowned by the BJP Central leadership and he was thereby quick enough to apologize to the activists for his statement. But does it change his ideology or the ideologies of his fellow travellers? There are many more in the list from Abhijit Mukherjee, to Mamata Bannerji, Asaram Bapu and many more.

The statement of RSS supremo, Mohan Bhagwat, was on a different tract as he said that rape is a phenomenon which takes place in India not in Bharat. For India the substitute for him is urban areas and Bharat is rural India for him. As per him it is the “Western” lifestyle adopted by people in urban areas due to which there is an increase in the crime against women. “You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang rape or sex crimes”, he said on 4th January. Further he implied that while urban areas are influenced by Western culture, the rural areas are nurturing Indian ethos, glorious Indian traditions. As per him ancient Indian traditions gave great respect to women, and it is due to these values of Indian tradition, that villages are free from crimes against women.

The statistics from India fly in the face of Bhagawat. In a significant statistical observation and study of rape cases Mrinal Satish, faculty member of National Law University, Delhi, tells us another tale. He has used the court data and observes that 75% of rape cases take place in rural India. His observations are based on the cases reported in Criminal Law Journal from 1983 to 2009.

The cases of rape in villages, like that of Khairlanji and rape against Adivasi women may not be on the radar of the Hindutva boss, Bhagwat, but those engaged with the issues of dalits, Adivasis and gender issues cannot buy the simplified rural versus urban divide. One knows that patriarchy which looks at women as secondary beings, primarily as sister, mother or daughter, rather than a person in her own right. She is not a being with swayam (selfhood) of her own. As for as RSS ideology is concerned only men have swayam (selfhood). The full form of RSS, the male organization is Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh while its women’s organization is Rashtrasevika Samiti, do note that the word swayam is missing here, in the name of women’s organization.

The myth that women had a place of honour in ancient Indian period is a well constructed one. During the long span of ancient Indian period the status of women kept changing, but women being subordinate beings was the running theme. During the Aryan period of pastoral life the women were supposed to commit symbolic self immolation after the death of husband, later this got converted to actual burning of the widows. It is probably around this period that two great epics were written, Ramayan and Mahabharat.

In Ramayan Lord Ram banishes his pregnant wife Sita, because of the rumours about her character amongst the subjects of Ayodhya. In Mahabharat, the Panadavas use their common wife Draupadi as a ‘thing’ and use her as a bet in gamble. Not to be left behind their cousins try to disrobe her in the court in front of the King Dhritrashtra! So much for the glorious place of women in ancient India! Later period’s values are well reflected in Manusmiriti, where the women were explicitly denied education and serving the husband and household chores were regarded as equivalent of education for the women. Manusmriti gives the detailed code for women and it leaves no doubt about women being subordinate or the property of men. The Gupta period (3rd to 7thCentury), which is regarded as the Golden Period of Ancient India, the women were having limited access to education and barring few names which are dished out to prove the glorious condition of Hindu women, mostly the women were having limited access to education. Their participation in Yagnas was secondary to husband, the Yajman, who was the primary being who had solicited the priest for the Yagnas. Yajnman word interestingly has no female equivalent.

The ideologues of the Mohan Bhagwat parivar attribute all the prevalent ills to the coming in of Muslims. This is a very clever ploy to externalize the internal suppression of women, and also of dalits. It’s not too long ago in history that during British rule, the continuation of this religiously sanctioned Hindu norm, Sati, had to be fought against by social reformers. The ghastly sati system, occasionally surfacing even now, and supported subtly by conservatives has not been easy to eradicate as religion was cited as the argument for preserving it. In the wake of sati of Roopkanwar in 1986, BJP’s Vice President Vijaya Raje Scindia, not only defended the sati system but also took out a morcha to oppose passing of the bill against sati. BJP of is the political child of RSS.

The travails of Raja Ram Mohan Roy in struggling against Sati system are a legend. The child marriage was/ is another such evil. While British wanted to bring in the law in early twentieth century to abolish child marriage, the argument to oppose it came from the sources of Hindu religion. It was asserted that as per Hindu norms the girl must be married before her first menses, Garbhadhan. It was argued that our religion’s norm about early marriage cannot be violated. The introduction of widow remarriage, the struggle to abolish Devadasi system, each of these has a long and painful story to tell about the status of women in India, in Ancient India, not influenced by modernization.

The education is the key to the empowerment of women and an integral part of democratization process. It was a painful journey and the efforts of Savitri bai Phule in this direction are revolutionary in the true sense of the word. These efforts were downright opposed on various grounds, the main obstacle being the Hindu traditions.

As such what is being criticized by Bhagwat as modernization is basically the process of democratization of society. This gentleman is stuck in the feudal mode thinking and is upholding feudal of social relationships in the garb of Hindu glorious traditions. As per these traditions; caste and gender hierarchy rules the roost. The atrocities against women are not due to democratization, which this worthy is calling modernization or westernization. The core of modernization is caste and gender equality. The essence of modernization is abolition of hierarchy, based on birth-the hierarchy of caste and gender. The process of democratization is the march of society from formal values of equality to substantive equality, and this the march has to be the agenda of social movements. The roots of oppression of women lie in the patriarchal values, which is the carry forward of ancient and medieval values, related to feudal society, society with the rule of kings, where woman was regarded as the one whose arena is the domestic work. The condition of widows and the women who were burnt alive as sati reflects the glorious ancient tradition to which Mr. Bhagwat wants to push back the Indian society, undoing all what Indian society has been able to achieve through the struggle for Independence, which was not merely a struggle to throw away the British rule but also a struggle to do away with caste and gender hierarchy.

For Bhagwat, the ancient glory is a cover to hide the gender inequality. Modernization is seen in a superficial way by many. Here the ancient traditions are glorified without going to the core of the social relationships. One is not criticizing the past, but understanding it in the context of the social milieu, the system of production, the level of education etc. is what is needed. Blind glorification of the past or blind condemnation of the past, both take the conclusions off the mark. To look down upon modernization as a crass process is a deliberate one, to try to bring in social equations, the epitome of which in a way is Manusmriti.

Here even the facts of statistics are being put upside down to prove a political point which is retrograde but covered in the cloak of ancient glory. The borderline between India and Bharat is not an iron wall, it is a fluctuating zone, merging and separating in a very fluid way. The need of the hour is to look deeper into the issue of violence against women. While all needs to be done to create a safe atmosphere, women’s safety and space for their work and creativity, we need to give a look at the social movements to overcome the chains of patriarchy, which is at the root of violence against women.

Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India. He is involved with human rights activities from last two decades.He is associated with various secular and democratic initiatives like All India Secular Forum, Center for Study of Society and Secularism and ANHAD.

India’s Rape Culture: Urban versus Rural By Ram Puniyani