It is difficult to reconcile India’s rapid economic and technological development with brutal practices that, in many cases, lead to the death of women and girls. Repeated incidents of gang rape in India are not isolated, but reflect widespread gender and caste discrimination in the country. Today, rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India.
Two recent gang rapes resulting in the deaths of Dalit women have shocked people around the world. Both women were young, one 19 and the other 22-years-old.
In India, 200 million Dalits face discrimination and abuse.
According to women rights’ activists, this is a situation that has increased during the coronavirus pandemic. There are no signs that crimes against women and girls are abating.
One of the earliest and most brutal manifestation of violence against women is female feticide, where female fetuses are selectively aborted after pre-natal sex determination. Researchers for The Lancet estimate that more than 500,000 girls are lost annually through sex selective abortions. Female fetuses are selectively aborted after pre-natal sex determination. Sometimes, the elimination of girls occurs after they are born, a situation of female infanticide that has existed for centuries in India.
One of the consequences of female feticide is the increase in human trafficking. According to some estimates, in 15,000 Indian women were sold as brides in 2011 to regions such as Haryana and Punjab to compensate for the lack of women as a result of feticide. While women in the Vedic age (1500-1000 BC), and some even now, were worshipped as gods, in modern times some are negated the basic right to life.
Feticide began in the early 1990s, when ultrasound techniques became widely used in India. Many families continue to have children until a male child is born, since boys are valued more than girls. Religious practices for their parent’s afterlife can only be performed by males, which makes them an additional status symbol for their families.
The Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, passed in 1994, making selective abortion illegal, has been poorly enforced. In 2003, the PCPNDT was modified holding medical professionals legally responsible for abuse of the test. These provisions, however, have not significantly deterred their abuse.
Although gender-based discrimination against women and girls is pervasive in developing countries, India is one of the worst culprits. Female discrimination, which starts in the womb, continues throughout women’s lives.
A survey by the Thomas Reuters Foundation found that India is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women.
In India, violence against women can take several forms. Women of any class or religion can be victims of acid-throwing, a cruel form of punishment that can disfigure women for life and even kill them. According to perpetrators’ testimonies, they do it to put women in their place for defying cultural norms. The U.N. Population Fund reports that up to 70 percent of married women aged 15-49 in India are victims of beatings or coerced sex.
Dowry traditions, in which parents must often pay large sums of money to marry off their daughters is claimed as one of the reasons why parents prefer boys to girls. In 1961, the Government of India passed the Dowry Prohibition Act, which makes dowry demands in wedding arrangements illegal. Although some kinds of abuse such as “bride burning” have diminished among educated urban populations, many cases of dowry-related domestic violence, suicide and murders are still occurring.
Rapes of women in India are not isolated incidents. They are actually symptoms of a discrimination that starts in the womb, in a society that persists in treating women as second-class citizens. Abuse of women in India will only be solved by changing entrenched cultural norms that continue to condone the abuse and degradation of women. Until the rights of all women and girls, regardless of caste, are accepted by Indian society, and appropriate laws are enforced, any measures to overcome this situation will only be palliative, and will not solve this most serious problem.
Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of the 1979 Overseas Press Club of America award for the article “Missing or Disappeared in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims.”
On 14th September 2020, an adolescent woman was brutally raped by multiple men in India. This article examines the gender- and caste-based hierarchies at play in this region, and how it has affected the case.
Yet another victim of gang rape has died to injuries inflicted upon her during rape in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. The woman, who was nineteen years old, died after battling with her injuries for fourteen days.
The infamous 2012 Nirbhaya case set precedent for allowing capital punishment specifically in cases of brutal rapes. While the victim’s family welcomed this punishment, many have raised concern on this. A fear of capital punishment, rather than deterring future rapes, will encourage the perpetrators to kill their victims after the rape. Unfortunately, this fear has also rung true at least to some extent.
Since the infamous Nirbhaya gang rape, instances of rape have become more visible in India. Every year, the number of reported rapes have increased. It is estimated that every 20 minutes, a man rapes a woman in India. Many predict that thousands of rapes go unreported each year due to the stigma attached to women being hurt in this way.
Caste-based impunity
Adding to this is the dimension of the traditional caste-based hierarchy of India. The woman who died late last month belonged to the Dalit caste: previously called the untouchables. Her perpetrators, on the other hand, were all from the upper-caste. This spells a recipe for impunity. Police have previously been accused of negligence and downright covering up of information in order to protect the perpetrators. The police’s actions in this case suggest a similar cover-up.
Local journalists report that the police tried to force the woman’s family to cremate her immediately. When her family did not oblige, the local police forcefully cremated her body in the middle of the night. They formed a human chain to ward off community and family members. In addition to insensitivity to the victim’s family, the immediate cremation was clearly a coverup for any possible information.
On top of that, despite the dying victims rape allegations, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) of the state, Prashant Kumar, made the following statement
“The forensic science laboratory report clearly says that sperm was not found in the samples collected from the woman… The report has made it clear that the woman was not raped,”
Medically, rape is evidenced by the signs of struggle and physical abuse on and in a woman’s body. Semen, on the other hand, is used to identify the perpetrator(s). It is not a determinant of whether a rape occurred or not. The ignorant statement from a senior officer of an investigating body clearly points to a foul play on an institutional level.
Individual or systemic violence?
An ex-supreme court judge made the following statement in response to the case:
”Sex is a natural urge in men. It is sometimes said that after food, the next requirement is sex. In a conservative society like India, one can ordinarily have sex only through marriage. But when there is massive and rising unemployment, a large number of young men remain deprived of sex, even though they have reached an age when it is a normal requirement. I once again make it clear that I am not justifying rapes, rather I condemn it. But considering the situation prevailing in the country, they are bound to increase. So if we really want to end or reduce rapes we have to create a social and system in India in which there is no or little unemployment.”
The statement has been criticized in social media for faulty logic, and for trying to shift the blame from the individual to systemic forces. The statement is problematic for many reasons. It places almost no responsibility on the perpetrator for his actions. Rather the rapist’s actions are justified through unfulfilled sexual urges. Most importantly, it completely misses out the major systemic forces behind the increasing rapes: patriarchy.
It is patriarchy that creates the entitlement to women and their bodies that men demand. It is patriarchy that deters women from reporting sexual abuses in fear of stigma. It is patriarchy that allows men to threaten women with physical harm for reporting. It is patriarchy that blames the woman for getting raped, while the man is excused for “acting on his sexual urges.” It is patriarchy that allows men the confidence and support so they continue to get away with crimes such as these.
The above statement also ignores the caste-based oppression that has allowed members of the higher caste to commit such acts against members of the oppressed groups. The caste-based oppression also gets the law enforcing agencies to align with the oppressor, instead of the oppressed.
The case is not an anomaly.
There have been numerous cases where police refuse to file an official report against any perpetrators but certainly perpetrators of higher castes. There are also many instances when women’s allegations of rapes have been questioned despite clear evidence on and in their bodies. Rapes where law enforcing agencies destroy the evidences are also not rare.
The resulting impunity men recieve in the sytem of patriarchy is evidenced by the systems of oppression: gender-based, caste-based and class-based. Dismantling these systems of oppression is imperative to ensure justice to victims.
Featured image: Protest in 2012 against Nirbhaya gang rape case via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Frenchwoman Maïmouna Doucouré, who wrote and directed ‘Cuties’ (English translation), a film which has sparked an online petition calling for it’s removal from Netflix’s streaming platform, has defended her work against the scrutiny it has come under (largely as a result of the way Netflix chose to represent her film), by asserting that we need to not “blame the girls” in these potentially accurate portrayals of their lives and behaviors.
As one of the many who has not seen the film, I have seen the promotional material: a still image from the film and text provided by an unknown individual describing a girl “who becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew“. The children are eleven years old. The young actors are striking poses that are not hard to see as sexually suggestive. New to social media, my burgeoning role as SJW internet troll is shocking to me, mostly in my quick adaptation to this drug. Perusing the pile-on, there were shades of every argument: from people who had seen the film, explaining that it was about the sexploitation of young females; to people who, enraged, called for it to be removed from the streaming platform altogether.
The alarming normalization of sexualizing children has long been evident in Netflix.
Perhaps not so blatantly as now, but children’s, particularly girl’s, sexualization of themselves (by the age of seven according to Dr. Jessica Taylor) is something that has also long existed in this and other modern, civilized cultures and I would argue, needs to be addressed.
As the creatrix of this soft-core child pornography, Doucouré has here deflected the legitimate question about her responsibility as storyteller to the “sex-worker” argument.
No one said anything about blaming the girls.
The argument against pornography is that real people, in this case eleven year old girls, do the things in real life, in front of a camera. In the case of feature films, often exhaustively with rehearsals, memorization and multiple takes [nearly 700 underage girls auditioned for the lead roles]. It is not just a story anymore. It is perpetuation. Psychically, it is normalization, not a challenge, for participants and audience both.
The shame never belonged to the exploited. To have been exploited is a hard thing to admit in a culture that believes that the shame does belong to the exploited. I think that explains much of the drive toward liberal feminism among young women who do not have direct experience with, or on whose livelihood still depends the pay-for-rape industrial spectrum.
I agree that the film should be taken down, but the story will and must be told.
Disappearing unpleasant or untrue or unwanted theories, arguments or stories transforms them from reasoned, hard “No“s back into question marks.
Trinity La Fey is a smith of many crafts, has been a small business creatrix since 2020; published author; appeared in protests since 2003, poetry performances since 2001; officiated public ceremony since 1999; and participated in theatrical performances since she could get people to sit still in front of her.
For this episode of the Green Flame we celebrate the United States launch of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign with WHRC U.S. co-contact Thistle Pettersen and U.S. WHRC media moderator Austin DeVille.
Our skill-share highlights the WHRC effort to offer mutual support in the face of inevitable backlash:
It is of the utmost importance strategically when you are engaged in radical political movements to anticipate and prepare for push-back and to stand in unity against it. On that note, the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA has a special committee dedicated to lending solidarity to anyone who has received backlash for signing the declaration. This committee will promptly send a letter to the opposing party in defense of the signatory’s right to resist threats to her safety and dignity. To contact the Solidarity Committee, send an email to solidarity@womensdeclaration-usa.com
We thank Thistle for permission to include her performance Michigan aka Gender Hurts in our program.
May I take my place in The Great Family. I offer thanks to your Spirit and accept responsibility for integrating your Story.
It started so long ago I have not strong before concept. I grew up around reckless gun owners and early understood that there was simply no place for them in the world I wanted. Still, lived with single women each with a pistol locked away in a case they never practiced with. One of which, at 23, showed me the jagged, hairless line the bullet had torn around her skull when she’d tried. I remember a lover asking me what I wanted as I cried. How he moved the rifles I was so upset about back into his mother’s house. I just never got used to them; am definitely not used to using them. I didn’t ever understand the want of something so unsportsmanly until I was blessed by Gail Dines through Maya Shlayen through Babyradfem, each a true sister. Then, when the man who tried to get into my car got scared because I made him understand that I was not fucking around, I understood that I wanted something more than my finger to point at him next time. Now there is this gun.
Seriously, so many worse things have happened. Most of them. What was it about this incident that changed everything? Partially, I think it was priming. Education. In isolation, all my rage and sorrow was drowned into silence by the ever wondering. Seeing other women undergo similar abuse en masse made me certain. There was no more confusion about the sadistic self-awareness; no more wondering about how hard it must be for him to be that way; no more patience; no more bullshit. I was in me. And this son of a motherfucker had no rights to me. He could die trying to assert them as I was instantly willing to put the violence where it belongs. Extinction.
To violate is to dishonor, to be irreverent of; at its root: a broken oath.
When I saw my friend violated for the first time, there was a before and an after. It broke me. Me, for whom it started so long ago I have no strong before concept. I saw what it did to her and I missed that part of my friend that was gone now, knowing what was missing for the first time, knowing I had to be strong for and love this new creature in this old skin, knowing that she might not be able to love me as easily or at all, that trust was gone now, nothing personal.
It is unbelievable, what people say about suicide: that it is rage internalized. I bet it was a man who categorized it that way and maybe it’s like that for some of them. What I know of women’s ends are just tired. We have standards. If it doesn’t look like they will ever be met in this life or any, if all the power to resist is stifled with murders and rapes and beatings and beatings and beatings and endless, joyless toil and the shit they think is funny or know they can get away with, it’s no one else’s business when you decide to end it.
Was it internal or external rage that led an uncle to drive recklessly fast in canyon-land pasture shooting at coyotes with his wife and all the grandkids of his parents’ lives at his whim?
I would guess that one tool at the mercy of another, however unsportsmanly, exists like any other, with its own intention and obsolescence built in. Capable of neither rage nor carelessness, it is but a swift finder of ends.
Disappearing can be important for people on the run from political persecution or immigration officials, from abusive relationships and stalkers, and for people involved in highly illegal political activity. This short excerpt comes from the book “Soldier of Fortune: Guide to How to Disappear and Never Be Found.“
There are two ways of looking at your disappearance plan:
You make preparations to become someone else.
You remain your original self and simply disappear one day without reason.
There are good and bad points to both. Should you wish to change your name and obtain a new passport, remove as much information about yourself from the Internet as possible and make sure you leave no clues that you planned to disappear. If, on the other hand, you do nothing—continuing your life as normal until the appointed day and then simply disappearing—you will leave no clues as to why you went missing. In either case, you will need to do some research and plan how to best succeed with your disappearance.
Planning your disappearance so that you will never be found is a difficult task; time is needed to get everything in place: finance, cover story, and your new beginning. How and when you decide to go will very much depend on your own personal circumstances. For example, if you are in a really bad relationship where physical abuse is a constant occurrence, you may need to disappear sooner rather than later. If your life is simply going nowhere and you seek a fresh start, then you have time to plan in more detail.
Change Your Identity
Just before disappearing, it would be beneficial to create a new identity and name. If you do this discreetly, it will make it even harder for anyone to track you down, especially if you decide to stay in your country of origin. Remember, there are many factors that will aid anyone trying to locate you: your Social Security number, credit cards, driver’s license, passport, marriage certificate, and the fact that you had an official name change can all be found, as they will be on record. With or without a name change, if you decide to remain in your country of origin, the chances of you being discovered are much greater.
There are many ways to change your identity or create a new one: You can change your name, your appearance, remain in isolation, or go somewhere where no one will ever know your true identity. To start a new or second identity, it is possible in most countries to change your name, but all the rules that govern this vary dramatically. For example, in the United Kingdom, it is possible to change your name or any part of your name by deed poll, while in America, the laws on changing your name vary from state to state and require some kind of public announcement.
Financial Resources
Financial resources will also play a big part in your plan to disappear. Not having enough money will limit your options, while having too much will bring you to prominence. If you are poor or of moderate means and have few assets that can be converted into cash, then your options to disappear are fairly limited. On the upside, very few people will miss your departure when compared to someone famous or extremely wealthy. Likewise, if you’re poor and have not committed any major crime, there will be fewer resources spent on trying to locate you or to find the reason for your disappearance.
This does not mean that you can’t disappear; you could always go on the road and become a hobo or drifter, as this costs nothing. If the police want you for a crime in your country or you are indicted on a crime and out on bail, the chances are that you will have surrendered your passport and your bank accounts will be frozen to stop you from disappearing. It makes no matter if you’re innocent or guilty, the courts order these things done even in some divorce cases. So unless you saw this coming and made alternative arrangements, i.e. moved the bulk of you money into accessible cash and usefully applied for a second passport, your only option is to disappear as a hobo.
How to Disappear and Never Be Found By Barry Davies
