Raveena Aulakh
Toronto Star reporter
Toronto Star reporter
NEW DELHI, INDIA—The
city exploded in fury on Wednesday at the news of the savage
rape and beating of a 23-year-old
student.
Incensed protesters,
mostly young men and women, surrounded a police station, blocked a major
highway, set up roadblocks in the capital. India’s Parliament erupted in
condemnation. There were calls for fast-track courts for rapists, and to make
rapists eligible for the death penalty.
“We want people to
feel the pain of what women go through every day,” Aditi Roy, a Delhi
University student, told the Associated Press.
On Sunday at about 9
p.m., a student and her male friend were on their way home in south Delhi after
watching a movie. As a bus pulled over, they stepped in, believing it was
public transit.
It was a private bus
taken for a joyride by the driver and five friends.
One of the driver’s
friends soon got into an argument with the woman over why she was out with a
man at night and the men on the bus decided to “teach her a lesson.”
Over the next hour,
the woman was gang-raped and beaten with iron rods as the bus drove around
south Delhi. Her male friend was also beaten. Then they stripped her and threw
them both out of the bus.
The young woman
suffered severe injuries to her head and intestines, and required multiple
surgeries.
While the fury is
unprecedented, crimes against women aren’t. Newspapers in India are full of
such stories every day.
Two weeks ago, Delhi
newspapers reported that a young, married woman was murdered because she
rebuffed advances by her husband’s male relative. She was bludgeoned to death
in her home.
A 32-year-old woman
was beaten to death in a village earlier this month in Bihar, one of the most
populous and poorest states in India. According to reports, she was allegedly
having an “affair” and the village panchayat — a local government at the
village level — gave the “death sentence.”
But one of the most
shocking stories came out in June when newspapers and TV broadcasters
extensively reported on a man in Indore in Madhya Pradesh state who kept his
wife’s genitals locked. The man, Sohan Lal Chouhan, 38, reportedly pierced
holes on either side of her genitals and before he went to work every morning,
he would insert a small lock and take the keys with him.
Is India no country
for women?
There is no simple
answer but India has been labelled the worst
place to be a woman among
the G20 countries, due to infanticide, child marriage and dowry deaths, a poll
of global experts concluded in June. (The same poll put Canada at the top.)
In another poll by
Reuters, India was ranked the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, behind
Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan and ahead of Somalia.
The statistics are
troubling:
• More than 12 million girls have been aborted in India in
the past three decades because parents prefer sons and do not want to pay a
dowry, according to a study by medical journal the Lancet.
• 47 per cent of India’s women between the ages of 20 and 24
were married before the legal age of 18, according to UNICEF’s 2009 State of
the World’s Children report.
• Crimes against women are on the rise, according to the
National Crime Records Bureau in India. There was a 7.1 per cent hike in
recorded crimes against women between 2010 and 2011. A story in the Hindustan Times on Dec. 5 said 580 cases of rape had been
reported as of Oct. 24 this year, up from 482 in the same time period in 2011.
• As many as 57 per cent of male adolescents and 53 per cent
of female adolescents believe a husband is justified in beating up his wife
under certain circumstances, according to a UNICEF 2012 report.
• In New Delhi, local police have been quoted in the media
saying that a woman is raped every 18 hours and molested every 14 hours in the
capital city. Hundreds of other attacks are never reported.
Women are
discriminated against at every stage of life, from the time they are conceived,
says Kamayani Bali Mahabal, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Mumbai.
“If she is not aborted,
she is in for a tough life where she has to fight for education and faces
Eve-teasing (catcalls, groping and other public sexual harassment), rape and
molestation,” she said. “If she falls in love with the wrong guy, there is
honour killing. When she is married, she could be killed for bringing
inadequate dowry.”
India is the world’s
largest democracy. It is where Indira Gandhi made history as the country’s
first female prime minister in 1966. Today the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi is the
president of the Indian National Congress, one of the major political parties,
and chairwoman of the ruling coalition. Three other powerful women —
Jayalalitha Jayaram, Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati Kumari— lead their parties.
But India is also a
patriarchal society where violence against women is rooted in age-old beliefs
that they are not equal to men. Despite the country’s remarkable growth as an
economic power in the past two decades, women are still largely seen as objects
and treated as such. As more women leave their homes to join the workforce,
crimes against them are increasing.
Uma Chakravarti, a
professor at Delhi University who has written on gender issues, blames it on
growing intolerance by men. She says men need to be gender-sensitized.
“From the time they are
born, boys are made to believe they are superior,” she said. “If there is a son
and a daughter, they are not raised equally, not even in urban areas.”
Urvashi Butalia, a
well-known Delhi author and women’s rights activist, says improving the
country’s infrastructure will help keep women safe.
“Good transportation
systems or well-lit streets will make a girl feel safer while travelling on her
own. That is what the state can do.”
Addressing cultural
baggage is important and it is possible through education, says Butalia. But
that is something families should do with their children, she says.
“They have to be
educated, right from when they are kids, that girls and boys are equal.”
Despite the grim
statistics, Mahabal sees hope for India’s women.
“Women are coming out
and reporting now,” she said. “Yes, there are more reports of rape, sexual
harassment, demands for dowry. I see that as empowerment — it was something
they didn’t do two decades ago.
“They are standing up
against tyranny and for themselves.”
Meanwhile, the
23-year-old victim of the brutal gang rape on the bus is still fighting for
life.
Four of her alleged
rapists have been arrested; two are on the run.
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