The Jig is Up!

Each year millions of Indians celebrate the killing of an Asura King by Hindu Goddess Durga for ten days. The Hindu festival, set in casteist narratives has us convinced that the evil is an outsider. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data records that every 16 minutes, a rape occurs in some nook, some place in the country. 96% of the rapes are committed by someone known to the survivor or victim. As of now, the streets of India echo with demands of justice for 31-year-old resident doctor, who was raped and killed on duty.

The India Today Open Source Investigation (OSINT) team recently found a plethora of links and multimedia files offering purported videos of the victim’s “sex” and “porn,” being hosted and shared across multiple platforms, including some big tech companies. The purported rape footage is among top searches in India as well as in Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and UAE. Google Trends data suggests that search volume spiked on August 16. Bengal CM, Mamata Banerjee, has demanded for the perpetrator of the crime to be hanged by the end of the month. In 2012, when news of the Park Street rape case hit, Banerjee attacked the survivor Suzette Jordan by calling the gang rape a “fabricated incident” (shajano ghotona).

In May 2023, two Kuki-Zo women were paraded naked and filmed by a mob in Kangpokpi district. The horrific video emerged in July 2023, and shook the nation, including the supreme court from their deep denial of the ongoing violence in the state of Manipur. On August 20, 2024, news platform, The Wire reported upon a leaked audio clip, which was first shared by the Kuki Students’ Organisation. The voice in the audio is said to that of Manipur CM Biren Singh, who can be heard saying that he is doubtful of the two women complainants from the video, if they were molested and raped. As per the report, “the chief minister can be heard making light of the crime against the two survivors and berating Meitei civil society groups for not coming out and “asserting boldly, with pride” that “it is we, the Meiteis who saved them from the mob”. “How badly we were shamed!… We should have taken credit for saving them, clothing them and sending them home”. The audio has been refuted by the ruling government, it is however currently under investigation. Following the audio leak, 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, including eight BJP MLAs have demanded Singh to be debarred.

For months in 2023, Indian Olympians and commonwealth gold medallists protested against former Wresting Federation of India Chief and BJP Bahubali Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on several accounts of sexual harassment including child abuse. On the day of the inauguration of the new Parliament by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his saffron comrades, as thousands marched towards the India Gate against Singh, the wrestlers were dragged on the streets along with the national flag by the forces. News of Nirbhaya gradually faded from the front pages to small columns and eventually disappeared in coming months of her gang rape and murder in November 2012. In 2018, Hindu ministers and lawyers marched in the support of the rapists and murderers of an eight-year-old Asifa.

In 2022, police found 27-year-old Shraddha Walkar’s body. The young woman was strangled, cut into 35 pieces and stored in a refrigerator by her live-in partner before he disposed of them in the forest. Not only did Indian media touted the gruesome murder as “fridge/refrigerator murder,” and played it as such with all the gory details for months to come, there was no acknowledgement of the violence and public and political discourse in the country quickly turned communal, fixating on victim blaming and moral policing.

All but one of the Hathras rape case were acquitted just days before International Women’s Day 2023. The 19-year-old Dalit woman was raped and killed by the upper caste men of Bhulgarhi village in Uttar Pradesh the year before. Her body was burnt by the local police in the presence of the District Magistrate without her family’s presence or permission. Upper caste residents of the village label the case as a love affair gone wrong and continue their support to the men. The nation wasn’t silent but rather rejoiced and welcomed the 11 rape convicts of Bilkis Bano with garlands when on August 15, 2022, the Gujarat government, backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, set them free. It was only in January 2024 that the supreme court of India nullified the remission orders after multiple PILs.

The limited times, our collective conscience as a society has been enraged enough to hit the streets demanding justice, it is notable that the victims were dead. The ones who live are not believed. The MeToo movement in India is living proof of the same, where one by one, all named perpetrators have been reinstated. While, Priya Ramani’s win against MJ Akbar held a torch of hope, it is nothing short of an anomaly.

Fixation on retributive justice imposes all the blame on the perpetrators and thus, our society that is equally culpable to the crime never gets challenged. According to Deloitte’s 2024 Women @ Work report, nearly half of the women are concerned about their safety at work or while travelling to work. Though the number of women who have experienced non-inclusive behaviours like harassment or microaggressions has decreased, 43% admit to experiencing such behaviours in the last year. The total POSH complaints filed have increased from 1,807 in FY22-23 to 2,325 in FY23-24 (a 29% Y-o-Y increase). The total pending resolution of complaints have also increased from 260 in FY 22-23 to 435 in FY 23-24 (67% Y-o-Y increase).

Sexual violence continues to be treated as an outside issue. The refusal to criminalise marital rapes, lack of strong laws to protect young people in casual and/or live-in relationships, state and social impunity to perpetrators looming around us only embolden the perpetrators around us. We shut our windows and homes when a man next door beats his wife and children blue. We cover our girls just as we cover the crimes committed by our sons, husbands and partners. Resistance against making sex education compulsory shows our commitment to rape culture and its gross prevalence. It is ironic to state that the children of “mother India” grow up to learn slangs pertaining to one’s mother and sister, while they are taught to respect women only when it’s their mothers or sisters.

Objectification of women on screen, homophobic jokes and violence against trans people in Indian media have also risen to new horizons. Recent blockbuster movies uphold and glorify the tenets of abusive relationships and Hindutva masculinity. Films such as Arjun Reddy, Animal, Kabir Singh, etc, provide evidence of how the plot and their success rely on deeply ingrained ideas of stalking, violence, rape, trauma, aggressive attitudes and possessiveness as justified and grand gestures of love. During a media interview, filmmaker Sandeep Venga Reddy was quoted saying, “If you can’t slap, kiss, touch a woman wherever you want, can’t use cuss words, I don’t see emotions there. Then it’s all margins and papers, red pen blue pen all that. There is nothing unconditional about it, it’s all conditions.”

The rape culture in India emboldens the control on women’s bodies and their autonomy. It translates human bodies into sites of violence. Children, adolescents and women are not safe anywhere, including their households. Anyone who does not ascribe to the masculine ideals and boundaries of our society is threatened with sexual violence. In the Brahmanical patriarchy, those who defy the binaries, Dalits, Muslims and adivasis and women will forever be at the receiving end of this violence.

Stronger laws alone cannot change the age old culture of rape and victim shaming mentality as our entire justice system is in dire need for change. There are no evils on the outside, as we are breeding, raising and protecting generations after generations of offenders. State and familial impunity to predators can only end if we initiate change in our homes, communities and workplaces. Our continued tolerance and acceptance of wife beaters and sexual offenders within families, friends and workplaces provide enough evidence for the fact that the jig is up. We are all equally part of the problem.

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