Andha Putra
Indian politics is no stranger to handing nominal positions to persons belonging to communities it wishes to woo. This has been seen in states where coalition governments have chosen to have multiple Deputy Chief Ministers.[1] As India’s democracy crumbles day after day, it is through the cracks that the minority, the underrepresented, and the underprivileged peep through to get a glimpse of what was promised. The fruit of representation dangles too low for the marginalised. But it is also the only ripe one in a barren garden.
The President in India’s Prime Ministerial form of Parliamentary Democracy serves no more than a nominal role. Most of the President’s functions and roles are to be acted upon only on the advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister. Draupadi Murmu is the second woman and the first tribal to become the President of India. President Murmu’s carpet to the Rashtrapati Bhavan was rolled well in time for the State Legislative Assembly elections in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh in 2022-23. These four states house 128 reserved Scheduled Tribe seats.
President Murmu has said that the cost of justice and the language spoken in India's higher courts act as barriers to equal access to justice.[2] Former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said during the unveiling of the new Lady Justice that “The law is not blind; it sees everyone equally.” It was quite a bold statement coming from the Chief Justice of a republic which has lakhs of pending rape and POSCO cases in fast-track special courts (FTSCs).[3]
Lady Justice no longer wears a blindfold, as Indian women have long realised that the figurine was always blind. What is slowly becoming apparent is that she was also deaf. Draupadi's last soliloquy is falling on deaf ears.
Na Abhaya, Na Aparajita
In 1884, Kadambini Ganguly first enrolled into the Medical College in present-day Kolkata. The Medical College was the first modern medical institution in Asia. In 1886, Kadambini Ganguly walked out the institution's gates as the first Woman Medical Graduate of an entity that Sri Aurobindo Ghosh considered his Mother Goddess, India. Sri Aurobindo, in his illustrious career as a self-proclaimed yogi and scholar of spiritual nationalism, wrote extensively about Swaraj. He saw it not only as a struggle for India's complete political freedom but also as a spiritual mission to uplift humanity.Kadambini Ganguly was also the first female graduate of India, earning her Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the University of Calcutta in 1883. She was a luminary in her professional field. She was also a part of the social reform movement in post-1857 India. She was the first woman to address an open session of the Indian National Congress during its 1890 session in Calcutta.[4]
Within a few kilometres of the Medical College, lies the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital. Abhaya was brutally raped and murdered on 9th August 2024 after she went to rest at 2 AM after a 36-hour shift. It is a normal yet inhumane shift length in the life of a resident doctor in India. The morning of August 9th showcased the inefficiencies of an increasingly authoritarian and corruption-riddled administrative system that a 78-year-old India possesses. The police did not let Abhaya’s parents see her body for three hours after their arrival. A repugnant attempt was made to paint the crime as a suicide initially. There was a rush with her cremation but the police FIR was filed almost close to midnight. Dr Sandip Ghosh, the principal of the state-run hospital was at the forefront, with the actions of the police and investigation authorities reeking of higher brass corruption. [5]
This incident carries with it many despairing ironies. Kolkata was the locus of numerous women-led movements during India’s freedom struggle. It is home to some of the oldest institutions in India and serves as the state's capital, where a female Chief Minister has been elected for a third consecutive term. A Chief Minister that befogged everyone by coming onto the streets to protest Abhaya’s rape and murder and asking for “justice”. [6]
Since her first election as Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee's rallying cry has been “Ma, Mati, Manush” (Mother, Land, and People). A thorough introspection might be in order for Mamata Banerjee and her party, the Trinamool Congress. However, it served as a mere reminder to the rest of “free” India, a week before her 78th birthday, that while the nightingale may sing in the most melodious chorus the words “Bangla Nijer Meyekei Chay” (Bengal wants its own daughter) [7], the song of justice has long departed from Draupadi’s lips. Her prayer to Krishna grows fainter with each passing minute. Can the song of justice not be heard without protestors marching with copies of the Constitution? Is justice served when the Chief Justice rebukes and admonishes the state police? Does justice always have to begin with a victim?
Mamata Banerjee’s Aparajita Bill does not answer these questions—of which there are thousands more. It is a face-saving, gut reaction from a Chief Minister who has no answers for the administrative failures of a state she has governed for 13 years. While India frenzies to bring justice to a daughter who has left us, it fails to deliver justice to those who still live and still hope. [8]
Khooni Ankakshar
India’s testosterone-riddled narrative of crime figures would put to shame any nationalist 9 PM news anchor. A nation so ashamed of its depravity and unrelenting systemic and cultural oppression of women, that at the end of every work day, Indian media spaces are flooded with a barrage of falsehoods and misrepresentations.
The latest report published by the National Crime Records Bureau is for 2022. Throughout 2022, there was a 4% increase in crimes against women. The previous year had seen a hike of close to 15%. In 2021, 86 rapes were registered per day. [10] There is a possibility that these numbers still do not represent the true story due to the Principle Offence Rule. [9] Crimes against women have only been getting more brutalised, but the Indian rhetoric has only been to desensitise the discussion around these subjects.
When it comes to convictions and trials, the numbers are embarrassingly low. The fast-track court system set up after the Nirbhaya case in 2012 only seems to be dealing in backlogs and increasing burden. Only 2.56% of the rape cases that reached trial in 2022 saw a conviction.
Understanding data is crucial to grasp the significance of these shifting figures. Some might attempt to lighten the dark shade that the worsening safety infrastructure paints on the nation by reporting these figures in terms of rapes per lakh in the population or by shifting the focus to particular states that report higher figures. Behind such simplistic attempts to misrepresent these telling numbers lies the common ignorance perpetuated through the famous innuendo of Sab Changa Si.
Oversimplifying rape data leads to the neglect of the vast under-reporting of crimes in the country. This under-reporting is rooted in the public’s wavering trust in law enforcement institutions and the still rampant ostracisation of minority groups in the country. Men from higher castes commit a majority of sexual violence crimes against Dalit women. Members of excluded and systemically oppressed groups face community pressures and ill-management of their cases. Convictions and the trial process are derailed and delayed due to the blot of casteism in India’s already unbridled corruption. [11] [12]
The last stand of India’s most fervent patriots (often entrapped in a saffron reverie) falls back on the most widely used fallacy in any discourse in India – the “at least we are better” fallacy. The whataboutery and weaponised nationalism may work to deliver the loudest “oomphs” of the “fastest-growing GDP” and “5 trillion-dollar economy,” but reducing the comparison of women’s safety to countries with monolithic and oppressive societies does a grave injustice to the very idea of India. Ironically, patriots in these countries also indulge in the misrepresentation of crime figures to portray their nations as “safe” – a competition that only has a losers’ bracket.
Nyay ka Chita
India’s reality resides in its most forsaken. The country ranks 141st in the world in terms of nominal GDP per capita—an abysmal statistic for a nation that houses hundreds of thousands of millionaires and billionaires.[13] Yet, the ones who are forsaken are not forgotten; they manufacture India’s poverty. The richest 1% of India’s population holds 40% of the nation’s wealth.[15] It is not difficult to imagine that the Vikas envisioned and loudly proclaimed at every political rally seldom escapes the boardrooms of the tallest towers. Rising inequality is compounded by an ever-deteriorating social order and hubris akin to a man parading a pyrite necklace. India ranked 128th in the world on the WPS (Women, Peace, and Security) Index.[14] The ostracisation of Indian women is even more pronounced in Indian villages, places Gandhi once envisioned as models of self-reliance. Narendra Modi has echoed Gandhi’s vision with his own saffron-tinted, superficial slogan of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. In a pitiful sardonicism, the victims of Indian villages have nowhere to turn to, but themselves.
Kathua
A burial was a dignity that an eight-year-old child was denied in her village. Radical Hindu right-wing activists forced her family to lay her to rest eight kilometres away, as even in death, her humanity was violated and disrespected. A was a Gujjar Muslim, a minority in Kathua—a district in Jammu and Kashmir, the estranged child of a divided and independent India. [16]
India’s crumbling administrative system was once again laid bare when a court ordered a case to be filed against members of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that had overseen the inquiry of the rape and murder. Yet, this came as no surprise, for the grotesque rape and murder of A had been tainted from the start by a shameless display of support for the perpetrators. Local leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party were at the forefront, rallying not for justice for A, but for those accused of her murder. Even the policemen initially investigating the case were implicated in the crime. The Congress Party, too, revealed its moral bankruptcy by welcoming Choudhary Lal Singh—one of the most vocal defenders of the accused—into its ranks for the 2024 Legislative Assembly Elections. [17] [18]
Ideology in India has long since perished, replaced by a system that thrives on the relentless persecution of minorities. A was drugged and raped in captivity for days before she was bludgeoned to death. To subject a child to such unspeakable horrors leaves little doubt that this was not just a crime of depravity, but a systemic assault on the Gujjar-Bakkarwal community—a bid to drive them out of the region. The political support extended to the accused speaks volumes of the moral decay that festers within India’s socio-religious divide, where hate is wielded as a weapon of coercion. The shielding of upper-caste Hindu men who commit such atrocities is an indictment of India’s justice system. This system now allows the accused to sit alongside Lady Justice, blindfolding her with his own hands.
Unnao
The Gunda Raj unfolding in India’s most populous state under Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is a testament to India’s deeply embedded culture of rape and the unchecked imposition of casteist apartheid. This apartheid is slowly escaping the machinations of even the most vocal leaders of the Jana Sangh. The rise of Yogi Adityanath and the current BJP state government has been fuelled by the increasing normalisation of a casteist social order, neglected yet thriving under their watch. Whether this ever-deepening chasm of hate politics and the radicalisation of younger men into the machinery of Gunda Raj was unforeseen even by the Jana Sangh itself remains an argument worth making.
BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s arrest was not easy to come. The High Court had to take suo motu cognisance of the case to ensure his detention.[19] The victim’s father was beaten to death by Kuldeep Singh’s associates. It was also the associates of Sengar who gang-raped the victim. An act of retribution after she dared to accuse Sengar of rape. The Yogi government remained sluggish in its response, while Sengar’s deep-rooted influence over the police and administration only prolonged his impunity. It gave him unabashed audacity as the victim and her family were harassed and pressured into withdrawing the case. Sengar and the victim had once lived barely a hundred metres apart. His audacity in bending the system to his will raises a far more unsettling question—how many such cases remain buried, never seeing the light of day? This manifestation of terror in the hands of legislators and political parties, who do not shy away from supporting it and often vocalise their efforts, only further maligns the already grim picture of justice in India.[21]
A casteist apartheid in Uttar Pradesh has all but erased the possibility of rules-based law and order. While the State Police may extol its encounter figures, the predatory nature of men in the state is not limited to legislators or administrators misusing their powers. It has seeped through the fragile bandages that a so-called free India attempted to place over its entrenched casteist order, once again enabling upper-caste Hindu men to perpetrate unchecked, systemic sexual violence against women from oppressed castes.
Sengar is a Thakur, and the Trivedis are Brahmins. Shubham and Shivam Trivedi repeatedly harassed and raped a 23-year-old backward caste woman from Unnao. When Shivam was released on bail, he continued to stalk and threaten her. On December 5th, 2019, as she made her way to court for a hearing, the Trivedis, along with their fathers and a mutual associate, set her on fire. Engulfed in flames, she ran for a kilometre, screaming for help—only to be met with silence. By the time she was taken to a hospital, it was too late. She succumbed to her injuries, a victim not just of her attackers, but of a system that has made justice a privilege, not a right.[20]
Hathras
The Hathras gangrape and murder victim was cremated in haste and without her family’s consent. Her memories of struggle and a hope for justice in a caste-infested society were turned to ashes by her perpetrators, this time, the Uttar Pradesh Police. Even five years on, her family continues to await justice. Section 144 was imposed immediately after the incident; her family was barred from speaking to the press and was met with intimidation and coercion at every turn. They remain under constant surveillance by CRPF personnel and CCTV cameras. Three of the four accused, all upper-caste Thakurs, were acquitted by the Hathras district court. The endemic and systemic oppression of Dalits in India sees no light at the end of the tunnel. In a cruel allusion, the victim and the Dalit community both had their tongues cut off. Such brutality and an avowed sense of ingrained majoritarianism signal a desolated image of villages in India. Gandhi’s bedrock of India’s dreams is not home to even his Harijans. [21]
Rakshak ya Bhakshak
Like clockwork, stirred by national sentiment, India awakens to cases of gruesome crimes against women. Yet, just as a manually wound clock eventually ceases to tick, the nation reverts to its patriarchal and apathetic self. Political conscience dies while victims are left reeling in courtrooms, or their ashes carried away by the streams of the Ganga.
The Justice Verma Committee was established in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya gang rape case in 2012 and was headed by Justice J. S. Verma, a former Chief Justice of India. The committee recommended stricter sentences for gang rapes and life imprisonment when the victim dies. It also made several recommendations addressing other forms of abuse that women face, such as workplace harassment and acid attacks. Yet, Indian laws remain woefully inadequate in addressing crimes against women. Marital rape is not recognised as an offence, and even the recently passed Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita(replacement to the Indian Penal Code, 1860) [55] fails to adopt the progressive, gender-neutral approach that is long overdue in rape legislation. The implementation of Fast Track Special Courts, as recommended by the committee, has had little impact, with conviction rates for rape cases languishing at only 27 per cent. [22] [23] [24]
Marital Rape
Far from reforming its institutional set-up and efficiency, the Indian Government in 2021 was more concerned about preserving the “institution of marriage”. The Modi government argued that criminalising marital rape would be “excessively harsh”. In the 2017 case of Independent Thought v Union of India, the Supreme Court raised the marital consent age from 15 to 18 years old. The insistence on not removing the marital rape exception from Article 375 of the Indian Penal Code (now the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita) is a silent agreement with a standard maintained in British-ruled India. The explicit decriminalisation of marital rape is an archaic stance that India shares with very few countries in the world. A woman's age or marital status should never be a determining factor in her ability to ascertain whether she has been raped. [25]
Death Penalty
Ever since 2012, the cries of the death penalty have been heard in unison with the demands for justice for rape victims. The cries vary in decibels, a different ring from the opposition, a different one of the government. The increasing brutality and depravity of gender-based violence against women and children take us further from our limited imagination of the atrocities one could inflict on another. The “rarest of the rare” doctrine, which allows Indian courts to impose the death penalty in certain cases listed under the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), has expanded, with the number of death penalty-eligible crimes rising from 12 to 18. The Justice J.S. Verma committee’s recommendations had advocated against the death penalty for those convicted of rape. [26] [27]
The question of the death penalty is deeply emotionally charged and often met with an unequivocal affirmative response from the public. The need for imposing stricter laws is indisputable. But rape is a social crime. It is a manifestation of a societal dogma that women are mere property, with their sexual “purity” determining their “worth” in society. Exonerating our collective conscience by dehumanising convicted rapists serves little purpose if the mistreatment and dehumanisation of the victims themselves continue unabated. The term “rape” originates from the Latin words rapere (to grab) or raptio (taking). The societal reaction to rape enables the rapist to take everything away from his victim. Rape victims endure shame and insensitivity throughout legal proceedings and police investigations. Is monetary compensation and the execution of the perpetrator true justice? Or is it merely a sleeping pill we force ourselves to swallow?
Forcing objectivity into the mix, there is no concrete evidence of the death penalty serving as a true deterrent to crime. [48] [49] [50] One argument posits that the death penalty could even lead rapists to kill their victims to prevent identification. Cases seeking the death penalty will only add to the already overburdened Indian criminal justice system. The cost of these cases, both for the victim and the accused, escalates with each appeal in the appellate process. Harsher punishments inevitably lead to prolonged trials, delaying convictions and justice alike. The states with the highest number of death row prisoners, such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, show no corresponding decline in crime rates. [53] [54]
The death penalty also silences victims. Many victims from disadvantaged groups struggle to understand the crime perpetrated against them. In most cases, the perpetrator is not a faceless stranger but someone known, often a family member or someone close to them. The prospect of condemning someone they know to death places an unbearable weight on the victim’s conscience, further discouraging them from speaking out. [51] [52]
The “rarest of the rare” doctrine also comes into play only when a court can justify if the accused is beyond any degree of reformation. In his 78th Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted, “Those who commit such demonic acts should realise that they will be hanged to death.” [28] The speed with which his administration, and others, have sought to enact “justice” reeks of little more than a jingoistic spectacle. Such promptness with any other form of welfare legislation is never witnessed. The death penalty represents the lowest rung on the ladder of what should be a focus on institutional reform. Instead, it stands as a mere political ploy of the incumbent government. The reformation of societal norms is the only deterrence that cannot be deemed a myth.
Law Enforcement
While legal reforms are necessary, real, impactful change must address India's institutional inefficiencies. Police insensitivity, the absence of witness protection programmes, and the entrenched impunity enjoyed by upper-caste perpetrators of violence against Dalit women cannot be remedied by mere sloganeering or the gavel of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Furthermore, the reluctance of police to file FIRs, the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools, and a culture that continues to undermine women's safety all contribute to a worsening state. [29] [30]
The Bilkis Bano case is often seen as a rare beacon of hope for women who have endured rape and other egregious crimes. Yet, victims like Bilkis are not only failed by their perpetrators but by a society that refuses to condemn such atrocities unequivocally. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, under then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Bilkis was gang-raped by a Hindu mob that also murdered seven members of her family. Her fight for justice has been a long and gruelling one, culminating in the Supreme Court stepping in to overturn the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to the 11 convicted rapists. [31] [32]
Bilkis’ path to a long and enduring justice was strewn in coals first laid by the state police. The police’s insensitivity and incompetence led to many botches in the investigation. The Supreme Court, nearly two decades later in 2019, asked the Gujarat government to take action against the police personnel responsible for the failings in Bilkis’ case. [33]
Courts are not eyewitnesses, and their ability to deliver justice relies entirely on the efficiency and integrity of the state administration. Across India, police forces have consistently exhibited both incompetence and indifference in handling cases of rape and sexual violence. Many officers either lack basic empathy for victims or hold stigmatised and prejudicial views on sexual assault. FIRs are often filed only under pressure from higher authorities or political intervention. Otherwise, buried under excuses laced with victim profiling, survivors are left with no choice but to turn back. Inadequate police training leaves victims further traumatised when they seek justice, protection, or even the most basic respite from threats and harassment. As of 2022, only 12 per cent of the police force was comprised of women. [34]
Custodial rape in India represents a betrayal by the very system meant to protect. The 1972 Mathura rape case exposed this brutal reality when a young Adivasi girl was raped by two policemen inside a police station. [56] When the Supreme Court acquitted the accused in 1978, it sparked nationwide outrage, forcing legal reforms in the form of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1983. [59] Yet, decades later, justice remains elusive. According to NCRB data, multiple cases of custodial rape are reported each year, but the true numbers remain hidden behind silence and fear resulting in underreporting. 275 cases of custodial rape were recorded between 2017 and 2022. [57] [58]
Victims and their families often face horrific retaliation—beatings, threats, even custodial deaths, as seen in the 2020 Jayaraj-Bennix case in Tamil Nadu, where a father and son were tortured to death in police custody.[60] Secondary victimisation compounds the suffering of victims. They are forced to relive their trauma in courtrooms, ostracised by society, and silenced by the system. For many, the police station is not a place of justice but a site of unspeakable horror.
Witness Protection
India’s first witness protection program was enacted by the government in light of the Asaram Bapu case. During the legal proceedings and eventual conviction of Asaram by the Rajasthan High Court in a rape case, three witnesses were murdered, and others faced attacks or threats. The concept of a witness protection programme was first raised in the Law Commission’s 14th report in 1958. The Witness Protection Scheme 2018 is a legislation long overdue in India’s criminal justice system. However, apart from the Delhi High Court's guidelines, there remains no comprehensive programme for the legal protection of vulnerable witnesses or the strict prosecution of those who threaten and seek to manipulate them. The effectiveness of this move is also yet to be examined given its recent introduction. [35] [36]
Maya Drishti
The Indian media’s lack of spine becomes most evident in its reporting on heinous crimes like rape and sexual assault, where these atrocities are treated as little more than passing matters. Acting as a gatekeeper for either the ruling government or the opposition, the media’s loyalties are dictated by whoever lines its pockets. The facade of serious journalism is quickly replaced by sensationalism when the victim belongs to a more represented community or when the crime occurs in an urban setting deemed worthy of attention. Just as political parties draw their vote bank lines, so too does the media in its selective reporting. Cases of sexual violence against Dalit women are often buried or diluted, with caste and religious identities conveniently omitted whenever it suits the media’s primary objective of profit.
![Sexual Violence and the News Media: Issues, challenges, and Guidelines for Journalists in India / A report part of the Media Action Against Rape (MAAR) research project [41]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/48b140_df24ec2b2a0c41e9ab59853672efb149~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_864,h_337,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/48b140_df24ec2b2a0c41e9ab59853672efb149~mv2.png)
Fodder for the Sensational
Victim profiling is a crucial aspect of victimology, aiding crime analysis and developing deterrence methods. The Indian media distorts this practice, using suggestive language to manufacture controversy and drive up TRP (Television Rating Point). It enables the social language surrounding rape cases which only furthers the manifestation of a deeply patriarchal and victim-shaming society into the discourse surrounding Gender-Based Violence. Either suggestive language is thrown into the fray or the case is sensationalised to the point where nothing else can be wrung out of it. The sympathy for the victim serves to virtually categorise the incident as an unfortunate and individual occurrence, taking away from the discourse the systemic and social reason for the existence of such crimes. Readers or listeners remain engaged, their outrage fleeting, and in the process, their complicity in sustaining an apathetic and regressive society is conveniently absolved. [40]
![Bhandari, Astha. “Indian Media Narratives in Gang Rape” (2021). Master of Arts (MA), Thesis, Sociology & Criminal Justice, Old Dominion University [37]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/48b140_65b7a20cc5d642ef8ff27875a1901a79~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_698,h_453,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/48b140_65b7a20cc5d642ef8ff27875a1901a79~mv2.png)
Erasure of Caste
The selective omission of context when rape or gender-based violence stems from Hindu caste violence is a glaring pattern in news reporting. The victim’s caste vulnerability is often concealed, while the crime’s location is framed with bleak undertones to shift focus away from the intersectionality of social crimes like rape. Upper caste biases are prevalent and are imposed as a means of propaganda to lighten the coverage of state-sanctioned sexual violence as in the case of Bilkis Bano in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
In A Research Study on Gender Sensitivity and the Coverage of Rape in the Indian News Media: Ten Years After the Nirbhaya Case, the authors note that in their “Gender Sensitivity Analysis” pertaining to the Hathras gangrape case, only 20 out of the 48 news stories examined mentioned the caste equation of the incident. [38] Most stories conveniently omitted the fact that the accused rapists were Thakurs, a convenient erasure that serves to insulate caste privilege from scrutiny.
Whitewashing
When the media does not lend an overt hand to the accused in reporting rape cases, it instead decontextualises the crime, dulling its impact by framing it as an isolated tragedy rather than a call for systemic change. Narratives are woven to evoke shock rather than accountability, often casting the crime as a case of love gone astray or omitting mention of the accused altogether, shifting the focus solely on the victim’s suffering. Such erasure or thick coats of whitewash are irresponsible attempts to sensationalise incidents that otherwise must only evoke a sense of social justice. The spectrum of the perpetrator's profiling is one of a confusing mix, either the media wants us to feel the horror of how such demons lurk in our society or it wishes for its audience only to impart its daily dose of sympathy and move on. [39]
Social Media
It is a familiar sight to see the police escorting accused individuals with their faces covered by a black cloth or a “monkey cap.” The law mandates the protection of the accused’s identity to prevent undue influence on investigations or the official identification process. Social media serves a similar purpose for those who are not the accused, yet. It is complicit in re-victimisation and digitisation of rape culture. Social media has opened floodgates for harassment of victims of sexual crimes. Google searches entailing words like “rape victim” and “video” go up in numbers. [42] [43]The repressed voyeurism comes out into the open with the frequency of rape jokes circulating over various social media pages. If not the voyeurism, self-styled moral crusaders with their pitchforks of penal populism flood online spaces, calling for the death penalty and chemical castration of the accused, transforming justice into a spectacle. Every strand of discourse serves the purpose of gratification for the general populace, either by exercising their selective outrage or feeding the voyeuristic fantasies and silent complicity of a patriarchal society entrenched in victim-blaming.
Bollywood
Bollywood and its surrounding music culture are awash with content that normalises and glorifies hypermasculinity, patriarchal narratives, and toxic behaviours like stalking, all under the guise of entertainment. As if the quality of Hindustani film culture has not degraded enough from the saturation of cheap hypernationalistic and jingoistic productions, films like Animal (2023) and Kabir Singh (2019), along with web series like Mirzapur (2018), have worked to promote a regressive standard of male behaviour and power. Sex scenes, often cheaply incorporated for audience appeal, do more than just titillate—they reinforce the portrayal of women as mere props for the “powerful” and “alpha” figures that these productions celebrate. What masquerades as storytelling is, in reality, a sustained cultural reinforcement of gendered subjugation, where dominance is mistaken for strength and misogyny is repackaged as masculinity. [44]
Meanwhile, blatantly misogynistic lyrics are disguised as harmless party anthems, embedding gendered violence into pop culture. Hindi rappers, eager to imitate American hip-hop, blindly absorb its most problematic elements, contributing nothing of value to their cultural landscape. Instead of innovation, they offer a hollow reproduction of a musical tradition that, at its worst, celebrates the same cycles of misogyny and objectification that plague Bollywood.
Purushottam
Vaishna Roy, the editor of the Frontline magazine, in her Editor’s Note in the aftermath of the RG Kar Hospital rape case, poses a simple yet infallible question–who will educate the boy child? [47]
This is a question of great exigency when the slogan of Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao has been stripped of all meaning. Slogans, however, are easy to make. Questions are difficult to ask. It is easy to make derelict descriptions of places where rapes happen; it is difficult to confront why they happen. It is easy to blame and blemish the victim; it is difficult to restore the life stolen from her eyes. It is easy to profile the victim; it is difficult to ask, “Why does that matter?”
The NCRB Crime Report of 2021 shows that in 96.5% of rape cases lodged, the offender is known to the victim.[45] [46] Rape does not exist in a vacuum. It shakes the foundations of social unity and harmony, exposing the failure of families, schools, and communities to challenge the toxic masculinity that breeds such violence. The boy child is everywhere. He is the perpetrator, the enabler, the bystander, and, at times, even the victim. A patriarchal, apathetic, and unapologetic society offers nothing to him either. He is deprived of the space to express, to learn and unlearn, to love but not hurt, to be held accountable but not feel cornered.
In India's schools, the boy child shares the same benches as the girl child, but while she is told to be cautious, dress modestly, and avoid trouble, he is left unspoken to, unchallenged, and unchecked. So, who is educating the boy child? And what happens when no one does?
Sanskaar aur Sankriti
The fight for justice for women in India extends far beyond the dusty courtrooms and the heavy jargon of law. Justice is not merely about escorting the perpetrator to his jail cell; it is about ensuring that women can return home, whenever they want to, wherever it may be, without fear. Justice has to be comprehensive and complete. It must be social, religious, economic, and accessible. If rape is a social crime, then justice must be a cultural transformation. The very bedrock of the Constitution relies on the sensibilities of the people of its time. Reforms and recommendations are easy to print in textbooks, but legal and institutional changes are only as effective as the society that upholds them. The citizen drives reform, but it is the culture that shapes the citizen.
But India’s culture, one of Draupadi and Gandhari, of Meerabai and Madhubala, of Razia Sultana and Rani Lakshmibai, of Kadambini Ganguly and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, has become that of Nirbhaya and Abhaya. With the heaviest weight on our conscience; and the lightest on the realisation of Gandhi’s Ram Rajya, it is hard to escape the supposition that India’s culture today, has reduced to one of rape.
Article by:
Kumar Abhyuday
Editor-in-Chief
For the Record
PES MUN Society
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