Monday, December 24, 2012

Yeh Jo Desh hai tera..!!!

I haven't been blogging for almost a year now. But for the past 10 days, all I have been hearing/reading in the media is about the Delhi gang-rape followed by various news on the rapes, sexual harassment, eve-teasing, molestation. I became so very disturbed with all this news and I really wanted to vent it out somewhere, and thus this post!

I remember in 2002, I read an article in TimesOfIndia with the title "In India girl is raped every 54 minutes". Now, after 10 years, where we talk about development of our beloved motherland, it has officially become "In India girl is raped every 20 minutes"!!! Is this what is called "development"? Shame on us! What have we achieved in the past 10 years? Unfortunately in a rapidly growing country, rape too is growing rapidly!

I was stunned by this data and started doing some research around this statistics and the following is what I learnt. The table below gives the name of the state and the corresponding number of rape cases that are there in the same for 2011. This data is released by the Home Ministry of India.


State  No. of Rape Cases
Madhya Pradesh 3406
West Bengal 2363
Uttar pradesh 2042
Rajasthan 1800
Maharashtra 1701
Assam 1700
Andra Pradesh 1442
Kerala 1132
Odisha 1112
Bihar 934
Jharkhand 784
Gujarat 439

Among these, Delhi city is rape capital of India with 453 rapes which where reported last year . It is around 1.8 times more than rape cases reported in Mumbai last year.

The total number of rape case reported last year has been Twenty three thousand five hundred and eight two.(23582)

There are some more disturbing facts around this:
1.  A Rape is committed every 20 minutes;
2.  Molestation every 26 minutes;
3.  Kidnapping or abduction every 43 minutes;
4.  Eve-teasing every 51 minutes;
5.  Dowry death every 1 hour 42 minutes;
6.  Criminal offense against women every 7 minutes.

Proud are we? Mera Bharat mahan!!

Rape is a crime not only against the body of an individual but also against one’s mind, psyche and reputation. The trauma that the brain, mind, body goes through the incident is irreparable. What rights does one have on to take away other individuals dignity, their peace and harmony? How different are we, the humans, who are supposed to have six senses, from animals? Have we even tried to use those senses in a positive way? Actually, animals are much better, male animals don’t have sex without the permission of the female animals (as shown in National Geographic Channel). The even alarming fact is that 93% of women are raped by people known to them. Outrageous! I just am not able to digest this!

The offense of rape declares a punishment not less than 7 years which may extend up to life imprisonment too. (If there is enough evidence!) But a husband who rapes his wife who is below 12 years of age is only liable for an imprisonment which may extend up to 2 years or fine or both. The Indian law doesn’t recognize the crime of marital rape yet. Also there is no section in I.P.C which punishes boys under 16 years of age for committing rape. They can be prosecuted only under Section 377 (Unnatural Offences) of I.P.C.

OK. So, what next? Yeah, people are protesting. Yeah, the government has promised that they are going to take severe action against the criminals. Yeah, politicians have taken this topic as an weapon to point fingers at opposite parties. But, we the people, who are the sole reason behind this bullshit, what are WE going to do? Actually NOTHING. We will blog about it, we will share FB comments on it, we will go to Cafe Coffee Day and get into a heated discussion about it with a cup of chilled coffee, what else? NOTHING. Including me, NOTHING.

But no, we can't leave it there. Isn't this our society? Aren't we responsible enough to do something for it? Koi bhi desh perfect nahi hota, usse beheter banana padta hai! I am not suggesting the Ghajini way of "Find him, Kill him" but probably, in the next 10 years to come, we should do something that will bring this statistics down! There is just no point fighting with the government for everything and everything. All the politicians are worried about is money and power. The fight is just going to go on and is not going to have an end result!

So, what do we do? We should educate people. We need to make people understand that it is a shame to touch a woman without her permission. We should educate our future generation the crime against rape. We should educate our peers, our society to respect one-and-all mutually, immaterial of their gender, race, age, religion, etc etc. We must educate people stating the fact that, in a country where we pray to Sita, Kali, Durga, Parvati who is a woman by  herself, this kind of bullshit JUST-CANNOT-HAPPEN!

OK, I am not some saint talking here. I know the implementing the above paragraph in reality is next to impossible. But we should definitely try. At-least, try within our family, friends, neighbors etc.

But, the next question arises, what do we do to such criminals? Give them the capitol punishment? Nah..!! That is just making their lives easier.. They die and they don't feel any pain! They should live, but live a painful life. For the sake of an eleven minute pleasure, he screwed up a woman's life. He just can be left alone so easy. He should be castrated. Physical or Chemical! Even better than castration, he should get aroused but should not be able to have intercourse, not even with his own wife! That should be the level of his punishment! He should repent his sins all his life! I know am talking like a barbarian here, but for such barbaric behavior like rape, this kind of barbaric solution cannot be wrong!

Let's face it. It's hard to be a woman. It always has. It always will and trust me when I tell you it's never going to get any easier. But it is also the fact that if your son gets into this kind of crime, then it must be YOU who should be ashamed of yourselves on the first hand!

To all the fellow women out there,
Stop playing the weaker gender! Stop celebrating women's day! We are no way inferior to the men! Why are we even allowing this kind of diversity in our society?? That is the reason the men pounce on us!

Stop this shame!

- An outraged woman. An outraged mother. An outraged daughter!