Yet another impotent rant..
It's been a long time...but I'm back..(Ouch! That sounds rather Terminatoresque!)
I had written quite a bit on this blog when I suddenly felt that I didnt particularly like wearing my heart on my sleeve.
So I did the unthinkable...I deleted all my posts( that too, without having saved any of them elsewhere)..
But days of monotony have forced me to rethink..Why cant I write about things in general rather than about my life in particular?
I'll give this a shot and see how things work out...Anyway it's not as if I have a horde of visitors to my blog..
Today I read about the verdict of life imprisonment given to the ward-boy who raped a nurse and gouged out her eye.
How innocuous sounding a word is RAPE when compared to its damning connotations..How much a euphemism for all the barbarity associated with it..
Beyond all the brutality and the physical violation of rape, it is the attitude toward the victim that confounds me. For the crime done on her, it is the victim who receives the more frightening punishment. The perpetrator gets at most a decade of languishing in a jail. And the victim? A lifetime of social ostracism. The more "forward-thinking" members of society view her with condescension..basking in the knowledge that they have done a favour to her by not shunning her.
Before the verdict was pronounced on the rape case and after he had been convicted, the rapist cunningly offered to marry the victim. Shocking, eh?You havent heard the entire story yet. The court actually asked the victim and her parents to consider his request and inform it of their decision. Archaic? It stinks of the worst sort of stink. The unbearable stench of reality. Someone told me that the court cannot be blamed in this regard because it merely holds a mirror up to the face of society. But is that a court's function? If we were all to be bitten by a homicidal bug, would the courts then condone murder simply because society does?
Indeed, the accused must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. And he must therefore be given an opportunity to present himself in a better light before the verdict is announced. But why is it that our judiciary is hopelessly tilted toward the rapist rather than the victim? Why is the humaneness reserved for the rapist? And in this case, what kind of precedent would the court's attitude set for other similar cases?
At the root of it all, lies the question- Does marriage sanction rape? Does it absolve the rapist of his crime? The answer seems to be yes from the way society reacts to such cases. A win-win situation for all the potential rapists in our country. Rape a woman and be rewarded with marriage- and for the woman in question, a lifetime of violation in return for the semi-erasure of the stigma attached to her.
Look up the statistics on Rape and you'll be shell shocked. Official records state that every hour, two women are raped somewhere in India. And Also for every case that's reported, 68 go unreported. That makes it 126 women sentenced for life every hour. That's more than two women every minute of the day.
I still had some faith in humanity and its essential goodness. Until I heard my college principal state on stage during his annual Women's Day Speech (please do take note of the opportune occasion!) two years ago."Rapes are generally because of the provocative dressing of women". What a convenient generalisation.
Mr. Principal, could you kindly explain to me how a two year old child would manage to make herself provocative? Could you explain to me about the lengths to which a teenager walking back home would have gone to, in order to provoke the policeman who unfortunately, was forced to rape her?
And this from the mouth of an educated man who is supposed to guide future generations of youth.
I rest my case.
DISCLAIMER: The author vehemently denies being a feminist in any sense of the word. She hates crazed feminists as much as she hates MCPs. :)
I had written quite a bit on this blog when I suddenly felt that I didnt particularly like wearing my heart on my sleeve.
So I did the unthinkable...I deleted all my posts( that too, without having saved any of them elsewhere)..
But days of monotony have forced me to rethink..Why cant I write about things in general rather than about my life in particular?
I'll give this a shot and see how things work out...Anyway it's not as if I have a horde of visitors to my blog..
Today I read about the verdict of life imprisonment given to the ward-boy who raped a nurse and gouged out her eye.
How innocuous sounding a word is RAPE when compared to its damning connotations..How much a euphemism for all the barbarity associated with it..
Beyond all the brutality and the physical violation of rape, it is the attitude toward the victim that confounds me. For the crime done on her, it is the victim who receives the more frightening punishment. The perpetrator gets at most a decade of languishing in a jail. And the victim? A lifetime of social ostracism. The more "forward-thinking" members of society view her with condescension..basking in the knowledge that they have done a favour to her by not shunning her.
Before the verdict was pronounced on the rape case and after he had been convicted, the rapist cunningly offered to marry the victim. Shocking, eh?You havent heard the entire story yet. The court actually asked the victim and her parents to consider his request and inform it of their decision. Archaic? It stinks of the worst sort of stink. The unbearable stench of reality. Someone told me that the court cannot be blamed in this regard because it merely holds a mirror up to the face of society. But is that a court's function? If we were all to be bitten by a homicidal bug, would the courts then condone murder simply because society does?
Indeed, the accused must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. And he must therefore be given an opportunity to present himself in a better light before the verdict is announced. But why is it that our judiciary is hopelessly tilted toward the rapist rather than the victim? Why is the humaneness reserved for the rapist? And in this case, what kind of precedent would the court's attitude set for other similar cases?
At the root of it all, lies the question- Does marriage sanction rape? Does it absolve the rapist of his crime? The answer seems to be yes from the way society reacts to such cases. A win-win situation for all the potential rapists in our country. Rape a woman and be rewarded with marriage- and for the woman in question, a lifetime of violation in return for the semi-erasure of the stigma attached to her.
Look up the statistics on Rape and you'll be shell shocked. Official records state that every hour, two women are raped somewhere in India. And Also for every case that's reported, 68 go unreported. That makes it 126 women sentenced for life every hour. That's more than two women every minute of the day.
I still had some faith in humanity and its essential goodness. Until I heard my college principal state on stage during his annual Women's Day Speech (please do take note of the opportune occasion!) two years ago."Rapes are generally because of the provocative dressing of women". What a convenient generalisation.
Mr. Principal, could you kindly explain to me how a two year old child would manage to make herself provocative? Could you explain to me about the lengths to which a teenager walking back home would have gone to, in order to provoke the policeman who unfortunately, was forced to rape her?
And this from the mouth of an educated man who is supposed to guide future generations of youth.
I rest my case.
DISCLAIMER: The author vehemently denies being a feminist in any sense of the word. She hates crazed feminists as much as she hates MCPs. :)
posted by Niranjana at Sunday, May 08, 2005
4 Comments:
came across ur blog.......u write well and u shud be writing more frequently than once in a million yrs!!!
this is just to exhort u to get back to blogging.........and speaking ur heart out.....
i m a good old virtual friend of urs.....frm PG.........
Came across ur blog.. nice post... but, bashing the people who treat a rape victim like just a normal person!..lmao
u wrote the truth and what i feel is that "Is the decision made by god to create humanbeing was correct enough".....is everywhere we hv standstill in this case........can't say but want to..
i have a habit of reading blogs cos i am innately interested in getting to know people beyond what they wish to share with us.
You have an amazing talent with words and one can feel the passion while reading your posts.....keep at it...
P.S...I've also deleted old posts without saving copies them.. :)
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