On a piercingly cold morning of January 31, 1982, two convicts Billa and Ranga were hanged till death at the Capital's Tihar Jail. Both the criminals brutally raped and killed a Naval officer's young children Gita and Sanjay Chopra on August 26, 1978 when they were going to participate in a radio talk show at AIR, Delhi. After many years, Calcutta's security guard Dhananjay Chatterjee was hanged at Alipore Central Gaol on August 14, 2004 for raping and killing a young girl Hetal Parikh at a housing society in Calcutta. On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old young Jyoti Singh Pandey (why do we hesitate to disclose her real name; to be raped and murdered wasn't her fault?) alias media-(re)christened Nirbhaya was raped and killed by six scoundrels on a moving bus in Delhi. One of them was a 'minor'. Those convicts, barring Ram Singh and that 'minor' are still in prison waiting to be hanged even after seven years. Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide. Perhaps, eventually all the remaining perpetrators will not be executed. On November 27, a woman vet Dr Priyanka Reddy was raped and burnt by her perpetrators in Hyderabad and the entire country is agitated. I've adduced the aforementioned incidents with a specific objective. Do we collectively remember these incidents which didn't take place very many years ago? The point is: We suddenly get activated and agitated when a similar incident of rape and murder happens. The intensity of agitation peters out and tapers off and things are back to square one until yet another shell-shocking rape and murder is reported.
Rapes are being committed nonchalantly across the country. Hardly anyone is caught and punished properly. We simply provide some lip-service, hold a rally in solidarity and type out this century’s most obnoxious and mindlessly cruel acronym RIP which sounds like Ripping Apart (in a soulless manner) in lieu of the intended Rest In Peace. What has society done to address rape, its consequences and aftermath?
Germaine Greer wrote an essay on rape and its psychological effects on the victims/survivors in The Guardian way back in 1982. The feisty English feminist tellingly wrote: “Only a rape victim can experience the magnitude of the most shameful assault on her body, mind and womanhood. The society cannot empathise even if it wants to. Because, rape permanently damages a woman or girl's persona…” Rape permanently damages a woman's persona and leaves her scarred for life. It often reduces her down to self-commodification and relegates her to self-loathing. We still fallaciously attach and accrue a social stigma to rape.
Rape is a chauvinistically patriarchal society's tried and tested way to subjugate a woman. It's a perverted sign of male hegemony, ingrained in the psyche of subaltern societies like ours. When a society still puts a premium on a male child and feels let down when a female child is born, full-fledged condemnation of rape cannot be expected from all quarters and walks of life. Rape has become a metaphor for exemplary punishment and justice for many. That's why, someone recently suggested that women devotees trying to enter Sabrimala shrine, must be raped to teach them a lesson! Agreed, rapists are worse than beasts. But that shouldn't mean that we must turn a Nelson's eye to the attitude of society towards all women. At the same time, Law also has no definite guideline to curb the menace and malice of a heinous crime like rape. Capital punishment for rape and murder is not adequate. In fact, death rap is no solution to rape. By hanging a convict for raping and murdering doesn't end rapes and murders. Death rap being a deterrent is a big myth. Had it been an infallible deterrent, there would never have been rapes and murders in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where a perpetrator of rape and murder is publicly decapitated.
Rape is not an issue to be tackled in the ambit of law and justice. The US justice Dennis Wornell defined rape as a 'socio-mental aberration' on the part of a perpetrator. Yes, it's a serious socio-mental anomaly that completely lacks moral elements of healthy existence. It has been neurologically explained that chronic sex offenders suffer from ‘neural un-receptiveness to possible consequences’. Law can’t deal with them. They are mentally ill and sexual fiends. These Satyrs must be treated and counselled by psychoanalysts and experts in the field of neurological imbalance (NI). I dare say, by the end of 2019, we all will have forgotten Jyoti Singh Pandey or Dr Priyanka Reddy. A socially sustained awareness is a must to address the issue of rape that's threatening to engulf society.
An advanced research scholar of Semitic Languages and Civilizations, Sumit Paul teaches at world’s premier varsities.
