Over The Past Week, India Showed Me How Lucky I Am To Be A Woman In This Country

You know what I love about this country? No, I’m not talking about her scenic beauty or her rich history, nor am I talking about the amalgamation of diverse cultures she shows off with pride. I’m talking about the people. Yes, the wonderful people who make up India. People who believe their men to be men. People who think that a woman’s duty is to be in the kitchen, and never raise her voice because it’s a man’s job to do so. People who think that women are to blame for everything, because she ‘probably provoked’ the man to raise his hand on her. People who consider a woman to be nothing but an object they can mishandle and misbehave with, and still have their way.

While I, like a lot of women in India, was in a natural state of beaming with pride about the patriarchal standards that are getting more and more ridiculous by the hour, a few horrendous incidents took place in different parts of the country. I didn’t know that someone’s Monday morning could get any worse till I read about all of them in the news.

1. A man went this far with a woman, because he was in love with her

The man accused went through the girl’s Whatsapp account on her phone, saw that she was having conversations with other men, and killed her out of burning rage. Sounds like a fair deal to me; after all, a woman is a man’s property.

 

2. A mentally challenged woman is no different than a normal woman- even she should be brutally raped, and killed

This mentally challenged Nepali woman was gang-raped and killed, and her body was found sans her heart and lungs.
See, this is why men are the best- they don’t differentiate on the basis of anything. There should be no inequality when it comes to women. Women of all kinds should be treated the same.

 

3. Age and family no bar, even if it’s a 12 year old

This piece of news stole the show. A 12 year old was repeatedly raped by her elder sister’s husband, and she ended up giving birth to the baby at the tender age of 13. Sadly, the girl has nowhere to go for support, monetary or otherwise, since her mother dismissed her, and the baby was given off to her relatives to take care of. While the accused is being sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment, the girl is trying her best to get him a more lenient form of punishment, because he seems to be the only one who can take care of her at this point in time. Moral of the story- a woman raped has to bear the brunt of being abandoned by people she calls her own, because apparently, she is at fault for being raped.

I would be lying if I said that this is all there is to a woman being raped in India. Victims are asked to keep shut and not talk about it, and they comply, fearing the accusers’ ability to do a lot worse if they told anyone about the incident, or be blamed for being the reason men ‘got provoked’ and ‘made a mistake‘.

 

4. This girl kept quiet for as long as she could, because she was being threatened by her rapists

The men who raped the 13 year old girl also video-taped the incident, and they threatened to leak the video online if she opened her mouth. After being raped again, despite not having said a word about the rape to anyone, she decided it was time she came out about this. The men are now arrested. Does this mean that the problem is dealt with? No, not even a little bit.

 

5. Social activist Sunitha Krishnan, who herself was raped at the age of 15, is being criticized for publicly sharing the videos of a woman being gang-raped in order for people to recognize the faces of the rapists in order to shame them publicly (the woman’s face and body has been blurred in the video)

A reputed online news portal is of the opinion that she was wrong to have circulated the video on Whatsapp because the ‘wrong people’ would get an idea off this, would want to do it more, and that it wouldn’t solve anything for the woman involved in this rape. Not only this, but Krishnan’s car was vandalized a few hours after the video started circulating. What we need to note here is that whether or not the accused are publicly shamed, it all boils down to the victim. Should it be that way? No, it absolutely shouldn’t. But it does, because women are always the ones to blame.

The lessons to learn from these incidents are many, and it clearly reflects the sad state of women in our country. We might think that we’re all changing with the times, but truth be told, we’re really not. And let’s not even get started on the fact that so, so many rapes and murders of similar nature get unreported on a daily basis. It’s nothing but ironic that while we worship goddesses with devotion and respect in our hearts, the real woman has no place here. If that isn’t saddening, nothing else will be.

We have observed a fair share of black days in humanity before, but I would simply end by saying that every day is a black day for humanity if you’re a woman in India.

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