Yet another woman has been raped in India. It will be difficult to ignore the crime. As I have mentioned elsewhere about travelling, getting recorded in the crime register, too, is a privilege. Nobody would like to hold their breath for it, though. Gangraped and brutalised , the Spanish woman , along with her partner , is set for a long ordeal in her quest for justice.
Because she happens to be a foreigner, a traveller, a vlogger, and, most importantly, alive to tell the tale, she’s part of the crime statistics this time.
Accidents can happen anywhere to anyone. The aftermath of an accident is what separates a functional society from a dysfunctional one. If actions and words are directed more towards telling the victim how they could have avoided the accident or how they should be responding to it than addressing the cause, it’s a sign of a dysfunctional society. In the case of sexual violence against women, this show of brokenness and dysfunction is like a deja vu. All of this should punch us Indians in the gut. It does not. Instead, we are busy figuring out how the victim in this case escaped violence in the more precarious neighbourhood. We are already thinking of this as a global conspiracy to defame India. We are offering our sympathies suffixed with the word ‘but’. We want to do everything to ensure it doesn’t tarnish our image. We are doing every single thing to protect our honour. Except for one thing: ensuring men do not rape women with impunity.
We are googling “witch-burning” and other instances of violence against women to lob at the Westerners who dare call into question Indian society’s treatment of its women.
