Bharat or India, rape needs punishment
In January 2013, when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said sexual violence happens in India, not Bharat, there was a huge outcry. The Parivar later tried to clarify his statement, pointing out that he had said: "Jisne Bharat se naata toda, uska yeh hota hai. Kyunki ham apni manavta ko bhool gayen hain, sanskaron ko bhool gaye hain.'' This seemed to fit in neatly with the theory of the urban migrant, the solitary male, being alienated and dehumanised in the urban environment, emboldened when in the company of others like him, turning a bunch of misguided men into a pack of wolves. The December 2012 rape, ghastly in its violence, was committed by one such wolf pack. So was the Shakti Mills rape of 2013.
The December 2012 rape case got the other champion of Bharat, from the other extreme, Arundhati Roy, angry as well. Women like the victim of the December 2012 rape were paying the price of an urban psychosis, she said in an interview to Channel 4 News, but it was far worse, "when rape is used as a means of domination by the upper caste or the army and police. And it doesnt even get punished." The December 2012 rape was terrible, she seemed to indicate, but it was also highlighted because it "plays into the idea of the criminal poor: the vegetable vendor, the gym instructor and the bus driver actually assaulting a middle class girl."
So while Bhagwat suggested that rapes don't happen in rural India because of the ever present "sanskar", Roy seemed to suggest that the army and the police themselves "burn down houses and gang rape women" in Chhattisgarh, Kashmir and Manipur.
What would they say to the case of Shiv Kumar Yadav? When asked about laws, Bhagwat had said, "Keval kanoon se baat nahin chalti hai," giving the example of traffic violations by people who are usually most educated. Roy gave almost the same kind of answer to bolster her own theory of rape as a mean of caste and class domination when she seemed to dismiss the earnest interviewer's query about stricter laws. The army and the police themselves, in her book, are the worst offenders.
So I ask again, what would Bhagwat and Roy, believers in two very different dogmas, have to say about Shiv Kumar Yadav? Here is a man who has reportedly raped before in his village, Ramnagar, in Mainpuri - at least one in Nanglatar village in April 2013 and perhaps many more. He has raped before in Delhi in 2011, and served seven months of jail time for doing so, before being let off. He has now raped again, again on duty, a woman who was using the service he was supposed to provide.
What would Bhagwat say to this? A man who has raped in Bharat and who has raped again in India too? What would Roy say to this, a man who did not rape as a reaction to the "widening gap between the rich and the poor"? Who is the son of a retired primary school teacher and comes from a family of rich farmers?
Isn't the answer a stricter enforcement of laws and a greater awareness among women, wherever they live, and whichever class they belong to? Today the Uber rape survivor's father revealed that the young woman had protested against the December 2012 rape. It is the rage of young women like her which forced a tone-deaf government to usher in a new law. It should have resulted in convictions, but the December 2012 victim's mother is still waiting for justice - the death penalty on four has been stayed, one died in prison last year, whereas the sixth was tried as a juvenile.
The question is not the degrees of safety women have in the two Indias, or where the rapist is located. The question is the degree of empowerment women feel to raise their voice against such assaults, and more than that the rule of law in both Indias to deal with such ghastly acts. Let us not hide behind geography or history when it comes to violence against women. There is one law for India and Bharat. Let it be enforced. If Shiv Kumar Yadav had been punished before in Mainpuri or even in Delhi, this would have never happened. In the Mail Today story from Mainpuri, one of the women said of Yadav: "'He was never afraid of the law."'
He should have been. If he had been punished, he would have been.