Is India a nation of rapists and killers?

S Gurumurthy

The gruesome rape and killing in Delhi in December last year had rightly set the nation on fire. The nation tried in vain to atone for the crime by a show of unprecedented frenzy. But in its boiling anger the national mind did lose its balance and capacity for self analysis. It flagellated itself. Shamed its soul. The stentorian chorus led the mission to shame India, imaging the Indian people as a whole as misogynists. With the frenzy subsiding, is it not time to stop self-flagellating. Start thinking. The world is asking whether India is a nation of rapists and killers of women? Only facts, not words, can answer this question.

With enthusiastic support from Indian media, intellectuals and writers, India was almost to made out as a semi-barbaric society. An example; Libby Purves wrote in The Times UK that the Delhi bus rape should “shatter our Bollywood fantasies” of heady spirituality, adding that upright Europeans have ignored the Indian culture of “murderous, hyena-¬like male contempt”. What a certificate for a rising India that the National Intelligence Council of the US in its report released four days before the Delhi rape had predicted India to become one of the three world powers by 2030! An India crying in guilt had almost endorsed Purves. Fortunately for India, a western woman writer Emer O’toole [Guardian 1.1.2013] intervened and tore Purves and her likes apart. Emer wrote that Purves and others pontificate, with a sense of cultural superiority, “as if rape is something that only happens “over there” – read India – and something “the civilised West “have somehow put behind”. Emer pointed out that while the BBC reports, as if shocking, the statistics that a woman is raped in Delhi every 14 hours, which equates to 625 a year, in England and Wales which has a population of 3.5 times less than in Delhi, proportion is four time larger: 9509 against Delhi’s 625. Pointing out that the Wall Street Journal decries India for convicting just over a quarter of the alleged rapists, Emer says that, in the US, only 24% of the alleged rapes even result in arrest, never mind conviction. How strange then is the report on India, she wonders.

Ten days later, even Emer’s data was found to be gross under-estimation of rapes in UK. In an article in the Independent [10.1.2013] titled “100000 assaults, 1000 rapists sentenced. Shockingly low conviction rates revealed”, Nigel Morris wrote: “Fewer than one rape victim in 30 expect to see her or his attacker brought to justice, shocking new statistics reveal.” ‘His’ attackers? Yes. In the West, women also rape men; a tenth of the rapists are women – something still rare in India. Nigel writes: Only 1070 rapists are convicted every year out of 95000 offenders according to the Office of National Statistics, UK. As 90% of the attackers were, like in India, known to victims, only 15% victims complained – telling it was “too embarrassing”, “too trivial” or “a private/family matter”. While in UK, a country which has less than 1/20th of India’s population the total rapes top 95000, the rapes in India in 2008 according to the report of the Central Statistics Office, Government of India, are far less – 20771. US is similar to UK.

The reported rapes in US in 2006 were 212000. If unreported rapes are added only 5% of the rapists ever spend a day in jail in US [National Center for Policy Analysis US Report No 229] One of six U.S. women has experienced attempted or completed rape [Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault: Statistics] More than a quarter of college-age women reported having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14 [Kolivas, Elizabeth; Gross, Alan (2007)] This is not to say that, on the scales of the ‘civilised’ UK, India can tolerate 1.6 million rapes, or on US scale [including unreported rapes] it can accept 3.4 million rapes. This is to point out that even if UK is less civilised like India, its total rapes should not exceed 1000. And even if the US is as ‘backward’ as India rapes in US should not exceed 5200. But, in UK, it is 100 times India’s; and, in US, it is 65 times India’s, In Noway, the first ranking country in global Human Development Index [HDI] one in ten women are raped [New York Times 17.4.2012].

According to the BBC [14.9.2012] rape per 100000 population is the second highest in Sweden which is ranked 10thHDI and yet as the world’s best place for women! [BBC 17.10.2010]. United Nations data shows that in Sweden the rape rate is 63.5 per 100000. In US, it is 27.5; but as more than 4/5 of forcible rapes in US are not reported at all [National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center Report July 2007], the effective rapes in US will be more than 137.5 per 100000! And what is the figure for India?Just 1.8! [See www.unodc.org documents on sexual violnce] But, that rapes are far less in India is no matter of pride. It is national shame even if a single woman is raped. For, Indians have traditionally worshipped not only women Gods, but women and girls in physical form as well, as Gods. The contrast with the West is not to claim any cultural superiority, but only to point out how the Indian and western writers who have written off India as misogynic have been blind to facts. And turn to the the infamous case of four serial gang rapes in two months in Sydney in 2000. It shook the world, but never made the Australians rapists in the eyes of the world.

More, even gang rape does not even make news in the ‘developed’ West at times. Emer compares the gang rape in Delhi with the gang rape in Steubenville in Ohio in US, where, in August 2012, a 16-year old girl was dragged, drunk and unresponsive, from party to party where she was raped allegedly by members of a high school basket ball team. Contrasting the brutal Delhi rape and death which spurred the Indian civil society to its feet, causing protest and unrest, bringing women and men into streets, with the army and the states of Punjab and Haryana canceling new year’s celebrations, Emer says that in Steubenville, sports-crazy townsfolk blamed the victim and but for a blogger Alexandria Goddard, now being sued, exposing it, followed by New York Times but four months after the crime, US might not have noticed the incident at all.

Still more. The demeaning picture of India is extension of the long held view that Indian traditions had made women inferior, and even led to decimating its girl children. Is this true? Look at the facts. The gender ratio in mid-colonial India [1901] was 972 per 1000; colonialism brought it down to 946 in 1951; modern India did it to a low of 927 in 2001. In 2011, it has improved to 940. And in the most traditional, therefore “backward”, Bihar, the gender ratio in 1901 was 1061, that is 61 women more than men; as late as in 1961 it was 1005. And now? 921! Urban India is lower at 924 to Rural India’s 947; the ratios of the most modern Mumbai [822] and Delhi [823] are even less. The answer is obvious. More modern India is, the less girls it choses to have. Who then is to blame for declining sex ratio? Modernity or tradition? Will those who demean India introspect? Study the facts before commenting? Are they listening?
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