“In what scriptures do you find statements that women are not competent for knowledge and devotion? In the period of degradation, when the priests made other castes incompetent for the study of the Vedas, they deprived the women also of all their rights. Otherwise you will find that in the Vedic or Upanishadic age Maitreyi, Gârgi, and other ladies of revered memory have taken the places of Rishis through their skill in discussing about Brahman.. What has happened once can certainly happen again. History repeats itself. All nations have attained greatness by paying proper respect to women.”
—Swami Vivekananda, CONVERSATIONS AND DIALOGUES
(From the Diary of a Disciple (Shri Sharat Chandra Chakravarty, Complete Works of Vivekananda, Vol 7, XVIII
From Nirbhaya to Gudiya, it seems only the names are changing. On the one hand, all of us are happy that the nation is taking strides in various fields and are proud to call ourselves from a great civilisation to an emerging superpower. At the same time, when we come across heinous incidents of crime against women, one would naturally perplex what is happening to us as a society and why our sensitivities towards women are becoming so nonsensical. The outrage and protests by people are understandable, but to get to the root of this issue we need to look beyond the incident and politics over it. The real problem is the way we are addressing this issue of crime against women at legal, social, cultural and economic levels.
If we take the recent case we get many lessons out of it. A 16-year-old girl, who was missing for two days, was found dead, suspecting rape before murder, at Halaila in Kotkhai, just 65 km from Shimla. As per the police version, the girl was offered a lift in a vehicle by a man named Rajinder Singh when she was walking home from school. Though police claimed success with the arrest of six people within 48 hours, the victim’s family allege the foul play saying that the real culprits are from ‘influencing family’ and are on run. The State Government also gave assurance of a CBI inquiry but failed to send any formal request. The custodial death of one of the suspects further complicates the matter, resulting in public outrage.
Police investigation and criminal justice system is another aspect that needs a complete overhaul. Criminals are confident that they can manipulate the system and victims do not get the satisfactory response, is the general complaint. In this case, the contradictory versions and unconvincing political response, indicate the same. Unless our criminal investigation system is transformed and the people working in it are sensitised with ‘sense of justice’, such grave incidences will continue to occure.
It is still a shame that our kids have to walk down more than five kilometres to get basic schooling. Our society which was known to manage our resources to fulfil basic needs is now completely dependent on governments. The unplanned rampant migration in the name of urbanisation and development is another cause of concern. The family bonds, social and moral pressures prevalent in own locality are completely missing with the migrant males.
Till now the phenomenon of heinous crime was prevalent in bigger cities, now it is percolating down to smaller towns is a grave concern. The problem of indifference, degradation of social bonds and dwindeling public morals are larger issues we need to address.
The latest data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) showing that crimes against women in 2015 fell slightly, compared to 2014. These numbers can be just indicative and not conclusive. Without getting into insignificant number argument should we be really happy with these numbers if incidents of ‘inhuman rapes’ of our own mothers and sisters of all ages continue to happen.
This problem is not of just men or women; this cannot be addressed by politically cornering one party or the other. Neither blind eye to the malice nor maligning Bharat world over is going to rectify this inhuman behaviour; sensitising our minds at the family and societal level and addressing the larger issues can.
@PrafullaKetkar
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