‘Women will work out their destinies-much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women’

-Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda the Hindu Monk and the chief disciple of Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa blamed neglect of the masses and subjugation of women for India’s downfall. His answer was women empowerment. This was in late 19th century. At nearly half of the 21th century, women in India are not only subjugated. They are ‘easy meat’ for Indian ‘men in heat’ who have failed to shackle their carnal overdrive! And in the most heinous manner possible as the following statistics would suggest.

The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 88 rapes in India every day in 2019. An Indian woman is raped every 15 minutes. Of the total 32,033 reported cases of rape in 2019, 11 percent were from the Dalit community. This suggests about 10 Dalit women are raped in India every day. Failing Babaseheb Ambedkar who sought upliftment of socially backward castes. A third of these cases have been reported from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Apart from these general statistics, gory tales of gang rape and subsequent torture of the already dilapidated victim with intend to kill stand out as thorns hurting national conscience, if there’s anything left of that commodity. National conscience on these matters is extinct. There’s no time for men and women in governance to shed tears for a raped woman. Modern India is busy with other ‘important agenda’. Including the government, which specializes in indifferent and flowery one-liners meant to spruce up flagging spirits and instill confidence into a generation robbed of the last vestige of hope.

  • The ‘mother of all rapes’ was the one committed on the streets of Munirka in South Delhi in the wee hours of December 16 2012 when a 23-year old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang raped and murdered in a moving bus in which she traveled with her male companion. She was most cruelly murdered by six men in the bus including its driver. The injuries she suffered are too gory to be described in a public forum. Eleven days after the assault she was taken to Singapore for treatment where she breathed her last two days later. The incident sparked widespread protests nationally and even had India’s so-called culture of respect for womanhood badly bruised in distant shores. Nations around the world had already become nervous over reports of their women tourists being raped in different corners of India. The heinous manner in which the young intern was killed had the entire nation hang her head in shame. All the accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused died in police custody from possible suicide. The juvenile among the six was awarded maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility. On September 10 2013 the four remaining adult defendants were found guilty of rape and murder and were sentenced to death by judicial hanging three days later.

Though the offenders were sentenced to death, the saga of gang rape continues unabated in Bharat- a country which has rightwing saffron-clad zealots shout ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ from rooftops at the drop of the hat, when women in the country continue to be gang raped and killed. They pretend not to realize that every time such a crime is committed, Bharat Mata they pretend to hold close to their hearts is being gang raped! This sordid continuum is aptly depicted in the two gang rapes that were committed in the heart of the motherland recently.

  • A 22-year old Dalit woman residing in and working in a private firm in Balrampur in UP failed to return home till late in the evening of September 29 2020. Finally she returned home in a rickshaw battered and bruised, reportedly with her back and limbs broken after being gang raped. The heinous crime left her physically spent that she was unable to seek treatment in a hospital. She was later taken to the hospital by her family, but failed to make it, dying on the way. Two persons accused in the rape were later arrested. They always are. Arrested, that is!
  • The modesty of a woman in Balrampur was violated by a group of murderous sex-hungry men belonging to an upper caste after a more beastly and similar incident unfolded in Hathras, also in UP on September 14 2020 where a Dalit woman was brutally gang raped by four belonging to an upper caste. The woman had accompanied her mother to collect fodder when she was attacked and violated. Autopsy report attributed cause of death as spinal cord injury caused by fracture of her neck vertebra. Such is the violence involved in such gory attacks by these sex-starved sharks. This and the Delhi gang rape of 2012 show that being accompanied doesn’t render women immune to rape. The ‘beasts’ on the prowl don’t hold themselves back even if their crime is witnessed by their victims’ companions. Their audacity far outweighs their unbridled carnal avariciousness.

Isn’t there a solution to this shameful malaise? Gory gang rapes continue to be committed even with death sentence looming over these men incapable of slowing their testosterone surge. If punishment through judicial hanging fails to stop them, then what will? They simply want to rape as a gang even if they’re put to death by law!

Will emasculation as punishment prevent these men from gang raping women? The courts must, in all seriousness think about having these men incapable of having their ‘organs’ shackled have the same removed in clean environs of operating theatres of designated hospitals. These men must be reminded of the woman they killed most brutally whenever they squat to relieve themselves after being emasculated! Crude crimes call for crude punishment. Don’t they?

The Hathras victim passed away in New Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital after prolonged battle for life initially in Aligarh’s J.N. Medical College and Hospital. The accused were arrested and charged with murder. As a ritual along predictable lines! But what followed the victim’s death was far from ritualistic. 

What followed was blatant misuse of state power to shield the perpetrators. To place them well away from the long arm of law. An item already modeled to the designs of state power. State power meant to deny justice to women being raped in the most brutal manner. According to the Hathras victim’s father, the village already resembled a police fortress by the time he returned with his daughter’s remains to perform last rites. The police had already made arrangements to cremate the mortal remains in the dead of night. In understandable hurry. In other words, to dispose of evidence that might expose the perpetrators in a jiffy. Men from a higher caste had to be protected.

 Women from the victim’s household were prevented physically from venturing out to behold her lifeless remains. The victim’s mother too was denied a last glimpse of her murdered daughter. The failed, yet brutal state was in a hurry! To shield the beasts belonging to superior caste who had just raped and killed another Dalit girl from whatever remained of ‘law’ in Uttar Pradesh.

 Every time a woman is raped in India, Indian womanhood and motherhood in a larger sense is raped! Which boils down to the reality that Bharat Mata is raped every time a woman is violated, murdered, and thrown away into the fields. And, maybe to be burned by the state to dispose of evidence of involvement of men the likes of Ajay Mohan Bisht wants to remain hidden under the bushel.

Pity alas! What ‘Bharat Mata’ then is these goons singing halleluiahs about!? Which mother then are they talking about?