The media coverage given to the Delhi rape case where a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus was enough to unsettle a nation. Or, so we thought. The victim died due to injuries inflicted upon her by the perpetrators.
Commoners and legislators equally felt that existing laws to ensure safety of women were not enough and that there was a need for stricter laws.
Media details of the gruesome act did unsettle us, but just for a few days. For as dust began to settle, newspapers were again flooded with reports of a Class XI girl being stripped and molested by 20 guys in Guwahati, of tribal women, foreign tourists and nuns getting raped, burnt and strangled by perpetrators.
Only days back as Opposition parties of Odisha declared a dawn-to-dusk strike to protest against the rape and murder of a 14-year-old minor in Kendrapada district, the message was beginning to become increasingly clear.
Nothing did change, after all. We as a nation have so easily settled down to the reality of women in our country not being safe. The causes of rape in India are often attributed to the cultural conditioning of Indian males. The populace is made to believe that men are aggressive while women are submissive. Objectification of the female body by media is held as another reason for rising cases of atrocities against women.
Our own Hari Prasad Pattanayak, Secretary of Utkal Karate School, however, blames it to the nice girl syndrome.
“A nice girl can’t hit back, swear and punch. And most of the rape victims are nice girls,” stresses Hariprasad. According to him, every woman must learn how to kick and punch.
The need for women self-defence, and hence a self-defence course is not new, admits Hariprasad. A black belt holder himself, Hariprasad recollects having designed one of his first syllabuses on women self defence way back in 1991. The impetus for the same was provided by the IMFA Charitable Trust. He also visualised Urja, a self-defence training programme for women.
Of late, he is focussing on his self-designed Direct Approach Series, a 40-day flexible training programme for women. The philosophy of the programme is simple: Women must react as predators prey on the weakest. Transgression of one’s modesty can occur anywhere, in buses, trains, elevators and malls.
The Direct Approach Series prepares a woman to meet any such emergencies. Secretary of the Taekwondo Association of Puri Manmohan Bhanja adds, “Schools should be the starting points for martial art training among girls. late age prevents them from attaining the perfection that training in martial art intends to provide.” Compared to pepper spray, Karate indeed looks to be a better choice. And it is better choice than waiting for stricter laws against rape or hoping for the cultural conditioning of males to change. Men like Hariprasad do have a point here.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)