like every time, the last bone chilling violation and killing of a young girl eventually got mired in political controversies. While for the world community, it is hard to metabolise the brutishness of the perpetrators of the crime, those in the business of power continue to pass the buck onto one another. Then there is the community of pseudo activists across the media, who provide a fulcrum to these endless and bootless controversies. Anyone who is someone assumes the moral authority to blame everyone, when such offences come to light. However it remains no one's mantle to chalk out a constructive redressal.
We may stratify societies into various groups and development models but the physical violation of women,continues to be one factor which runs at parallel ratios in all of them .The reason behind such a widespread and increasing abuse of women , remains rather obstruse at a time when we claim to be living in a world of women empowerment and gender equality .
More than anything else, the problem here is a two sided paradox. On the one hand there is a set of laws to protect women, but these are definitively not cogent enough to curb the potential violators. On the other hand, there is a flimsy sense of awareness on women's rights and entitlements, but this is masked by archaic patriarchial norms and the resulting lack of assertiveness in a majority of women.
'Justice delayed is justice denied ' is far more than an overused cliche in this context. The lumbering legal processes which follow the reporting of such crimes not only keep the victims from coming forward for legal help but is also a shot in the arm for those, who have the inclination for committing such crimes. Subsequent to repeated interrogations of the victim and her family, traumatic face identifications and medical confirmations, attempts are made to bring the accused to book.
Then of course, there are judicial rounds to grapple with. Finally even when the convicted perpetrators have been sent behind the bars, it was seldom for life time imprisonment or the death penalty. That is, until recently when the milestone law was ammended, which accords death penalty to those guilty of sexual assault on a minor. Those convicted of violating adult women still get way with barely a seven or 10 year imprisonment however.
Hence they end up paying just a fraction of the price, whereas the victim is left with harrowing physical and emotional scars, psychological challenges and even threat of serious sexual infections. Add to all this the social stigma that has been tagged to sexual offences, which makes resuming a normal life extremely daunting for such victims of sexual assault. The feebleness of these laws designed to protect women from sexual offences, has in fact enabled the perverts, to commit such acts several times.
On the other end of the spectrum is an inherited social structure which has always propagated the 'weaker sex ' ideology. The entire notion that females are inferior to males because they have been traditionally envisaged as being economically dependent on their male counterparts, has granted a rather sublime status to males in our society. This docile, domesticated and enduring version of women is a symbol of femininity which the society has always idolised. In fact most acts of sexual violation of women, the crime stems from this very notion of women being inferior to men. These are acts of subjugation by the use of force. These are symbols of assertion of a shallow masculinity, which renders women helpless and hurt. Acts which not just physically mutilate them but erode the very fabric of their self respect and dignity. There is a wave of awareness for empowering women across all sections of the society, by equipping them with police and women rights organisation's helpline numbers, sensitising young girls and tightening general security standards everywhere. However these are never sufficient unless the entire equation of gender power is challenged in the society. The real equality can not be taught out of the blue but has to be perceived in all the institutions of socialisation from the childhood itself. Be it family or school, workplace or marriage, we need an overhauling of mindsets alongside the overhauling of laws. Equality between sexes has to be imbibed right from early years even within the family. It has to reflect in both the work distribution pattern in the family and workforce. An engendering of roles in households and larger society has to be put an end to. The idea that women are unfit for certain professions and suited for the more domestic roles, is highly suggestive of social bias and inequality.
When for a ten year old boy, a female is an equal power to contend with in all domains of life, he then grows up with the same ideology. Years later he might not ever get inclined to dominate or subjugate any woman with an unjustified use of force.
(The writer is a former Government official. Views expressed are personal)