Rape and dishonour

Rape and dishonour

On March 8th I saw a couple of Bengali films on Women – ‘Charitra’ which focused on the issue of rape and 'Diu konya' which showed the success story of two women who changed a poverty stricken hamlet into a prosperous community through their spirit, initiative and hard work. The films were part of a festival sponsored by justfemme.in , a women-centric online magazine. Please visit and join hands in their endeavour by writing on issues you feel strongly about.

Rape can be traced to several underlying causes – sexual frustration, perversion, an act of revenge and as an exercise of power. The revenge and power elements are born out of the social stigma that attaches itself to the victim of rape. She is considered ‘defiled’, ‘fallen’ and unchaste. She is a symbol of dishonour for the family.
So if you want to shame the family rape their women. If you have a caste dispute, go rape their women and subdue them and show your power.
If the community thinks a woman has not been following their rules, punish her by rape and have her head shaven off. She will be brought in line.
If a man rebels, rape the women in his household and mangle his pride forever.

Ok all this happens “out there” not in our families – more in uneducated, caste- dominated societies steeped in prejudices . We are educated, urban and more broad minded . So what is our attitude towards a rape victim?
We all show the right reactions when a rape is reported – we are outraged, we condemn the criminal and agree that he deserves the harshest punishment . We feel sorry for the victim. If we encounter one in the course of our daily life we would help her as we would any disadvantaged person.
I don’t wish this for my worst enemy but just for the sake of this discussion, if it were to happen to us or someone in our own family, would we be able to treat it as an accident and get on with life as before? Can the husband treat his wife with the same level of respect and love or would it somehow be tainted? (remember the film Ghar?) What about the rest of the inner family and extended family? Would they treat her without any reservations – would she still be treated as the Patni , the Grihalakshmi? Or does an accident somehow make her less of a woman. In the film, a victim who has been accepted by her family is asked this question if everything is normal between her and her husband and she breaks down and says : "no, what is broken doesn't get mended forever." The equality is gone. She is somehow inferior.
How many of us would go public and report the case? and how many families would think of family ‘honour’, sisters and sisters-in-law to be married and try to hush it up?

Among other dimensions of rape, the film explored if it is the besmirching of her character which makes rape so terrible for a woman even more than the physical violence she experiences. This actually works in two ways – first to keep all women submissive and if she is a victim, to keep her quiet for fear of social stigma.

What are the normal noises one hears from the ‘system’ when there is a rape?
Girls who dress with modesty don’t get raped.
If you are too aggressive you tempt men to rape you thereby exercising power over you.
A woman invites rape by venturing alone in the dark in lonely,less frequented places.
You cannot control what others do but you can be careful for your own safety.

Standard devices for keeping women submissive and dependent. When I was growing up, I constantly heard this statement on why a women needed to be extra careful :
Whether the thorn falls on the cloth or the cloth falls on the thorn , it is the cloth that gets torn so protect yourself.
The tear that they were referring to was the damage to one’s reputation and consequent damage to life.
It is bad enough that she has been physically violated and subjected to a crude form of violence. But she must prove that it was not consensual intercourse , that she did not do anything to invite this . And even after all this she is deemed a “fallen” woman – fallen from the high standards of chastity that a woman “must” have. She is defiled - she has to live with the stigma of a fallen woman.

And to prevent rape, we want to restrict the movement of our women - don't walk here, don't stand there, don't dress like this or that, don't go out after sunset, don't , don't, don't. It is simple logic that you cage the animal that poses danger to others but here we let the animal roam freely and cage the potential victims. Restrict a woman’s right to walk freely, talk freely, laugh freely and dress as she wishes.
Elementary, huh!

When a policeman asks a rape victim , as in the film, “what were you doing there alone at that time?” should we not be turning back and asking him why people should fear to go to any place when we have a paid police force. Isn’t every rape in a dark alley a sign of failure of the police system? If I have to stay locked in the safety of my house after dark why do we have the police? To provide security to the ministers ? Is the legal system all about punishment after the crime?

If you see the reports of rape there doesn’t seem to be any common reason – the victims are from all age groups, all social strata and there are cases where girls are abducted from outside their houses and taken to these lonely spots and raped. You can observe all the don’ts and still end up being a victim because it is not about what and who you are; it is about who THEY are.

So why bring up issues about a woman’s character when she is the victim of rape? Why does an accident have to become a lifelong cross she has to bear? The way a society views a rape victim can itself go a long way in helping her - to heal, to get back to her life with less emotional trauma. Above all it will encourage them to come forward and report the cases and not suffer in silence and also ensure that the animals are brought to book. And detach the notion of honour from rape and you take away the sense of power that these perverted men derive from a rape.

In the 60s , Jayakantan wrote a story called “Agnipravesam” where a college girl is raped in a car on a dark rainy evening . On seeing her state when she reaches home, her poor widowed mother immediately senses what has happened. She takes her in and simply pours water on the girls head; then she tells her to treat the water as fire and feel pure again and forget the incident.

Agnipravesham indeed - being through the horror of a rape is worse than passing through fire and surviving it. She is a victim, a survivor and there is nothing dishonourable or fallen about her. If anybody should feel fallen, it is the entire system because every incident of rape is a sign of the failure of a system to protect its constituents.