Mulayam Singh Yadav either has a warped idea of rape (more warped than the act itself) or he has got his biology all wrong. That can be the only explanation for his shocking comments on all matters rape. This time while addressing a gathering during distribution of e-rickshaws on Tuesday, the politician segued into the Badaun rape issue and issued this shocker of a statement. “It is impossible for four people to rape someone together. Kabhi aisa ho sakta hai kya? Aisa practical hi nahin hai. (Can such a thing happen? It is impractical),” he said. “If one brother commits rape, his three other brothers would also be made accused in the case.”
This stunning dismissal of the agony and trauma of a gang-rape is as outrageous as it is incredulous. Only paralysis caused by sheer disbelief at the statement he made has probably saved him from public wrath. And this isn’t the first time that he has made a shocking statement on the issue of rape. In April 2014, he dismissed the gravity of rape by saying, ‘Boys will be boys. They make mistakes.’ Opposing an anti-rape legislation he said, “rape accused should not be hanged. Men make mistakes.”
He even blamed women for rape saying that girls get friendly with boys and when they fight and have differences, they term it as rape.
The UP administration has frequently come under criticism for being tardy in dealing with those accused of rape and doing little to contain violent crime against women. However, Mulayam Singh Yadav appears to be in denial about the magnitude of the problem.
“Out of the total rape cases in the country, only two per cent were reported from the state. It is less than in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Some people are trying to tarnish the image of the SP government in the name of poor law and order in UP,” he said.
This sense of perspective bowling across from the left field totally flummoxes us. But of course, women complain of rape only to defame the Samajwadi Party. It can’t be any other motives like maybe they were really raped. Or that they were raped. Or even that they were raped. This ‘complaining-about-rape-only-to-defame-a political-party’ logic totally fits.
The Mulayam Singh episode also brings home to us another realisation – that we were barking up the wrong tree when we thought we needed to reform society so that they don’t blame women for rape. And we thought it was because they don’t respect women. Judging by what Yadav said, it is entirely possible that society too, just like Yadav, blames women for rape because they don’t really understand the biology or the psychology of it. Maybe they don’t know what it looks like when a woman says ‘no’. Maybe they were never taught to recognise it.
Maybe even the society which blames the woman, the policeman who interrogates her, the unsympathetic doctor who roughly treats her, the court which subjects her to the two-finger virginity test – they all think the same as Mulayam Singh Yadav – “It is impossible for four people to rape someone together. Aisa practical hi nahin hai.”
According to Mulayam, gang rape as a word, as an occurrence, does not even exist.
Perhaps this incident makes a perfect case for implementing sex education in schools. But we won’t press too much upon this issue, in case Mr Yadav thinks that I am only asking for sex education in school because it’s part of a larger conspiracy against the Samajwadi Party.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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