Last week, Justice D Devadass of Madras High Court who passed a historic judgment, while citing religion and its capacity for reconciliation, referred the case of a minor’s rape for mediation between the victim and accused. The victim, whose parents are deceased, is the mother of a child conceived after the rape. The order came in, on an appeal and a bail plea filed by the accused, V Mohan, who was convicted and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment. He was also slapped a fine of Rs 2 lakh by a Mahila Court in Cuddalore, in 2002, for raping the minor. He hasn’t served his term. Two of his associates were charged with lesser offences.
The victim, now 21, who resides in a village, approx 80 km from Cuddalore was quoted as saying, “did the judge ever think how I suffered all these years? He knew I had a baby from that rape. And now this single order of his wants me to go through that suffering again”.
Claiming that a similar case which he had referred for mediation was near a “happy conclusion,” (the accused had agreed to marry the victim), the judge said, “In the facts and circumstances, the case before us is fit for attempting compromise between the parties.‘Mediation’ mode is best suited to them…Keeping the appellant inside the jail and asking him to participate in the mediation talk will not result in any fruitful result. He should be enabled to participate in the deliberations as a freeman and vent his feelings, open his mind and moorings.‘Where there is a will, there is a way'”.
“Women are soft targets of male lust,” further added the judge.
Why and how then are courts, cops and families in India of the same opinion, ready to impose another kind of physical and mental torture on a woman, who has been sodomized and violated? Is it because marriage in India is considered as a corrective measure? Is it because we are still tongue-tied in accepting the glaring statistics of marital rape? Are the relatives of the rape victim equally ashamed of her life-long ‘raped,’status? Will no man ever touch another daughter from the same tribe? Or is it the sense of an all-prevailing shame that forces a victim’s parents to withdraw complaints when, the man accused of raping their child agrees to accept her as his wife? Can she ever forget how he hurt her, in a place she may never heal?
Is her suhaag raat her deathknell?
In February 2015, the family of an Oriya woman confessed to a foreign news channel that their girl had “no other option. Her whole life would have been ruined. And we would have to put up with the embarrassment forever.” The woman said, “It was my own decision to marry him. Our parents also agreed to it. I am optimistic that we will have a smooth life”.
The wedding was organized at the Jharpada jail on 28 January, 2015 in Bhubaneswar, where the man was held, since his arrest in 2014 on rape charges.
The accused was subsequently freed on bail.
Is marrying off a girl to her rapist as degrading as marrying off a woman to a canine or a tree? In September 2014, Mangli Munda, an 18-year-old girl from a village in Jharkhand was married to a stray dog. The ceremony was hastily organized by village elders, after a local guru convinced Mangli’s parents that the teenager possessed ill-luck and that marrying a man would bring destruction to the family and her community. Will such regressive community practices ever be counted as rampant social evils – as painful and horrific as gang rape, child sexual abuse, marital rape, dowry deaths and child sex trafficking?
In December 2012, merely 12 days after the Nirbhaya case, a Patiala teen committed suicide after the police failed to register her complaint and instead, asked her to marry the attacker. She was brutally gang raped. In 2013, a village Panchayat ‘ordered’ the family of a six-year-old to marry her off to the eight-year-old son of the man who raped her. The man, aged 40, raped the girl repeatedly, even as the village Panchayat was passing judgment. A police investigation was launched only after the man’s second attack on the child.
Is the Khap our only enemy or does patriarchy wear different faces? How and when will I ever feel safe in the land of the Mother Goddess?
Just across our colony gate in South Delhi, there are several foreign nationals, mostly women, who reside in an apartment. I have seen a few of them at the mall nearby selling imported skincare lotions and face creams. We often smile at each other, while crossing the road or when we bump into each other at the neighborhood ATM. We never speak.
Last week, when I stopped by the ATM, I noticed some commotion at the entrance of the same building. A woman with dark-blue eyes, hair braided, dressed in skimpy shorts and a neon halter top was at the center of this mayhem. When I enquired about the matter with my driver and suggested help, he said this halla was on for a bit. Some men who were waiting on their bikes, probably courier delivery boys whistled at her and passed lewd comments. One of them tried to pull her closer. She shrieked and a crowd had gathered.
“Zyada toh unhe aur unki saheli logon ko ghur rahen hain tabh se…sab choti choti kapdon mein bahar aa gayi…” my driver offered his opinion. His voice was laced familiar discomfort.
The dichotomy is staring at us in the eyes-blaming women wearing skimpy clothes and therefore attracting unwarranted attention, in a sexually starved nation that lusts after white skin and drools over Sunny Leone and Savitha Bhabhi; where little girls are taught to call every little boy, ‘bhaiyya’, where kissing is as unacceptable as your periods; where families live in denial of sexual violence; where incidents of incest and child abuse is buried to save the image of the atypical bharatiya parivaar. Hum saath saath hain!
“Yeh toh meri behen jaisi hain…sorry…maine kuch nahin kiya…” one of the miscreants pretended to sob, as a constable glared at him.
The girl in question was speechless. Her hands were shivering. Most of the people in the gathering were clicking pictures on their mobile phones.
As women in India, we are often asked by our male friends if we think all men are rapists. Watching this young girl from another country hassled and rushing indoors, wiping her face, I could not help wonder what would it take for a woman to be respected? What is the point of an expensive ad campaign with the ever sermonizing, Aamir Khan lecturing us on how tourists are another form of God. The same Khan is embroiled in a controversy with Jessica Hines for fathering a love child during the making of Vikram Bhatt’s Ghulam-an allegation he has always denied. What will the government spending crores for Rakshabandhan mean, next?
Will I have to tie a rakhi to an eve teaser? Will a judge order a rape victim to call the accused, ‘bhai’, instead of decreeing that she should marry her assailant? Will the men in buses, metros, roadside pavements, college canteens, boardrooms, matrimonial sites, bedrooms, courts, playgrounds, school buses stop molesting us?
Will my body ever be considered mine?
Will my identity ever be more than bahu, bhabhi, beti, Ma, behen…?
Image courtesy:BCCL
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