Why do rapes happen in India- by Sharath Chandra.R
This question is asked at least by 4 persons during my Europe stay. I thought of writing post on it many times but got delayed. Now, Hazipur incident caught my attention and triggered my thought. This is a very detailed and articulated answer to the question. But if you read it, you will have no more doubts.
If you read about Hazipur (Hyderabad, India) rape accused who brutally raped and killed 3 girls, you would be getting a chilled throat at the psychology of a sadistic rapist. What goes through a rapist’s mind and how he reaches that level, and how many ways a man can become a sexual offender is what this post talks about.
A victim’s pain is undebatable and unfortunately many times she is the one who is blamed for dressing or behaviour which is tagged as provocative. I personally witnessed such people and was surrounded by a few at a phase in life which gave me many insights and also a few unforgettable incidents.
The big reason- Illiteracy and alcohol influence
Whatever we might talk and analyze, it’s all in vain without we understanding the fact that majority of the brutal rapists are illiterate and would be under heavy alcohol influence. They look at women as a tiger looks at a deer while hunting and their focus is only on the female genitals; they are not at all bothered about the victim’s pain, emotional trauma, and even their own judicial conviction. It’s why even 3 year olds and 75 year olds are raped.
The men with such mental state who don’t have money or power do brutal rapes with the help of their peers and under the dose of cheap liquor. They don’t even know the judicial conviction for their act (which is how Nirbhaya happened). Rich, with the same mental state will be doing substance abuse (drugs) and think they can get away with the law (which is how Shukla’s case happened in Lucknow).
The various other detailed for sexual offences to happen are
1. Mothers of the men offenders don’t wear modern dresses.
In Indian conventional families, you take it for granted and have no doubt about it, mothers and sisters always wear decent, fully covered, and accepted dressing. They might do in their teens and student times but not after they are married or not when they visit home during their college holidays. Witnessing a man of the family getting furious over a woman’s modern, revealing, and exposing dress is a common sight. So a boy growing out of such a family will be trained to think ‘ My mother is not wearing a modern dress and neither my sister nor anyone decent I know. So this girl wearing it is welcoming a man or desperately waiting to have sex.’
So the mothers who want to wear modern dresses shouldn’t stop it for anyone. You will be saving many women from sexual abuse.
2. When individuals are blamed, what’s the use of a system in place?
We hear police, politicians, and elders talking about ‘Why is she out at such a time at night? Why was she in such a dress? Why was she going to such a place alone?’. My question in mind always would be ‘Why the fuck you need it?’ If everyone is supposed to stay at home if individuals are always responsible for their actions, why do we have Governments, police, courts, and a whole system? First of all, one should remember,
Systems are created because not all individuals can function properly. And systems are created to protect individual rights not to blame them always morally due to the system’s inefficiency. To organize 1.2 billion population it’s not an easy task though. Already a lot of sex is happening in the country which is visible in numbers.
3. People get IIT ranks but fail with negative marks if tested on Sex Education
People work hard, get top global ranks in education, go out with friends, watch NetFlix, dine out on weekends, earn money through high paying jobs but they don’t know basics in Sex. It’s simply because they are not taught about it. When they are not taught, who didn’t teach them are to be blamed. Parents, teachers, school and college managements, and thought leaders in society- all share the collective guilt.
By discussing what are your sexual priorities, tastes, and what sexual fantasies turn you on, you can first realize how much healthy you are sexually. And a potential offender can be identified and counselled. If not there are many husbands who rape their wives regularly, ask them why they became like that and those wives better know how it’s to be getting raped very often.
4. Lack of proximity with the opposite gender makes every interaction a sexual advance
In a backward society, male and female proximity is discouraged and looked down because of which even a small friendly gesture of a girl/woman is perceived as acceptance for sexual advances by boys/men. Yes, they do have women interaction at home but the minds are already trained from childhood ‘Women at my home are holy, women outside my family circle can be poked and abused’.
It’s the reason misbehaved incidents occur in public transport, office places, and the fashion industry.
5. Rape victims are isolated and haunted until they commit suicide
There’s a saying ‘The biggest enemy for a woman is another woman’. I think holds true in rural and suburban cultures where a family’s honour is counted with the women’s sexual purity. So when a woman from the family has had premarital sex, caught in a scandal, or has been raped all the surrounding women gossip and gossip and abuse her until she hangs herself.
But they forget one small thing. A thunderbolt doesn’t think on whom it’s falling. A rapist doesn’t care about who he is targeting. The women who are gossipping might be targeted if they are unlucky, so better not think you are always safe as when you are gossipping, commenting, and judging.
6. Prostitution is not legal in India- biggest factor for rapes
I have seen legal escort culture in Europe which is why the region has low sexual crime rate in the world. The high sexual tension is clearly visible in India which people hide under the carpet and take U-turns in sexual goals using the word Love or they desperately marry for that. Those who can’t get sex in these accepted norms or who got addicted to it, either watch porn excessively and few of them try implementing the violent sex in real life which leads to rape eventually.
A combination of free porn and legal prostitution calms down many potential sexual offenders because the list of services provided by escort firms will always be heavier than the fantasies men can ever have.
7. There is a disparity in professions which makes ‘SEX’ the only excitement for hopeless men
A doctor is respected and a software developer is looked up to. Then what about an auto-driver, a fruit vendor, a garage mechanic, and a watchman? they are excessively abused in their professions and denied any means of basic dignity. Out of that frustration and hopelessness, they build aversion towards the rich and women (because, in their point of view, those are the two things which are moving in front of them and seem impossible to ever acquire)
So one section of them become burglars forcefully extorting money or valuables from rich and the other section become rapists getting sex from women they desired. Both are almost the same; they try to acquire something in a short-cut, forcibly.
There’s one more section which does the same thing but not with force but with manipulation. They cheat people to get what they want. According to section 375 of IPC, consenting sex is treated as rape if the man convinced the woman into having sex by promising he would marry her and later failed to do so.
8. Only heinous rapes are complained. There are many date rapes, soft rapes, unconscious rapes, and inside family rapes which go unreported
Only chilling incidents like that of Hazipur are reported in Media and complained to police. In my research, there will be many dark sexual incidents and memories for women. They just don’t report for the below reasons
- Family honour will be polluted
- Fear of increased threat from offenders
- Fear of victim blaming and character assassination
- Lack of time and money for legal proceedings
- Fear of being isolated from the normal crowd
9. There are cases where women have consented first and called it a rape later
There was a famous Supreme Court judgement in 2017 where a woman, in a live-in relationship with a man for 5 years and filed a case stating that the man raped for many times in the 5 years time.
The judge rejected the plea asking her ‘Why didn’t you report it then in the past? Did it take five years for you to realize that you are raped? So that sums up the point. The 3 judge bench also gave a statement which says ‘Rape laws and Nirbhaya act in India are to protect women from mishaps but they cannot be used as weapons against men for taking revenge, blackmailing, or money extortion.
After Nirbhaya happened 2012, laws were tightened for rapists with Nirbhaya act. And in 2013 alone, 60% more rapes are reported, which when followed till the end of judgement, it was proved that 55% of them were used by gangsters to extort money from rich and sensitive.
10. Misogynistic influence around in the form of friends, relatives, and elders
Who has had a number of sexual encounters, he is treated as cupid. For acquiring this tag of cupid, playboy, or sexual supernova, men become addicted to it and evidently, there’s a substantial surrounding influence. I heard many times men talking degradingly about women when they are a little modern, talkative, or outgoing. In such an environment, a normal and innocent boy could also make a wrong move towards a girl and regret it for a long time.
The one biggest reason which is not mentioned is Men will be under alcohol influence which is the biggest trigger for all the above reasons. As people are educated and society is evolved, the sexual crime rate will come down.
