Gone are the days when women were considered to be Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga. Now, only the lady figure stone idols are revered, while the living lady gets the wrath of male population.
Women have been repressed since the later Vedic period, but at least they were respected then. Now they are just a body that men use for their gratification, a body that men, or animals clad in men’s skin use to fulfil their terrifying sexual urges.
With so many assault and rape cases being reported and endless being shadowed by the society, women of India are forced to ponder, ‘Are we safe in our country?’
While discussing about sex, urges and sexual desires is a taboo in the country. The taboo is not just leading to increasing number of crimes in the country, but also resulting in national shame! Although women have always been considered as objects of desire and Indian women have understood the low laying levels of security in the country, the major concern on women’s safety came into light after the 23-year-old student was fatally raped and assaulted on a moving bus in the Indian capital on 16th December. Yes, in the capital city of the country! And when her friend tried saving her, he was brutally beaten.
However, the worst part was so many localities, who saw the agonized girl and her friend after they were thrown on the street, didn’t even bother to help them! No matter how many laws our country makes, no matter how many police officers are deployed, no matter how many times we say that we are ‘civilized,’ the incident still manages to slap us. We as a country should be ashamed.
There is no point is in asking or wondering, ‘Is there a problem with India?’ because the truth is that problems related to women’s safety abound us!
Our first problem is that the laws are not strict. But the fact is even when the laws are made tougher, the problem still prevails. Lack of law enforcement is prevalent. One of the recent examples of this is Gang Rape of Swiss Tourist in central India on March 17, 2013. The victim, reportedly a 39 years old lady from Lausanne, Switzerland was camping with her husband for a night on a bike tour when she was assaulted and robbed by several men at around 10 pm. This is not the end of the story, on the same day, another woman in Madhya Pradesh’s capital was gang raped on a moving bus in the middle of the day.
And believe it or not, as you sit and read this article, a woman is probably being assaulted or raped in some part of the country. Thanks to understaffed forces, police inaction and fast track courts’ slow decisions the situation has become grim.
But at the same time, we cannot just ignore our own mistakes. We cannot just simply blame the government while we walk past a woman who is being eve teased by a guy or if we let men beat their wives. We cannot expect the situations to get better if we as a community don’t come together and respect women, if we don’t teach our kids the value of women, if we keep on boasting our male child’s ego!
We as a society need to take a stand. At the same time, we need to follow some simple individual measures like protecting and respecting women around us, carrying pepper sprays, knowing the nearby police stations in the area we are travelling, and coming together to force the government to build stricter laws.
Local police is currently fast tracking the matter. The accused in the Delhi Rape case have been arrested. But media as well as well protesting populations cannot rest and wait for another incident like this to be reported. Even with the fast track court working swiftly on the issue, the longest fight is yet to come – the fight where we rebel against our traditional notions of women and look at them as an equal gender!
