Could I have prevented the Delhi rape?

The first news I read after waking up today was about the gang rape of a 23 year old student by 4 men in a moving bus in the capitol of India – New Delhi. It brought on all the emotions of shame and disgust of being born in such a city which is now rather infamous as the Rape Capital.

Growing up in Delhi, I never could make peace with the restrictions my family put on me, in terms of my getting back home way before it became dark outside. I would start getting frantic calls from my mother if I got even a few minutes late than 5 pm. My brother or my dad would religiously pick me up after coaching classes which would end late in the evenings. I would really despise the fact that I wasn’t allowed to drive any vehicle.

Each had his or her own reason – too much crazy traffic for a car and riding a scooter is definitely not safe for girls, because well the city has a reputation. So the only mode of transport left for me was DTC (government operated) or blue line (privately operated) buses which carried the burden of transporting factory workers, students, middle class people who couldn’t afford anything better because nothing else could beat the speed, price and effectiveness of traveling on those buses. Another reason I had to travel on a bus (and this was before Metro trains were introduced) was that it was considered much safer to ride a bus full of people than taking an auto rickshaw with a lone driver who could easily take you to remote place and overpower you.

But even the bus wasn’t the safe haven for women, with no room left to breathe, and people dangerously hanging on the doorstep of the bus, you would be lucky to find a seat. If not then you are in for a rough ride, with weird men trying to grind you with an excuse that they are being pushed from the multitude of people behind them, and soon you would learn to ignore the unsolicited touches and pinches you would get on your rear end, because reporting the person behind you would not be an option, in case they decide to stalk you after getting off which of course you don’t want. So all you could do was to try out these tactics:

1. Give the guy a deadly stare and hope that he would get the signal and back off.
2. Call him Bhaiyya dhakka na maaro (Back off bro) – hoping that he would suddenly start seeing you as his sister and back off.
3. Learn how to step really hard on the guy’s toes till he feels the pain and backs off
4. Just “accidently” hit the guy where it hurts the most (read: testicles) and blame it on the multitude of people pushing you!
5. Just grind your teeth and pray either you find a Ladies only seat soon or you reach your bus stop sooner.

My friend used to come to college on a chartered bus and go back on an auto, and she had to call her rightly so frightened mother at least 5 times a day, just to assure her that she is safe. Imagine living with this stress, anxiety and fear of being insulted, assaulted, abused, captured, and raped every day and what it does to the young minds of women in Delhi. (P.S I refuse to use the very benign verb used in India- Eve Teasing which tries to lessen the magnitude of the assault on women.) No wonder I couldn’t wait to leave the city where the biggest concern on each woman’s, each parents’ mind is the whether they would be able to reach home safely tonight or not.

The argument that the law enforcement in India should be made more responsible and effective to ensure the safety of women doesn’t hold much as at least I don’t have much faith in it. Their first instinct is to try to put the blame on the victim with harassing questions like why she was hanging out late at night, was she a prostitute, what was she wearing, what did she do to bring it on herself. Because whatever the reason may be, it is not and can never be a woman’s fault that she was raped. It is the heinous crime committed by men who believe that it’s OK to rape, as there will be no consequences and it is the fault of women who do not sympathize with the rape victims and take the side of their husbands or brothers or uncles who commit crimes against women.

You might be wondering what can we do? This is what we all can do – Tell our sons, brothers and friends that:

1. It is not OK to objectify women and consider them as mere needs for pleasure and sex.

2. It’s not OK to sprinkle each conversation with incestuous abuses or cuss words like MC and BC.

3. It’s not OK to idolize screens heroes like Honey Singh and internalize his lewd songs which describe women as mere sex objects and f***ing them as a matter of pride and symbol of victory. Step off the dance floor the moment you hear such songs. (I do.)

4. Tell our daughters and sisters that a rape or assault isn’t the end of life, however traumatic it is. It doesn’t mean that it was in any way their fault. We don’t have to burden them with accusations of bringing shame and dishonor to the family. Because shame and dishonor are not in any way related to a woman’s body, it’s purely a social construct which male dominated society has created to subjugate women. We already have lost thousands of women who have been killed in the name of honor; we don’t want another generation of women to suffer in the same barbaric society that we have been trying to leave behind.

Especially as Sikhs, we have an added responsibility to protect the weak, as we have been doing for the last 500 years and to make women feel safe if they see a Sikh nearby, and not get carried away with the hollow sense of pride that Punjabi songs these days create and ourselves become the biggest perpetrators of violence against women.

What do you think needs to be doneWhat do we do, so that our at least our daughters would not grow up in an environment where they have to be scared for their safety every moment of their lives? so that one day, women in Delhi and every other part of the world, can step out of the house without any fear?