Raakhee Suryaprakash
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| Image: Pixabay (Hans) |
This past week two
landmark legal events and one fiscal event are, to many, small lights at the
end of the very dark tunnel that is ensuring safety of women in India. First
the fiscal: in its 2014 Union Budget the UPA administration in a bid to woo the
woman vote announced a Rs. 1000 crores addition to 10-billion rupees corpus it
set up in 2013 to secure women—sadly the latter lies largely unutilized a year
on—every measure counts when implemented though! The first of the legal events
was the filing of the charge sheet against Tehelka
founder-editor Tarun Tejpal by Goan Authorities a few weeks short of 3 months
after his arrest for sexually assaulting a journalist from his publication under
the more stringent Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 dealing with sexual
offenses against women. Next was the Indian court’s decision to hang the 3
surviving adult rapists 14 months after the horrific gang rape of the
23-year-old in a Delhi bus that shocked the national conscience and got many to
the streets and changed laws. Considering the usual speed the Indian judicial
machinery these legal processes were completed almost at a record-breaking pace.
This is just the
beginning and there is a long way to go for a nation and society with such a
blatant bias towards misogyny. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) P. Santasivam at
a Chennai seminar on ‘Improving Criminal Investigations’ recommended that the
statement of rape survivor’ should be enough to secure conviction, as no Indian
woman will voluntarily accuse a man of rape unless it really happened. Biases
aside, fast track convictions aided by the continual electronic surveillance
the population is under could get perpetrators of crimes against women off the
street and punished at once. Rapists and acid attackers continue to go about
violating women unchecked despite the more stringent laws as evidenced by the
continued prevalence of gang rapes and sexual assaults across the nation. One
reason is explained by Romit Chowdhury, a graduate student in Cultural Studies
from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, in the Hindu article ‘Good Laws, Bad Implementation’. He postulated
that “for Indian men the demonstration of masculinity—which has always
problematically rested on harassing women—has now linked itself to breaking
laws that protect women.”
Another reason could be
that pro-women laws need to be backed up by proper implementation, timely judgements,
and immediate incarceration and sentencing of offenders so that acts against
women become prohibitive. This will not happen until law enforcement agencies
actually get behind enforcing the pro-women laws a 100%. At a time when police
personnel in many reported cases hamper the registering of FIR in the case of a
sexual attack, keeping in mind the the already low numbers who actually come
forward to report such violations, 100% implementation and prompt due process
is a bit of castle in the air. It won’t happen till every resistant recruit is
brainwashed to disregard misogynistic, paternalistic, or chauvinistic
conditioning and made to automatically register cases in any circumstance. A former
professional from the gender sensitivity training field had a bleak outlook to
offer on training of judicial officials. She recalled strongly protesting the judges
and lawyers abhorrent opinion that "Women will have fun, take pleasure,
and then turn around and say it is rape." It is such attitudes that must
be wiped out by training future generations in the right way from the get go
continuously in schools and colleges. Perhaps the CJI’s opinion is an indicator
of changed attitudes in recent times.
The
Guardian’s report “Women’s Rights – Country by Country”
reveals India relatively positive position on laws securing women’s rights but
in the same Hindu article mentioned
before one is presented with incontrovertible evidence of societal backlash
against progressive laws, e.g., the progressively anti-women diktats of khaps gaining prominence in India’s
north and east. The need to fast track punishing offenders and training future
generations to be gender sensitive is something that must be addressed ASAP!
Resources
(1) “Nirbhaya Fund gets
Rs. 1,000 cr. more”: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nirbhaya-fund-gets-rs-1000-cr-more/article5700295.ece
(2)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tarun-Tejpal-charged-under-new-anti-rape-law/articleshow/30584881.cms
(3) Death to Delhi
rapists!!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-26252802
(4) Remarks of the CJI
P. Santasivam @ seminar on IMPROVING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS, Feb 8, 2014,
Saturday, Chennai
(5) “Good Laws, Bad
Implementation,” Vasundhara Sirnate, The Hindu, Feb 1, 2014, pg. 10
(6) http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2014/feb/04/womens-rights-country-by-country-interactive?CMP=twt_gu
Raakhee Suryaprakash has a Master’s degree in International Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry but her passion remains writing and researching things that change the world for the better. Her work has been widely published both in print and online media. Raakhee Suryaprakash is in the process of launching a social enterprise SUNSHINE MILLENNIUM that aims to help India's off-grid rural areas achieve the Millennium Development Goals by setting up of solar-powered millennium development centres maintained by local stakeholders and funded by corporate social responsibility programmes and government schemes.