Rape is not just an Indian problem

I had hoped to resume this blog in 2013 on a lighter subject, but unfortunately the fallout from the gang rape and murder of the young woman in New Delhi has produced some disturbing trends, not just in social media where the more left-field opinions are to be expected, but also in the so-called respectable publications and on television talk shows. They demand a critique.

It seems that many commentators are judging not the individuals, or even their social backgrounds and upbringing, but the Indian nation as a whole. I have heard and seen opinions where India has been described as a barbarous country where women are treated as chattels or legitimate objects of titivation; that the country values its women less than its men and has no interest in respecting or protecting them.

Well, let’s take stock for a moment.  These attitudes certainly exist in India – but they don’t in the so-called enlightened and progressive West? A lot has been made of the fact that a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India. I have seen just one reference to the published statistic that a rape occurs every two minutes in the United States.

Both these figures are horrific and inexcusable and in India the wave of revulsion has been shown on our television screens and in our newspapers almost daily since the gang rape occurred in mid-December. There have been marches and candlelit vigils and did you note that while the media focused on the women in the streets there were actually just as many men with them?

And when the frustration boiled over and the police turned nasty, men were there in the front row taking the lathi lashings and the bursts from the water cannon. When the Indian President’s son and Congress Party MP made some disparaging remarks about the protesters the outcry was so great he was quickly forced to apologise but even so, I wouldn’t bet much on him holding his seat at the next election.

In contrast to this let’s take a look at the cases of Jill Meagher, raped and buried in a shallow grave in Victoria this year and Joanna Yeates who had the life strangled out of her by a perverted next door neighbour in the United Kingdom just before Christmas in 2010.

Both these cases were high profile in their two countries. Both held the attention of their nations for a while, and with both there was great sadness, mourning and fine words from the political leaders.

But did either produce one skerrick of change, either in legislation or in other initiatives to confront rape and make the streets safer for women? If so, I haven’t heard of them.

Yet in India, I am willing to bet that the groundswell of protest and soul-searching now being felt throughout the nation are the beginnings of beneficial effects on social attitudes and that politicians, fearful of losing their jobs, will enact laws to make their towns and cities safer places for all their inhabitants.