Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The proper revenge for India’s Daughter

I have recently seen the documentary film India’s Daughter, dealing with the horrific gang rape and mutilation of medical student Jyoti Singh on a bus in India in 2012, her subsequent death from the internal injuries she suffered, and its aftermath.

The production has been banned in India, but I know for a fact that many high officials, perhaps even Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, have viewed it.

In some ways I can understand why the Government moved to block distribution of India’s Daughter. It contains a confronting interview with one of the rapists, Mukesh Singh, totally unrepentant and actually blaming his victim for the savage assault.

“A decent girl would not roam the streets at 9pm…housework and housekeeping are for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night, doing wrong things and wearing wrong clothes,” was his excuse for what he and the others had done, adding that if the girl had not struggled so much she would have been allowed to leave the bus otherwise unharmed.

Worse still was a defence lawyer who supported his client’s attitude and went further saying that even if his own daughter or sister had got herself into a similar situation and was raped, he would pour petrol over her and set her alight.

No matter that Singh was in the company of her boyfriend, who was also badly beaten. No woman should be out at night unless accompanied by her husband, brother, father, grandfather or some other male relative. Fortunately this man is now subject to discipline by the Indian Bar Association.

Obviously this is not the kind of image the Government wants as it seeks to portray a modernising nation preparing to take its place among the world’s great powers. Nor does it constantly want to be reminded of the fact that a rape in India occurs on average every 20 minutes.  

Equally disturbing were the mobs calling for the rapists to be strung up.  Four of the six have been convicted and face the death penalty, a fifth is a juvenile whose maximum sentence can be only three years imprisonment and a sixth was found dead in his cell, a presumed suicide.

To balance this there were the more measured views of a senior female judge, and younger friends of Ms Singh and her boyfriend. While understandably disgusted and bitter at what had taken place, they sensed the real problem lies with the patriarchal nature of Indian society where, in the most conservative areas, women are still treated as possessions – valuable possession perhaps, but possession nonetheless.

The judge was right when she said education was the only effective, long-term cure for this problem. Other contributors were also right in pointing out that the lynch-law mentality has no place in Indian society.

I have been a life-long opponent of the death penalty, or judicial murder as I prefer to call it. The first aim of punishment should be rehabilitation and at this point I cannot help but mention the situation of Australian drug criminals Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran whose rehabilitation in an Indonesian jail has been apparent to all, but who still face imminent execution.

But what of Mukesh Singh, who shows no remorse and actually seeks to portray himself as the victim of what he and the others did?

What greater punishment could there be for him to spend decades in jail while outside Indian society gradually changes (as I believe it must and will) to one of mutual respect and equality among the sexes; watching those with his brutal attitudes die off to be replaced by men and women who have created a more enlightened age.

What greater punishment for him to sit in his prison cell year after year, forgotten, irrelevant?

 

    

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