- RAPE
NOUN - The crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will.
Let its true meaning sink into your very core. At first it may seem a very common offence, obviously due to its numerous occurrences maybe even more than we can count. Also, its nature of commonality has made us emotionless to these incidents which can also be termed as a callous attitude. This ‘chalta hai‘ attitude is what gives an easier access to the rapists to continue sexually harassing women again and again because they realize that if at first nobody noticed it, maybe nobody would care the next time as well.
According to National Crime Records Bureau, 24,923 incidents of rape are recorded in India – annually. To be honest, this is just the tip of the iceberg, nobody is even aware of the many cases that go unreported all because a female has to keep in mind the honor of her family while also bearing the brunt of the society who questions her character, even when she is the victim.
Time and again, a rape victim is made to realize that she is no more pure and is treated like an untouchable, dejected from the society as if it was her fault that she was raped. Moreover, on the off-chance that she is open-minded and dresses up nicely, people immediately label her as ‘desperate’ or comment that she was asking for this to happen, like an attention seeker.
Come to think of it, things don’t really affect us till the time we experience it personally, till then we choose to remain silent on a plethora of issues, but do we really need this to happen to our kith and kin to realize the gravity of the situation? Can we handle the pain and the trauma that a rape victim goes through? Can we even for a fraction of second put ourselves in her shoes and see what she goes through and how judgmental our society is? Living in the 21st century wherein our country is steadily developing into a progressive nation and this how backward our mentality is.
One of the recent incidents took place in Gurgaon where a 23-year-old woman travelling in an auto with her child was groped and raped and her child was thrown out of the moving auto, which died on the spot. This just shows that we have lost humanity in order to quench their sexual urges these rapists can surpass any limit and even perform barbaric acts like mutilating the victim so she dare not speak up.
All these issues make it more difficult for a woman in our society to stay safe when people with such horrible mentalities still roam freely in our country. Why is that we impose restrictions on women, attempting to decide how they should dress up or till what time can they stay out.
Why is that we don’t teach the men to change their thinking in such matters and teach them to respect women and value them, not to look at them as an object made to satisfy a man’s sexual desires only?
The time has come that we stand up against this injustice that has rotten our society and give these rapists a taste of their own medicine, for it is the only way could they ever understand the gravity of the crimes they commit.
“To deter rape, punish those who blame women for Rape!”
Karan Arora & Srishti Yadav
Decent reads 