India's fight against rape has just started

I am unlikely to forget the morning of December 6, 2019. As the news of the encounter deaths of all the four accused in the Hyderabad veterinarian's rape flashed across screens, I was gripped with conflicting feelings. Here was something I was not expecting, having resigned myself to the feeling that timely justice would not be done in this case just as it hasn’t been done hundreds of times in the past.

But Mohammad Ali alias Mohammad Arif, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen Kumar and Chintakunta Chenna Keshavulu were dead, shot by the Hyderabad police, allegedly as they attacked police personnel at the crime scene. As a wave of disbelief washed over me, I was soon left wondering whether this was indeed justice – and if there are any quick fixes in dealing with rapists.

I had been looking for answers to these questions in the aftermath of the Hyderabad veterinarian’s rape, but the incidents of December 6 put a spotlight on the question in a way that was absent even a day earlier.

But first let me come to the anger – anger that many have been clearly feeling, given the expression of support for the police’s action in Hyderabad.

The Hyderabad rape came as a stinking reminder of how India has not changed much since the Nirbhaya rape case of December 2012. After that horrifying incident, the country saw a spate of candle marches being held in colonies of smalls towns, hours of debate in Parliament to fast-track such cases and the setting up of the Nirbhaya Fund.

I would even argue that the recent Hyderabad rape case falls in the same category as the Nirbhaya one. Thanks to its gruesomeness it was able to garner the attention of media houses, politicians, the Women’s Commission, NGOs and your attention and mine to an affair, which is reported everyday and treated as a routine event. But what about the thousands of other cases reported and unreported in India of violence against women? Had anything really changed since Nirbhaya?

These were some of the questions in my mind as I was looking for possible solutions to tackling the culture of violence against women in the days after the Hyderabad veterinarian's rape and murder. Now that instant justice has been done in the case – and we have been forced to confront if we are willing to support the execution of rapists even before investigations are complete and courts have given their verdicts – it’s clear summary execution of rapists cannot be a solution.

Rape is an ugly representation of existing realities in our society. Even if people backed instant punishment for rapists – irrespective of the fact that it would raise questions about our democracy and the kind of society we will build going forward – rapists will continue to be among us. That is because tackling rape requires us to turn our gaze at how our society treats men and women from infancy.

We have to stop ignoring the root cause of the issue – gender bias, one of the major faultlines in our upbringing. Until the time a male child is made to feel that he is superior to a female child, the latter's body will continue to be taken for granted. The Justice Verma Committee report, which was released after the Nirbhaya case, recommends that children’s experiences should not be gendered.

"A certain way of playing or relating cannot be constructed as masculine or feminine, but merely as an experience. Once socialisation ceases to be about gender-biased expectations, children’s experiences can naturally teach them about inequalities and rights of others," the report stated.

The long-term remedy lies in these small but crucial non-gendered experiences of people from their childhood. The burden to create such environments for young ones is on all of us. It is our responsibility to impart such experiences to children in our homes, schools and even workspaces.

This is the first and most basic step. Next, our participation in any such conversation is pointless if we are unwilling to stand up to help when the situation demands it. Women continue to get raped in broad daylight. They continue to get teased, followed and preyed upon even in crowded streets and sometimes no one even steps forward to help them.

The important question here is this: What will you do if you happen to witness someone being harassed? Will you be a bystander or muster courage to do the right thing?

Many times we are scared to help, fearing that the rapists may target us. But we should know that we will not be alone in this."If you are a witness and you're scared that the accused may harm you, you can ask for police protection. It is the police's duty to grant witnesses protection and one's right to seek one," said Maitreyi Krishnan, an advocate with Manthan Law in Bengaluru.

There is no shortcut remedy to prevent rape. We have to start from the beginning. India's fight against rape has just started. And we have a long way to go. Are you on board?