JOIN USThe politics of rape
Crime against women becomes a hot button issue when a ‘Nirbhaya’ incident is perpetrated with diabolical ferocity. What tends to undercut its enormity and gravitas is the recklessness with which India’s patriarchal society, especially the political class, tends to trivialise it by making misogynistic statements not against the perpetrators of the vilest crime against women but against the victims.
When Karnataka Congress legislator K R Ramesh Kumar made an obnoxious statement in the Assembly that “when rape is inevitable, lie down and enjoy it,” he was not creating a precedent. Rather, he was joining a league of political leaders whose bizarre statements on the issue have brought politics crashing to a new low. The year was 2009. The then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, the powerhouse of Dalit politics, and the then state Congress President Rita Bahuguna Joshi were engaged in a vicious squabble over the quantum of compensation to low-caste rape victims. As Mayawati was distributing Rs 25,000 each to the victims, Rita made an insensitive statement. “The Dalit women should throw the money back at Mayawati’s face and tell her ‘you should also be raped and we will give you Rs 1 crore,’” she blurted out.
Expectedly, it touched off a political storm. Hit below the belt, Mayawati dispatched Rita in jail under various sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act while her BSP cadres torched her house. That was the politics of rape. While Mayawati tried to leverage it for ramping up Dalit sentiments, Rita sought to discredit the state government and bolster the dwindling political fortunes of Congress. But the issue of rape was reduced to a rhetorical and puerile political debate. Paradoxically, when the Mulayam Singh Yadav government had announced compensation to some rape victims, Mayawati, then the opposition leader, made a statement that was similar to the one made by Rita. The entire episode had a tinge of irony as the real issue was swept under the carpet. And the real issue is the oppressive social system in which patriarchal males use rape as a weapon to subjugate powerless women while the government feels that it has done its part by fixing a price tag on the outraged modesty of the victims. It is this patriarchy that allows a callous administration in Madhya Pradesh to force nubile women to undergo virginity/pregnancy tests at a mass wedding function (2013); permits the arrogant officials at the National Institute of Sports, Patiala to force Renu Gora, a bronze medalist at the 2006 World Boxing Championship in Delhi, to serve tea and snacks to them and visiting guests (2009); spurs hairstylist Jawed Habib to spit on a woman’s head during a hair styling workshop (2022); grants license to lumpens to threaten Virat Kohli’s less-than-a-year-old daughter with rape (2021); and entitles Tamil actor Siddharth to tweet sexist remarks against ace shuttler Saina Nehwal (2022).
This iniquitous patriarchal system has been designed and sanctified to control a woman’s freedom and obliterate her right to explore her sexuality. Patriarchal values are not only regressive and visceral but also ingrained in our social fabric and routinely get expressed in the expletives targeting the woman’s anatomy — the daily lingo that goes with a false machismo. Such a mindset emboldens sick men and sex prowlers to flash their organs, rape, throw acid and kill women. We can trust our political leaders to do business even over the issue of rape. If India’s underbelly is showing this time round in Karnataka, it is appalling but not unexpected. Still, such statements only bring down the stock of the political class.