A callous remark reveals popular perception about rape

Just when we thought there was no way out of the mess we find ourselves in, just when hope was dying, just when we thought corruption will eat us up like cancer, the CBI director, Ranjit Sinha, on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the organization, has some advice for the nation: If you cannot avoid the rape, enjoy it.

I am mildly troubled by the callousness of the statement made by an official of such high stature. What worries me more is the number of people, men and women, but mostly men, who will agree with what the CBI director has said. The CBI director later said that he was only using a ‘proverb’ to make a point. The proverb disgusts sensible people because it assumes that it is possible to enjoy the experience of rape.  I am not sure about the CBI director but I do not see myself enjoying being raped.

To me the director’s statement is as good as: if you cannot avoid getting hit by a car, enjoy being hit by a car, or if you cannot avoid getting blown to bits in a terrorist attack enjoy it, or if you see someone killing your loved one, perhaps your child, and you cannot stop it, then you should enjoy it. It is obvious that anyone who believes rape can be enjoyed does not think like this.

It is possible that when the CBI director made the remark he did not actively or unconsciously means any disrespect to women. His insensitivity towards the national rape crisis, reflected by his comment, it can be successfully argued, is an accident the CBI director would like to forget but is not likely to forget till he retires.

What he is hinting at perhaps is the larger bureaucratic structure that leaves a senior official like the CBI director with two choices: enjoy the rape or endure it. The statement has a sense of fatality to it. It’s a choice but it is a closed choice. The final outcome is pre-determined: One is going to be raped. Only when the outcome is known is the victim offered the choice of turning a painful experience into a pleasurable one.

The context in which he used the ‘proverb’ was the debate on legalizing betting. Ranjit Sinha was of the view that if we cannot enforce the law, we should make the offence legal. The nation is being raped by bookies and our top sleuth wants us to enjoy it. The CBI director’s statement is loaded with the pragmatism in an environment where there is no hope. No matter what choice we make as a people, our destiny is rape.

It is not the CBI director alone who injects the rape metaphor in day-to-day life in order to make a point. We all do it and many times we do not even think about what we are saying. For generations this thinking has been applied on a different level in the plots of countless romantic movies. The hero relentlessly stalks the girl convinced that when an Indian girl says ‘no’ she actually means ‘yes’. In the end the girl gives in and says ‘yes’ which the hero naturally takes as another instance confirming his ‘no’ means ‘yes’ theory.

On the face of it Ranjit Sinha would actively condemn the act of rape but his own statement, knowingly or unknowingly, supports the idea of rape: it’s okay to rape — if they won’t be able to avoid it, they are likely to enjoy it and if they don’t then it’s their problem.

Views expressed are personal