Column

In the national uproar over the Ruchika case, one important point is being overlooked: Ruchika is not alone. Sadly for our country, there are many Ruchikas everywhere. Their stories may be different, their tormentors may not be as powerful as Rathore, they may not take their own lives, but the essentials will be the same: they will have been sexually molested, some of them will even have been raped; in either case, the long arm of the law will be fiddling in its own pockets and the criminals will roam free.

The latest figures from the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) make this amply clear. Crimes against women dominate the NCRB data, 7 of the 10 fastest rising crimes being against them. While the incidence of all crimes rose by just under 5 per cent over the previous year, dowry deaths rose by a staggering 15 per cent.

Cruelty by husbands and relatives, which is one stop short of a dowry death, rose by a 14%. Abduction of girls went up by 13% and sexual harassment by 11%. Rape and molestation increased by 7%. As you can see all these anti-women crimes are well above the increase in general crimes.

If the picture these numbers depict looks grim, the reality is even worse. The NCRB data, although the latest available, comes from 2007. In the two years elapsed since then, we must have made more “progress”, and the figures would have got more appalling. But that’s not all: apart from dowry deaths which are difficult to hide, most of the other crimes are grossly under-reported since many victims prefer to suffer in silence rather than go through the double trauma of reporting the crime to the police, then re-live the horror in court.

As it is, the crimes that are reported are terrible enough. The other day two young men raped a young girl in “revenge” they said, because of her dispute with her parents. Fathers-in-law have raped the bahu of the house and worse, fathers have raped daughters. In rural areas rape is often used as a weapon in caste disputes, the forced sexual act somehow being seen as non-polluting by upper-castes.

Young men rape the objects of their “affection” if they are rejected, or deform them with acid which I suppose is worse. In Delhi and other parts of the north, macho young men do “car rapes” either as a sport or to assert their masculinity.The list, it seems, is endless.

All of us know the reasons why these crimes are so commonplace. Ours is a male-dominated society and in most of the country, women are second-class citizens. India is also a largely feudal society where the landlords and their successors exercise an absolute right over their subjects and that includes the women.

The situation can’t get better because of one simple reason. The men who are products of this society are the ones who go on to become policemen. And the women who are products of this society go on to become the wives, mothers and mothers-in-law who aid and abet these crimes because they actually believe that women are inferior.(Even in the Ruchika case it is Rathore’s wife who is his main ally).

Growing urbanisation and literacy, especially female education, will no doubt change this. But the process will be slow and painful. Are we prepared to wait until this happens? While more and more Ruchikas meet their tragic end? Not if we lay claim to an India that is shining and aspires to superpower status.There is only one quick solution. Which is not to wait for attitudes to change, but to force the change, especially in a group that can be controlled.

That group is the police force. Their attitudes will become more liberal if there is a big stick poised to hit them. They will be more considerate to women victims and keener to catch the perpetrators if they knew that they themselves will be punished or sacked. In an insensitive society, fear is the only key.