A Jyoti Singh Pandey gets replaced by a Priyanka Reddy. Delhi gets replaced by Hyderabad. Dr Manmohan Singh gets replaced by Mr Narendra Damodardas Modi. Yet what remains constant is the head in sand attitude of our society which doesn’t want to acknowledge that the problem lies within us.
When it is normal for the right wing trolls of the social media department of the ruling party followed by the highest office in the land to call out for the rape of Rana Ayyub, daughters of Rajdeep Sardesai and Priyanka Chaturvedi; when political leaders across party lines give tickets to those accused of rape and say aloud that it is the women’s fault and boys will be boys; when it is normal for boys to eve tease girls and their parents to just laugh it off; when it is normal for us to think that our armed forces should not be held accountable for rapes in insurgency areas like Manipur and Kashmir; when it is normal for us to blame our daughters for not always being covered in a hood even in 49 degree C; when it is normal for many honorable men to dig out bikini pictures of Gul Panag and share it on the social media because she decided to fight for AAP; when it is normal for us to bar our girls from going out after dark but it is perfectly normal for boys to be out post-midnight; when it is normal for us to give a religious excuse for everything we do to our daughters, how will it ever change?
The police are always blamed but when have we undertaken major police reforms post-independence? We are in a hurry to bring Kashmir in our fold but have no hurry to get our basic law and order in place. We are in a hurry to build a temple but don’t want to put the same pressure on our ruling establishment to make women safety a national priority. Our biggest pillar of democracy, the media is more concerned about Pakistan’s women than the crumbling of women’s basic rights in their own country.
We want to dream of a 5 trillion USD economy and compete with NASA in space but how will it happen if those future scientists, economists, managers and other blue- and white-collar workers cannot move out of their homes and have equal access to safety and security like their male counterparts?
#womenrights #india #rapes
