REALLY PROUD TOBE INDIAN??
Er. Mickey Sood
How do you start your day? You get up, freshen up yourself, take a sip of freshly brewed coffee. open up the newspaper and the headlines goes like our PM Modi wanted a display of “WOMEN POWER” oa the R-DAY theme. Prime Minister started a policy of “beti padhan beti bachao” mission. Quite a good start of day indeed, where you feel finally something good is there to hear about women in our country. Ironically, just after few days another morning newspaper headlines comes across as a slap on the face of humanity. Two school girls gang raped at abohar’, ‘woman found raped, murdered in amritsar’. ‘mentally challenged woman brutally raped and murdered in rohtak.
Oh Yes, SHAME! So what’s happening to this country?(everybody asks this). What do we do about it? (Nobody has an answer to it). Or it has become something of a pattern by now? Here’s what we do. One, Blare your anger and indignation. Two, Switch on our television sets where news channels go on a overdrive having shouty debates in studios. Three, launch a campaign in girl’s name. Four, a fast-track court is set up to ensure speedy justice. The trial goes on and on until the case fades from the media and our memories.
But is this really helping? To answer that, lets take a look at statistics. Everyday 92 women are raped and GOD only knows how many cases go unreported. More than 31.000 cases are still waiting for justice. After all that happening some people made some excellent inferences out of it. Rape is somehow the woman’s fault. ‘why was she out so late at night.” “why did she go to such a secluded spot? why was she wearing a short skirt.” ‘why was she drinking liquor? “WHY?” The questions pile up until the woman ends up feeling like a criminal or starts
blaming herself saying it’s my fault. Which makes me wonder what was that 3 years old ting tot or 80 years old or that mentally challenged woman were wearing when they got raped? So who do you put blame on? The Government? The Girl herself? The boys? The stereotypes? Or the upbringing. UPBRINGING?? No one ever teaches their sons to rape a woman but neither they do to respect them. Instead, they frame the image of girl as ‘weak’, dependent. fragile and what not. Since childhood boys are socialized by giving tags-boys should be self dependent, strong, aggressive, earn money, men are responsible for carrying forward the family’s name etc etc. Whereas for girls some peculiar kind of stereotypes have been made like soft spoken attitude, family responsibility. They are always taught to behave in a particular weak way. But there is no such rulebook for boys.
Need of the hour? The girls would stop acting like they are weaker than guys. They could stop being a victim and saying its my fault. They need to accept that the only person who loses honour in the act of rape is the rapist himself. Role of society? Stop telling the girl that her honour was stolen. Her life cannot be reduced to
one heinous crime that was committed against her body. Rape may have been the worse thing
to happen to her, but it is not the thing that will define her. Life will go on. Need to analyze that
whether the rules we are setting is taking our society on progressive path or holding it back All of this, in order that girls do not have to add an extra prayer God, Please don’t get me raped today in their daily routine. So that every girl could say bekhauff azaad hai jeena mujhe, bekhauff azaad hai rehna mujhe
