Here are some more links which talk about the issue of social acceptance, victim-blaming, silence and several other important issues.
Urvashi Butalia in this Op-Ed in The Hindu .....
"First, more than 90 per cent of rapes are committed by people known to
the victim/survivor, a staggering number of rapists are family members.
When we demand the death penalty, do we mean therefore that we should
kill large numbers of uncles, fathers, brothers, husbands, neighbours?
How many of us would even report cases of rape then? What we’re seeing
now — the slow, painful increase in even reports being filed — will all
disappear. Second, the death penalty has never been a deterrent against
anything — where, for example, is the evidence that death penalties have
reduced the incidence of murders?"
Blind to what, Your Honour?
Indira Jaising in The Times of India ....
"Of all the promises made in the Constitution, the most important are the
promises of the 'right to life', the 'right to dignity', the 'right to
personal liberty' and the 'right to bodily integrity and health'.
However these promises are yet to be redeemed for women. Rape and other
forms of sexual assault,domestic violence,dowry death and honour
killings — the most brazen violation of these rights — are a real
and daily danger for most women."
Why is rape our collective culture?
Annie Zaidi in The Hindu ....
"Once a man in a car followed me in Saket. He asked for directions to
PVR, then asked me to come with him, and ended up calling me a bitch. I
remember wondering what “provoked” him. I was wearing an off-white sari.
When I wore it in Benaras, people mistook me for a grieving widow."
Jason Burke in The Guardian ....
Latest violent sexual attack on a woman convulses India, sparking fierce criticism of police and rows in parliament.
Vandana Shiva in Aljazeera ....
"And while we intensify our struggle for justice for women, we need to
also ask why rape cases have increased 240 percent since 1990s when the
new economic policies were introduced. We need to examine the roots of
the growing violence against women.
Could there be a connection between the growth of violent,
undemocratically imposed, unjust and unfair economic policies and the
growth of crimes against women?"
Delhi Protests and the Caste Hindu Paradigm: Of Sacred and Paraded Bodies
Madhuri Xalxo in Savari ....
I am a bit shaken by what outrages the mainstream media on rape. The
incident is horrifying and yet so very familiar to us dalit, bahujan and
adivasi women.
In the same Delhi, hundreds of adivasi girls are taken as domestic
slaves and get raped, and go missing…Why doesn’t the mainstream media
even consider that newsworthy? Why is there no uproar for the death
penalty for these upper caste men from elite backgrounds raping us? Is
it because we are born to get justly raped by the others?
