The Unspeakable Truth About
Rape In India
By:Sonia Faleiro
I LIVED for 24 years in New Delhi, a city where sexual harassment is as regular
as mealtime. Every day, somewhere in the city, it crosses the line into rape.
As a teenager, I learned to protect myself. I never stood alone if I could help
it, and I walked quickly, crossing my arms over my chest, refusing to make eye
contact or smile. I cleaved through crowds shoulder-first, and avoided leaving
the house after dark except in a private car. At an age when young women
elsewhere were experimenting with daring new looks, I wore clothes that were two
sizes too large. I still cannot dress attractively without feeling that I am
endangering myself.
Things didn’t change when I became an adult. Pepper spray wasn’t available, and
my friends, all of them middle- or upper-middle-class like me, carried safety
pins or other makeshift weapons to and from their universities and jobs. One
carried a knife, and insisted I do the same. I refused; some days I was so full
of anger I would have used it — or, worse, had it used on me.
The steady thrum of whistles, catcalls, hisses, sexual innuendos and open
threats continued. Packs of men dawdled on the street, and singing Hindi film
songs, rich with double entendres, was how they communicated. To make their
demands clear, they would thrust their pelvises at female passers-by.
If only it was just public spaces that were unsafe. In my office at a prominent
newsmagazine, at the doctor’s office, even at a house party — I couldn’t escape
the intimidation.
On Dec. 16, as the world now knows, a 23-year-old woman and a male friend were
returning home after watching the movie “Life of Pi” at a mall in southwest
Delhi. After they boarded what seemed to be a passenger bus, the six men inside
gang-raped and tortured the woman so brutally that her intestines were
destroyed. The bus service had been a ruse. The attackers also severely beat up
the woman’s friend and threw them from the vehicle, leaving her to die.
The young woman didn’t oblige. She had started that evening watching a film
about a survivor, and must have been determined to survive herself. Then she
produced another miracle. In Delhi, a city habituated to the debasement of
women, tens of thousands of people took to the streets and faced down police
officers, tear gas and water cannons to express their outrage. It was the most
vocal protest against sexual assault and rape in India to date, and it set off
nationwide demonstrations.
To protect her privacy the victim’s name was not released publicly. But while
she remains nameless, she did not remain faceless. To see her face, women had
only to look in the mirror. The full measure of their vulnerability was finally
understood.
When I was 26, I moved to Mumbai. A commercial and financial megalopolis, it has
its own special set of problems, but has, culturally, been more cosmopolitan and
liberal than Delhi. Giddy with my new freedom, I started to report from the
red-light district and traveled across rough suburbs late at night — on my own
and using public transit. It seemed that something good had come out of living
in Delhi: I was so grateful for the comparatively safe environment of Mumbai
that I took full advantage of it.
The young woman, however, will never have such an opportunity. On Saturday
morning, 13 days after she was brutalized, this student of physical therapy, who
had, no doubt, dreamt of improving lives, lost her own. She died of multiple
organ failure.
India has laws against rape; seats reserved for women in buses, female officers;
special police help lines. But these measures have been ineffective in the face
of a patriarchal and misogynistic culture. It is a culture that believes that
the worst aspect of rape is the defilement of the victim, who will no longer be
able to find a man to marry her — and that the solution is to marry the rapist.
These beliefs aren’t restricted to living rooms, but are expressed openly. In
the months before the gang rape, some prominent politicians had attributed
rising rape statistics to women’s increasing use of cellphones and going out at
night. “Just because India achieved freedom at midnight does not mean that women
can venture out after dark,” said Botsa Satyanarayana, the Congress Party leader
in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Change is possible, but the police must document reports of rape and sexual
assault, and investigations and court cases have to be fast-tracked and not left
to linger for years. Of the more than 600 rape cases reported in Delhi in 2012,
only one led to a conviction. If victims believe they will receive justice, they
will be more willing to speak up. If potential rapists fear the consequences of
their actions, they will not pluck women off the streets with impunity.
The volume of protests in public and in the media has made clear that the attack
was a turning point. The unspeakable truth is that the young woman attacked on
Dec. 16 was more fortunate than many rape victims. She was among the very few to
receive anything close to justice. She was hospitalized, her statement was
recorded and within days all six of the suspected rapists were caught and, now,
charged with murder. Such efficiency is unheard-of in India.
In retrospect it wasn’t the brutality of the attack on the young woman that made
her tragedy unusual; it was that an attack had, at last, elicited a response.
(Sonia Faleiro is the author of “Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of
Bombay’s Dance Bars.”)