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DABRA, India — One after the other, the men raped her. They had dragged
the girl into a darkened stone shelter at the edge of the fields, eight
men, maybe more, reeking of pesticide and cheap whiskey. They assaulted
her for nearly three hours. She was 16 years old.
When it was over, the men threatened to kill her if she told anyone, and
for days the girl said nothing. Speaking out would have been difficult,
anyway, given the hierarchy of caste. She was poor and a Dalit, the
low-caste group once known as untouchables, while most of the attackers
were from a higher caste that dominated land and power in the village.
It might have ended there, if not for the videos: her assailants had
taken cellphone videos as trophies, and the images began circulating
among village men until one was shown to the victim’s father, his family
said. Distraught, the father committed suicide on Sept. 18 by drinking
pesticide. Infuriated, Dalits demanded justice in the rape case.
“We thought, We lost my husband, we lost our honor,” the mother of the
rape victim said. “What is the point of remaining silent now?”
As in many countries, silence often follows rape in India, especially in
villages, where a rape victim is usually regarded as a shamed woman,
unfit for marriage. But an outcry over a string of recent rapes,
including this one, in the northern state of Haryana, has shattered that
silence, focusing national attention on India’s rising number of sexual
assaults while also exposing the conservative, male-dominated power
structure in Haryana, where rape victims are often treated with callous
disregard.
In a rapidly changing country, rape cases have increased at an alarming
rate, roughly 25 percent in six years. To some degree, this reflects a
rise in reporting by victims. But India’s changing gender dynamic is
also a significant factor, as more females are attending school,
entering the work force or choosing their own spouses — trends that some
men regard as a threat.
India’s news media regularly carry horrific accounts of gang rapes,
attacks once rarely seen. Sometimes, gangs of young men stumble upon a
young couple — in some cases the couple is meeting furtively in a
conservative society — and then rape the woman. Analysts also point to
demographic trends: India has a glut of young males, some unemployed,
abusing alcohol or drugs and unnerved by the new visibility of women in
society.
“This visibility is seen as a threat and a challenge,” said Ranjana
Kumari, who runs the Center for Social Research in New Delhi.
In Haryana, the initial response to the rape after it was disclosed
ranged from denial to denouncing the media to blaming the victim. A
spokesman for the governing Congress Party was quoted as saying that 90
percent of rape cases begin as consensual sex. Women’s groups were
outraged after a village leader pointed to teenage girls’ sexual desire
as the reason for the rapes.
“I think that girls should be married at the age of 16, so that they
have their husbands for their sexual needs, and they don’t need to go
elsewhere,” the village leader, Sube Singh, told IBN Live, a news
channel. “This way rapes will not occur.”
The most vulnerable women are poor Dalits, the lowest tier of the social
structure. Of 19 recent rape cases in Haryana, at least six victims
were Dalits. One Dalit teenager in Haryana committed suicide, setting
herself afire, after being gang-raped. Another Dalit girl, 15, who was
mentally handicapped, was raped in Rohtak, according to Indian news
media accounts, the same district where a 13-year-old girl was allegedly
raped by a neighbor.
“If you are a poor woman who is raped, you cannot even imagine a life where there will be justice,” Kalpana Sharma,
a columnist, wrote recently in The Hindu, a national English-language
newspaper. “If you are a poor woman and a Dalit, then the chances of
justice are even slimmer.”
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Labels: International news
