Dr. Panchanan Dalai
It is repugnant to the nature of a civilized society that men should rape women. In fact, rape of men or women, to take a liberal stand, is always abominable and can only be attributed to a monstrous regime. As a heinous act, rape is not only an unredeemable sin, but also an audacious travesty of our modern law and governance. Our systemic indifference and strategic silence on rape are detrimental to both the comprehension and annihilation of rape in our political times. In both these conditions, rape only incarnates itself as the rape of the State and Humanity. It acts as a deadly boomerang not only to the civil society, but also to the custodians of State and citizens.
Having said so, it is also of paramount importance to focus and diagnose the nature and function of civil society’s response to rape, particularly their protests and activisms. Unfortunately, the protesters of rape have also mistaken rape as a mere political event, while demanding to expose the political nexus or governmental failures. Though it is intellectually effective to subscribe to the idea that rape is political, it is a moral fallacy, on the other hand, to reduce rape as a mere physical and political barbarity. In fact, rape is more than a physical crime! It is not an action, rather a demonic idea, and an intricate dystopian fantasy of patriarchy. This is something that our rational society is blissfully ignorant of!
Therefore, protesting rapes with or under political banners is an obliteration of the enormity of the monster called rape. Let us take the example of two women protestors of a rape incidence; one justifying the stance of the reigning political party, and the other blaming the ruling party as the representative of the Opposition party. Both these women fail to understand how they have innocuously fallen prey to the patriarchal design of party politics. In other words, instead of being cognizant of rape as violence against their own gender, these women allow themselves to be used as shields to protect the toxic patriarchal politics. They fail to decode that protesting under any political organisation is a mere assertion of patriarchy, as politics itself is a patriarchal reality. To me, this itself is a rape of ideology! What they should do, instead, is to rise above political rivalries and perceive rape as a patriarchal instrument of violence, domination and barbarity against women. Rape is an organised crime committed with masculine volition and violation. It is a ‘masculine hegemony’ that can be fought by women conscious and free of such ‘toxic-masculinity’.
Similarly, while we stand with the victim of rape, we should also focus on the culture of female sexual violation and victimisation, rather than subscribe to political ideologies and or affiliation to set it right. Let us remember that the politics of rape is entrenched in the culture of politics, deeply erected on “Phallicism”. Moreover, the gravity of rape does not depend on how big or powerful the offender is. A rape is a rape, no matter how big is the offender and how weak is the victim. To understand rape in our contemporary times, we need to demystify the idea that rape is only committed by rapists or so called ‘bad people’. A good many of gentlemen have fallen prey to this carnal sin. In fact, there are several common myths surrounding rape which need to be dispelled. Until and unless we decode the patriarchal engineering of rape, no single justice can cure the rape culture.
It is quite natural to vent out our emotional empathy and support to the victim and her family, but we also need to translate such emotional outbursts into radically meaningful and intellectual conditions for eradicating such an evil called rape. “Certainly emotions can cloud one’s judgment, but … to leverage those emotions into meaningful intellectual activity is all the more important to their education”, says Yorie Hong. What are necessary to eradicate rape culture are not any political or bureaucratic interventions but solutions that would emanate from good education, ethics and culture. We need to question ourselves why, even after the Nirbhaya incidence, there have been recurrences of brutal rapes in our country. Though the politically educated society is trying to find a solution of rapes in laws, punishments and prisons, the actual ray of hope to fix this carnal sin lies in the moral ethics and humanity. Unfortunately, the most rational and educated people in our times have failed to realise this “wisdom”!
If rape has appeared to be a widespread culture, it is because we have reduced our estimations of rapes to patriarchy, system of justice, culture of punishments, media representation and public protests. Rational trial of rape may deter rapes in our society, but it is not a foolproof or permanent solution. The monstrous manifestations of rapes in our times, on one hand, and the increasing number of prisons, courts and police, on the other hand, are most conspicuous examples of our failures in understanding rape, rapists and rape culture. It is an irony, which we the people fail to comprehend, despite repeated instances of brutal and sensational rapes.
Read how William Shakespeare hyphens rape between court and conscience in his tragedy ‘Titus Andronicus’ (1593-94):
Sat: Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power,
Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.
Bas: Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own,
My truth-betrothed love and now my wife?
The writer is Associate Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University. Views are personal.