Only in India, how Nirbhaya case normalised gangrape in four years

Rapes are not unusual. They occur every day in hundreds, if not thousands. They exist everywhere - in our homes, in our offices, in our back lanes, in our khets and khaliyans. Rapes have been a bane for our society. They have been eating away at people’s lives, leaving us scarred, broken, and confused.

Mostly they are embodied in the unexplained tears and agony of children whose mother has been raped, or the sorrow of the parents who have lost their daughter. They get manifested silently through the anguish of loved ones who cannot comprehend each other’s pain. Rarely, they shake our core and make us raise our voice against the status quo.

That rare moment happened on December 16, 2012. Who can forget the pain and the sorrow we all experienced as details of the gruesome night emerged, and the intensity of our rage as we poured out on the streets demanding change. It was a moment of hope for millions of rape survivors who had been suffering alone. We all cried for Nirbhaya. We said in unison this should not happen again.

But did Nirbhaya change anything? Are we less tolerant of rapes than before? Have conditions changed for the rape victims in the last four years? Moreover, has our attitude towards rape reformed at all?

Indian society is ironically very tolerant of rape. We don’t see rape or its accompanying omens like sexual harassment and objectification as a big deal. It is okay to look if you don’t touch. It is acceptable to call women whores behind their back if in front of them we call them mothers or sisters.

Rape is an anomaly in our understanding: that one time where one idiot went too far in this “art of enjoying women”. The common man thinks: the idiot didn’t get it, I do. I know how to look at a woman’s anatomy, enjoy it, but not to violate her.

The dictum is that biology is always asking for it but it is up to the men to not react. Rape is about self-control or personal morality. As a woman, however, statistically one must be lucky not to be raped. Unfortunately, rape is a systemic problem and one doesn’t need to look far to find its victims.

There are thousands of raped women in India but very few people are willing to talk about rape as a social endemic. The most appalling thing about being a rape survivor is the culture of silence surrounding it. There is culture of adjustment in which the women fruitlessly try to appear and act normal while battling a storm within.

Our sanskaars do not allow for open discussion of sexual matters. As a result, raped women are everywhere and yet rape is always on the back-burner as a social issue.

Nirbhaya was different. Nirbhaya let us go of the scruples and made us ask aloud how can we allow anyone to pull someone’s intestines for momentary pleasure? Nirbhaya was shocking because it underscored the contrast between common benign notions of rape and its cruel reality.

It brought home the inequality of consequences between the victim and her perpetrators. After all, while Nirbhaya lay on the hospital bed in a faraway land, her rapists seemingly went about their normal lives.

Nirbhaya reduced the psychological distance between us and the rape victims. Rape was suddenly familiar and close. Its viciousness all too real. In a simple way, it also explained to us that behind every rape victim there are other individuals that suffer.

A rape victim was no longer just a vagina - she was someone’s hope, someone’s dream, someone’s aspirations. This too was new for us - an idea of a woman who is not just her biology. Nirbhaya made us realise that rape is colossal and communal.

Yet, rape continues to be. Next to articles on rapes, there are quotes by politicians, panchayats, family members, friends that offer justifications for the act. They tell us women and children are just not that high up in the social ladder. They are dispensable.

Their account reclaims that rapists are people, and rape victims are not. No rape victim ever was. That’s how Jyoti Singh became Nirbhaya. Now all nobodies who are brutally gangraped are Nirbhayas. In India, rape remains to be an unfortunate slip rather than a crime.

It is truly disgraceful that even after the moment of understanding between rape victims and society at large, Nirbhaya did not enrage us enough to continue our agitation. It was not strong enough to dismantle the duplicitous narrative that condones rape.

Worse, Nirbhaya seemed to have lulled us into more complicity. She has become the universal story: a cultural reference point for such tragedies. Girls as young as three years old continue to be mutilated, bitten, left to die.

But we are more immune than before. Now we need something bigger than Nirbhaya to get us out on the streets. Nirbhaya has normalised brutal gangrape for us.

We cannot expect rape culture to be replaced overnight. Fighting the culture of objectification of women and its subsequent consequences requires sustained effort. It is insincere to demand a lasting change by erupting just once.

We must keep up the resistance. Otherwise, in the years to come mass outrage on Nirbhaya will look farcical. It will become a symbol of our habit of prioritising our convenience over doing what is right.

Also read: Rape victim breaks her silence on the abuse she faced. Wants Modi to read this