Rape, laws and the Indian state
I got the idea for writing about an extended post on rape in India, not just from the Dhananjay Chatterjee incident, but from a comment on this networking site called Orkut. The Calcutta community on this site has been having a furious debate on the death penalty for Dhananjay Chatterjee and one guy, Siddhartha, has some interesting things to say. I am cutting and pasting the comment that got me thinking:
I'm not particularly fond of death as a concept. There have been many people who have been raped and have managed to reconstruct their lives (Germaine Greer?). Death is a one-way road. I personally would choose hope (however faint) over finality. If only for revenge. If only for the struggle to survive and rebuild. There's a very strong urge to hang on to life.
If I were a woman, I think I would prefer to be raped than to be murdered. Now womens' rights groups please don't attack me -- I do NOT, emphatically NOT, even faintly condone either crime. Both are abhorrent and both should be punished exemplarily.
Anyway, this got me thinking about death versus rape etc. And this is what I wrote in response to what Siddhartha had to say:
Bit ambivalent about the death versus rape thing. On the whole, as a woman, I guess, I'd reluctantly agree with Siddhartha- I'd prefer to live and rebuild my life. Although I guess that might be a function of my family, those around me, the class I belong to etc- which will allow me to rebuild my life. Can't say I speak for a majority of women....
I guess, as I said in an earlier post, rape is every woman's ultimate nightmare. So what do you do when you get raped in a country where a woman is raped every hour? Well, ideally you should not bathe, shower, or change clothes. This is important to preserve any evidence of the rape. Go to a friend, well known social worker or to a place where you know someone can help you. Report the rape to the authorities. Seek counseling; this can help you deal with the issues you might face after the attack. But all of this sounds easier said than done. Because if you do wish to seek action against the rapist, you will then come up against the rape laws of the Indian state. I found two aspects of rape laws in India very troubling (and I'm no lawyer, this is very much a layperson's perspective)- first, that your personal life is a matter of concern. As the Mathura case showed, if you are considered of 'loose moral character' that will be exploited to the hilt by the defence lawyers. However, I have a even more fundamental question: what if you are a prostitute and you are raped? Does the fact that you sell your body for money mean that your body can be violated at will?
Here's another article about the unfairness of rape laws in India. What really disturbed me about this article, was the bit about 'Other Unjust Judgements' and that takes me to the second aspect of rape laws in India- that of consent. If you are raped, to secure conviction you must show that you resisted. So how do you show that? As the Mohammad Habib case showed, if you're a 7 year old girl, and were unable to inflict damage on the rapist's penis, he might go scot free. This whole consent thing is very disturbing because if you are say, being gangraped, by say five men, and you are a 16 year old, struggle becomes almost futile. You might be beaten up, you might become senseless.
One of my friends in Delhi told me something interesting once. She said that she was once fighting physically with her kid brother almost five years younger, who was about 15 at this time and she said, he's become so so strong. He can hold my wrists in an iron grip and I can't get out. (She's 5' 10" and a big girl to boot). It got us talking about resisting men and she rightly pointed out, "how on earth do I resist successfully against someone who rapes me if my 15 year old brother while playfully fighting can pin me down and overpower me?" This is a very critical point, simply because as the Sakina case showed, a 16 year old girl, sold into prostitution, and forced into having sex, couldn't plead rape, because it was assumed that she was having sex willingly. And of course, the entire Mathura case revolved around the concept of consent as well.
So, how much should I resist, and how should I resist someone bigger and stronger, or instead some people, if I have to prove that I was raped against my consent?
I think there are some important questions here that deserve to be answered before rape laws can truly become gender sensitive.
3 Comments:
The question of death for rape (or anything else for that matter) has to be looked at from a different perspective than a biblical eye for an eye. The criminal justice system of a welfare state can not and should not be vindictive in nature. Even though everyone is responsible for their own actions, we are at least partly shaped by our social circumstances and to that extent all are responsible for what happens in society.
The logic behind any sentence should be to remove a person from free society if the continued freedom of that person is dangerous to others. I can not see how a death sentence enhances this primary goal which may be met by say, life without parole. Some may say that such a sentence is relatively "easy", but its called a life sentence for a reason: because its a life thats taken away, only you are not killed.
If as people point out, a woman is raped every hour, and murder is committed may be every 2/3/4 hours, then why is one judged to be particularly heinous and a death sentence is handed out, and in other cases people get off lightly ?
And then, murder and rape, heinous and decadent though they may be, are still human. Its a very old crime (perhaps the first crime ?) and the emotions that drive someone commit such a crime are human, however nasty though they may be. The right to life is a basic human right and can not be taken away, even by the state.
I was chomping through ur blog, did u manage to meet Yvette Rosser ? how abt a post abt that meeting :-)
Nope, haven't met Yvette Rosser. I think she lives in Texas, and I live in the UK! Will be reading more of what she writes in the next week or so and will blog that.
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