Elephant in the Room

In September 2024, InkSights had turned its lens on the rape and murder of a young trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The accompanying caption observed the now familiar reactions following such an incident: women are handed a pamphlet with cautionary pointers, their freedoms are curtailed and the shame and blame quietly shifts from perpetrator to victim.

Here we are, two years later, with a strong feeling of deja vu. September saw a number of sexual assault cases — the Astha Gunj rape case where a 17-year-old was allegedly raped in a park by three men who posed as police officers, the case in which four teenagers allegedly raped and killed a minor girl in Swaroop Nagar and another where a teenage girl in Jamui, Bihar, was allegedly groped and assaulted on camera while returning from a coaching class with a friend. Within 24 hours of this last incident another minor girl was allegedly molested by a gang of men in Samastipur. In the last week of September, Outlook reported that at least 13 rape and assault cases were reported in Delhi-NCR alone. The “rape epidemic” as it is being referred to made headlines in September and continues to do so in October, despite changes in laws around sexual assault. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, following the ‘Nirbhaya’ rape case expanded the definition of rape, and made separate sections to punish acid attacks, voyeurism, stalking and sexual harassment. India is clearly not lacking in laws to deal with sexual crimes. Yes, there is police insensitivity, victim-blaming and shaming, investigative failures, trials can go on for many years and survivors face social ostracization.

Though the cause and punishment of rape can’t be simplified into a single reason, every time there’s a rape, we seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room — our collective failure to address gender inequalities at home, in school, in our curriculum, work spaces, society and institutions.

No amount of protests, ‘reclaim the night marches’ and op-eds will make up for this failure. We cannot legislate our way out of a culture that is steeped in inequality, disrespect to women, patriarchy, male entitlement, lack of sex education and teaching consent to boys. We have to look inwards. Into our homes, our conversations with our sons and daughters and into treating boys and girls equally.

Victim-blaming is international as is evident from the New York Governor, Kathy Hochul having to say recently, “If someone is too intoxicated to consent, it should not matter whether they chose to use drugs or alcohol. Voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang rape.” She was reacting to an alleged gang rape of a student that happened in 2024. The student at Cornell, then 20, filed a civil law suit in the New York State Supreme Court on September 16, two years after the incident. The victim’s lawyer, according to a BBC report says “she is not doing well as she finds herself ‘under siege’ from online sleuths seeking to identify her.” As is common with victims of sexual assault, this woman too has been accused of “asking for it” since she was intoxicated, judged for filing a law suit two years after the incident and accused of being manipulated to do so.

As protests erupted in Delhi and in other parts of India, with women and university students demanding safe spaces and justice, the Supreme Court found itself in agreement. Amidst the protests, our country’s top court said, according to a Guardian report, the five successive rape cases ‘starkly underlined a systematic failure’ and it could not help but ‘draw painful parallels to the Nirbhaya incident of 2012’.

InkSights is a monthly art series by NWMI member Anupama Bijur viewing current affairs through a gender and news lens.