Beyond Belief

"This is the mentality which most Indian men are suffering from unfortunately. That is the mindset that has been perpetrating the crime because they justify it indirectly; you asked for it so it is your responsibility."
Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research, New Delhi

Rapes in India, according to the head of the pro-Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh political party occurs only in cities.  Never in villages.  Village women never adapt to Western lifestyles. Were they to do so they would be inviting violation. This is the head of the political party representing the main opposition in India.

And what about the spiritual gurus that so many look to for inspiration toward the divine, the type of guru that interprets how best humankind can adapt itself to hope for redemption in the hereafter?  Take Asharam who stated, in his great wisdom, that the victim of the New Delhi gang rape/murder was responsible in equal measure for the horrors she underwent.

For she had it in her power to have "chanted God's name and fallen at the feet of the attackers", which would most certainly have halted them in their gruesome tracks.

And justice and the law in a country that prides itself on being the largest democracy in the world with a British tradition of jurisprudence overlaid with the usual Indian love of bureaucratic process?  Three of the five accused (and the sixth, a teen whose case is being handled separately in juvenile court) are represented by lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma, a Supreme Court lawyer, no less. 

His clients, he insists, are innocent of all charges brought against them. And this is how, precisely, they will plead.

The male companion of the murdered medical student was, furthermore, "wholly responsible" for what had occurred. It should have been well known to both young people who boarded that fateful bus that they were tempting ill fortune.  No unmarried couples should ever be out on the streets at night. 

They were, heedlessly, and as such became fair game.  His clients were mere puppets of a vengeful society.

"Until today I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady. Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect." Travelling late in the evening, and on public transport no less, was a clear invitation to disaster. The man's responsibility to protect the woman he was with was not met as it should have been.

"The man has broken the faith of the woman. If a man fails to protect the woman, or she has a single doubt about his failure to protect her, the woman will never go with that man."  There, we have this pronouncement on the highest authority; a Supreme Court lawyer.  "This is a very complicated case and the matter has not been solved yet."

It is quite incidental and of obviously little account that police claim to have DNA evidence linking all six men to the unspeakable atrocity. Blood samples taken from their stained clothing match that of the dead young woman. Five of the six illiterate, violent thugs and rapists are to be tried for abduction, rape and murder along with additional charges.

India is not alone in its burden of incongruously ignorant men with professional status.

Take, for example, the recent statement of U.S. Republican Representative of Georgia, Phil Gingrey, an obstetrician/gynaecologist for the past forty years who in his professional wisdom opened up in an interview to support the distinction between "legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape", and the biological ability of a woman to shut down her reproductive faculties after a rape.