By Srikant Mohanty: A dream for a rape free India has finally come to be just a pipedream. Challenging the fear of draconian anti-rape laws, the rapists stage one heartless and inhuman act after another. The incidents of rape bring hair-raising tale of an iron rod thrust inside a girl after being molested by a group of drunken men in a bus.
The lawmakers remain in darkness, while groping in futility for the end of such inhuman acts but see no hope in working out a fruitful solution. As the recent incident of rape brought the death of girl who was simply burnt after a gang-rape, the nation hangs its head in shame, indulging in serious soul-search. Although, earlier rape was considered a sporadic act by some hooligans, a surprising rise and frequency in the same gruesome incidents reveal that India has achieved the least on the front of safety and security for the dignity of women.
“While the women have begun to accept new challenges, the patriarchal society is in no mood to give way…it is the same ideas about hedonism in the male’s mind that want to pervade forever. That mindset disallows woman a seat alongside the men. This is what at least the shameless rebellious male attitude makes clear. At least, stronger laws can hardly save the womenfolk from being targeted in group acts of molestation by men”-says Sharmista Shadangi, lamenting as she goes through the graphics of violence in the acts of rapes on minor girls and women in India in the recent past.
Women remained under “purdah” for a long time before independence, being barred from education and other privileges in life. Gradually, with the facilities of education, they grew and outshined males in many fields. But what initially stayed as strong resentment in the males’ attitude towards women gradually evolved into over-jealousness and a seemingly depraved males’ bastion made this clear with repetitive acts of rapes and killings of women.