An indignant refrain after the rape and murder in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Hospital is about the attack occurring in the victim’s “own workplace”, the assumption being that this at least should have been a safe haven. The problem is in the word “own”. As the “Reclaim the Night” marches indicate, public spaces, workspaces, and even homes are still not places to which women can claim unconditional ownership. Whether boardrooms or surgery rooms, women are still—discreetly or blatantly—considered intruders; they have to be watchful as strutting males lay claim to their body and mind, their agency and authority. This is the dirty truth of patriarchy. It is why the first official comment after the Kolkata incident asked why the victim was in the room at night, not why the rapist was there.
One recalls a similar chilling comment from one of the rapist-murderers in the Nirbhaya case, who said he did it because she was out at night, entirely assured that she therefore “deserved” to be raped. The socialisation of men in India is such that they osmotically absorb from infancy the idea that a female body is by default “available” for male consumption. In the wake of the Kolkata episode, there are disturbing videos of young boys (and girls) telling reporters that the victim must share the blame, that men cannot control themselves, that women should stay home to be safe. Conservative societies also vest the idea of “honour” solely in female bodies, thus deeply stigmatising rape victims, a sentiment then internalised by women, and in turn giving rise to the horrific idea that rape is a fate worse than death, thus completing the cycle of female devaluation.
The phrase “rape culture”, coined in the 1970s, acknowledges the global phenomenon of a rising social predilection towards rape, which has sprouted from the nasty bogs of glamourised sexual violence, extreme misogyny in language and imagery, and the normalisation of violence on and disrespect of women. Popular culture, via lyrics, memes, jokes, or films like Arjun Reddy and Animal, routinely glorifies violence against women and the sinister idea that violence is extreme love.
If we apply the psychologist Albert Bandura’s premise that humans learn behaviour through observational learning, by picking up stuff they see and hear, it is clear how easily rape is learnt as acceptable behaviour—from drinking buddies, from forwards of rape porn and rape jokes, from the rash of films that debase women, and in homes where women are customarily dismissed. The tendency is particularly marked in societies that revel in war culture and macho posturing, signs familiar in social discourse in India today.
After the Kolkata incident, Google Trends data for India reportedly showed a spike in searches for the victim’s rape video and for her name in pornography sites, a phenomenon recounted in 2019 too when a veterinary doctor was raped and killed in Hyderabad. The inherent voyeurism of this is unhealthy enough but add to it that the terms “rape” and “pornography” are being interlinked and we are looking at a very sick society indeed. There is also reason to believe that the increasing anxiety and sense of male lack, as women become more empowered, might be triggering the violence.
Each time there is outrage about a particularly gruesome rape and killing, there is a clamour for stricter laws, for capital punishment. The solution, however, lies not in more laws but in more change, a sea change that must begin in homes and classrooms and take down the patriarchy brick by brick. The slogan Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao translates into “Save the girl child, Educate the girl child”. But the real question for India is: who is going to educate the boy child?
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