These are the slight young men in faded clothes who hide their faces with scarves when the police parade them before TV cameras as the crowds outside chant for their heads. It is easy to fear and hate them, not just for their acts, but because much of India sees them as sub-humans, fit only to be ignored when present and disposed off when inconvenient. 'An eye for an eye' is the mantra now gripping a country whose founding father warned that this only ends up making the whole world blind.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Jehangir Pocha is the editor-in-chief of NewsX in India and a former editor of Businessworld. He is a contributing editor to The WorldPost.

NEW DELHI -- The new heresy in this country full of holy cows is to pity the rapist.

India is angry, very angry, over a continuing spate of gruesome rapes that have horrified the nation and turned rapists, molesters and harassers into the public enemy No. 1.

Almost every week another twisted and macabre rape is reported by India's excitable media, further fueling the public outrage that spilled over in December 2012 when a young girl the press named Damini was savagely gang-raped inside a bus.

Most Indians see rape simply as the result of misplaced machismo among sexually frustrated men, and they are flailing against the problem with some machismo of their own. Accountants, students, housewives and grandmothers, who've never raised more than an eyebrow at crime, are now joining activists in taking to the streets to demand rapists be shot, beaten to death, publicly executed, castrated and electrocuted.

Vigilante justice is also growing, with rapists often publicly beaten, sometimes even to death, paraded naked through the streets and castrated. 'An eye for an eye' is the mantra now gripping a country whose founding father warned that this only ends up making the whole world blind.

Jolted by the depth of public antipathy, India's chronically lethargic and incessantly squabbling legislators, who have barely allowed Parliament to function for five years, have roused themselves to pass stringent laws greatly expanding the definition of, and punishment for, rape. Now, even an unwanted sexual grope is considered full-blown rape, taking to a new extreme laws that say even a man who has consensual sex with a woman and then refuses to marry her is a rapist.

But little effort is being made to understand why so many of the young men born in India's timeless villages and tumultuous cities are becoming brutal sexual predators.

There is almost no inclination to accept that rape is really a crime of power and anger, a social disease. So even when a rapist is clearly psychologically disturbed, police, courts and activists in this country -- where mental health is barely understood and support for the death penalty is in the high 80s -- often sidestep the issue. Those who even suggest the need for "kinder, gentler" justice are mocked, pilloried and even accused of being anti-national.

Such palpable rage is understandable. For decades, even centuries, rape and other horrific crimes against women and children were often just shrugged off in India. It was the victims who were ostracized and humiliated with "finger tests" that involved government doctors probing their vaginas with bare hands. Judges would often ask them explicit questions and question their character while their tormentors, who almost always got bail easily, would jeer from their seats.

With rising education and empowerment, many previously silent voices are now aggressively fighting these feudal hangovers, something that is part of India's great face-off between modernity and medievalism.

But the one-dimensional nature of the crusade means it is failing.

Even after the passage of India's draconian anti-rape laws (which are also being widely misused to settle scores, but that's another story), there has been a consistent rise in rapes, particularly murderous gang rapes. Many of them transcend to new levels of grotesqueness and are committed an inhuman coldness that is even more disturbing.

Consider this: On New Year's Day a 16-year-old girl in Kolkatta was gang-raped, and when she threatened to complain, her attackers gang-raped her again, doused her in kerosene and set her ablaze. In Delhi, a five-year-old girl abducted by a neighbor was raped for two days and had bottles and needles inserted into her body, which was covered with burn and bite marks and wounds. In Lucknow in northern India, another five-year-old was mutilated, raped and killed after being stabbed 53 times. Days later, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in New Delhi while asking for directions. In Goa, a four-year-old Iranian girl was raped just days after a German student was raped by her yoga instructor. Even in Mumbai, generally considered India's safest city for women, a press photographer filming at a derelict city mill was raped by a gang who made her imitate scenes from a blue film and later confessed to raping several other women at the same spot.

The full data for 2013 is still not out, but in the state of Delhi alone the number of rapes has doubled to more than four a day. Chillingly, many of these were committed virtually in the open, in fields, city sidewalks and parks, with little fear of intervention from the public or law.

More chillingly, the real scale of the problem is unknown as most rapes still go unreported in India. When police nabbed a gang of nine men after a rape spree, they confessed to gang-raping a staggering 59 women, including several minors. But only 16 of those rapes had been reported.

All rational data, thinking and research is screaming to India that its rape problem is only poised to get worse. Countries, such as Britain and France are already warning their citizens against traveling to India, and across much of the country, women are afraid to venture out alone -- especially after dark -- because they are frequently teased, groped and molested.

Despite this, society is avoiding engaging directly with the problem to the extent that even simple community policing proposals have failed to take off anywhere.

There is also a steadfast refusal to deal with the deeper social and psychological causes behind India's spiraling sex crimes partly because no one has the time for it. Walk down any street and you will see India is a country in a hurry, even if it is not entirely sure where it wants to go. Only one goal is clear and indisputable: getting rich. The hustle to achieve this means little effort or attention goes towards anything else.

Rising wealth is certainly transforming some of India. In the last 15 years, the wealth of Indian billionaires has grown 12-fold, and is now enough to end absolute poverty in the country twice over. But two-thirds of all Indians, some 800 million people, still live with the frustration of making less than $2 per day.

Their outbursts of anger -- fistfights, road rage, and screaming matches -- are everywhere. But those in control of the public discourse are overlooking India's fraying social fabric and near-total breakdown in law and order because they are loath to challenge a system to which, and in which, they are accommodated.

Government is also too broken, especially at state and local levels, to do much. With tax evasion rampant, what little revenue governments get is blown up on populist schemes (that end up being milked by vested interests), interest payments, salaries, and, at a national level, defense. Spending on social and civic service is dismal.

So life in most cities and towns, where hundreds of millions are migrating in search of the "Indian dream" has become quite dehumanizing, not just for the poor but even the middle class. They live in soul-destroying hovels and cope with the stress of having to scrap every day with each other for the basics of life -- like power, water, sanitation and space. Though change has increased their social and financial ambitions, ancient hierarchies mean they go through the day being mocked, shouted at or otherwise disregarded, and live in mortal fear of the powerful, especially the police.

They are constantly bombarded with highly sexualized messages, particularly films that objectify women in the crassest ways, but lack the social training and opportunities to have open, healthy relationships -- and sometimes to even meet the opposite sex. The ostentatious display of wealth all around them makes them yearn for more, but they feel insecure, untrained and unprepared for the challenges of life because they are not given the tools -- such as education and fair access -- needed to outgrow their subsistence living.

It is young men nursing these powerful but inchoate feelings of frustration, inadequacy and resentment that wander the streets at night, looking for thrills, or just a way out. They are the amoral men emboldened by the virtual absence of law and order who gang up and goad each other to prey on women and children. Having never been treated with any consideration, they show none, and having only learnt to get by grabbing, they grab the closest, easiest thing -- sometimes a five-year-old, sometimes a 50-year-old, sometimes a friend's daughter, sometimes a stranger. Their violence is sharpest not when they commit their crime, but when someone tries to stop them, for records show the gravest violence is visited upon women who resist rape and Samaritans who try to prevent them.

These are the slight young men in faded clothes who hide their faces with scarves when the police parade them before TV cameras as the crowds outside chant for their heads. It is easy to fear and hate them, not just for their acts, but because much of India sees them as sub-humans, fit only to be ignored when present and disposed off when inconvenient.

It is long overdue that India begin to recognize how it is creating these monsters. Its continuing refusal to examine how a society once renowned for its empathy and rectitude is suffering serious dislocation, and how ill-equipped government, experts and families are to handle this, is causing millions to live in anger and frustration and condemning those who lash out to die at the gallows.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot