The Power of Protest - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 102

Repressed Patriarchal Society
The women's protest movement, unlike the earlier corruption demonstrations, was genu-
inely spontaneous and was significant because women suddenly found that, for thefirst time
in their lives, they could come out openly and talk about assaults that they had previously
kept quiet about. An astonishing number of women have stories of being seriously harassed
and attacked, often on buses where eve-teasing (men touching women provocatively) had
turned into something more insistent and aggressive. Other stories are of rape nearer home.
Statistics indicate that victims' relatives and neighbours are often the attackers. Police re-
cords show that in as many as 96 per cent of the cases men known to the victim were re-
sponsible for the rape. 10
Bollywood films increasingly encourage frustrated men to assume their victims are
available by depicting women provocatively, glorifying instant sex rather than relation-
ships. The easy accessibility of pornographic material on the internet 11 and mobile phones
is likely to have done even more than films to reduce respect for women and increase the
desires and frustrations of young men who have been brought up in a basically repressed
society.
India's patriarchal traditions, which have created a society where women have been
dominated by men who show them little respect, were on display in reactions to the outcry
over the gang rape. Illustrating the lack of concern about rape, political parties gave tick-
ets in the 2009 general election to six candidates who had declared that they had been
charged with rape, and 34 other candidates who declared that they had been charged with
crimes against women. 12 I n traditional male-dominated rural societies, and in the recently
urbanized north Indian states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, local clan-based councils of
male elders called khap panchayats rarely side with rape victims. When a spate of rapes
happened in Haryana, a khap panchayat said the solution was for the young to get married,
without any minimum age limit, so that their 'sexual desires find safe outlets'. Often young
girls who belong to the Dalit community ('untouchables' in the caste system) are raped in
a form of lower-caste oppression. Panchayats sometimes suggest a victim should marry the
rapist because, so the argument goes, no other man in the locality will have her. Women
are blamed for being provocative, or the intercourse is dubbed consensual - a line often
taken by the police. Women can also be subjected to a humiliating and irrelevant 'fingers
test' 13 to assess sexual activity, which defence lawyers then use to argue that rape has not
occurred because such activity has been frequent and consensual. It was only in 2013 that
the Supreme Court asked the government to change medical procedures. 14
Patriarchal and macho attitudes have been exacerbated by rapid economic change. Wo-
men have in the past 20 years or so become free and able to develop professional and other
careers where they progress rapidly, often outclassing men in their adaptability and lack of