India doesn’t understand its rape problem

MUMBAI — “Rapists must be hanged,” said Aasan Koyi, from behind the counter of his south Mumbai coconut water stall on a recent afternoon. “Some people work; some study. Other people only know how to do obscene things. For that, they must be hanged.”

Koyi’s cold logic echoes the sentiment that has swept through much of India since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi in December 2012. In September 2013, a Delhi court sentenced four of her rapists to death.

Others have given up on the justice system altogether. In July, villagers in West Bengal responded to the alleged murder and gang rape of a 7-year-old girl by beating the 60-year-old man they suspected of the crime to death. In October, locals in the city of Ganganagar in Rajasthan apprehended a 40-year-old as he allegedly tried to rape a teenage girl. They dragged him into a nearby butcher shop and castrated him with a meat cleaver.

These incidents don’t occur in a vacuum. Protesters, politicians, andcelebrities have advocated vocally for harsher punishments for rapists, frompublic execution by firing squad to surgical castration. But violent retribution, judicial and extrajudicial alike, has done little to end rape. Statistics from India’s National Crime Records Bureau show that incidents of reported rape in the country increased 35.2 percent between 2012 and 2013.

Rather than solving the rape problem, the bloodlust pulsing through India has instead squelched the country’s ability to address the problem’s roots — something Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)government has said it intends prioritize. In 2013, for example, a whopping94 percent of rape cases involved offenders the victims knew, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Rape, in other words, most often occurs between friends, neighbors, and family members — a troubling social reality India refuses to grapple with.

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the advocacy group All India Progressive Women’s Association, argues that the obsession with punishment “deflect[s] attention from the accountability shared by the state” — its failure to address social norms that lead to sex crimes against women. These norms often emerge from legal and educational institutions that place little to no premium on gender equality. India’s preoccupation with capital punishment gives “individuals a way to distance themselves from potentially sexist beliefs they may themselves hold.”India’s preoccupation with capital punishment gives “individuals a way to distance themselves from potentially sexist beliefs they may themselves hold.

“Our original mandate was to recommend changes to the law,” explained Abhishek Tewari, counsel for the committee. “But … we realized that the solutions to problems of sexual assault and rape required a much larger, holistic approach,” he said. As the group consulted with social workers, psychologists, and other experts on gender-based violence over its 30 days of work, it “came to realize that there had never been a serious study in India directed at understanding the psychological factors that drive rape,” Tewari said.

But the likelihood of a deeper conversation on issues of rape and sexual assault in India seems in doubt. Few public officials have echoed Modi’s fresh thinking. On the contrary, Subramanian Swamy, a senior member of the BJP, recently made statements in which he stated his preference for castration of rapists as opposed to execution.

Lalitha Kumaramangalam, chair of the National Commission for Women, a government advisory body tasked with protecting and promoting the rights of women, and a member of the BJP’s National Executive, said she is “hopeful” that Modi’s government will implement some of the Verma Committee’s recommendations. But when asked for her party’s stance on recommending the death penalty for rapists, she was less accommodating. “As a party, we endorse no lenient measures for people considered hardened criminals.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/12/india-rape-verma-delhi-modi/

-> Hmmm.. Haven't we heard this castrate rapists solution many times from north indian sounding female handles on Sulekha & SuCH. Loose cannon Swamy appears to be losing his marbles as well. And I will have agree that Modi has been sensible on this issue.