{"id":2876,"date":"2014-06-15T11:48:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T11:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehadixit.in\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2023-09-15T13:24:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T13:24:46","slug":"rape-in-india-reading-between-the-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehadixit.in\/rape-in-india-reading-between-the-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Rape in India: Reading between the lines"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sometimes photographs \u2014 even ones that go viral \u2014 aren\u2019t worth a thousand words. Here\u2019s what they won\u2019t tell you.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n Neha Dixit<\/strong><\/p>\n In India, most public spaces are occupied by men. In a patriarchal society, many consider women out in public spaces to be either for male consumption or defiant creatures who need to be taught a lesson through sexual harassment.\u00a0A 2011 survey<\/a>\u00a0conducted by Jagori, an Indian women\u2019s empowerment group, shows that 42 percent of women in Delhi were harassed both physically and verbally while waiting for public transport.<\/p>\n Similarly, 50 percent of women in Delhi found the lack of access to clean and safe toilets a hindrance to their accessing public spaces. Even in big cities like Mumbai, for instance, there are\u00a0half as many public toilets for women<\/a>\u00a0as for men, and most of them close at 9 p.m., unlike the men\u2019s toilets, which are open all night. The two girls in Badaun were raped when they had gone out to the agricultural fields to relieve themselves. The government funds doled out to construct toilets under the sanitation campaign in Badaun were instead used to construct rooms in people\u2019s houses. The villagers said that constructing a rain-proof roof over their heads, which they could not otherwise afford, was a\u00a0bigger priority<\/a>\u00a0than constructing a toilet. According to\u00a0a 2013 report by Water Aid America<\/a>, 300 million women and girls all over India defecate in the open. A large majority belong to the poor lower castes in rural areas, who cannot afford a toilet. A recent study, “Danger, Disgust and Indignity<\/a>,” suggests that in 2013, 400 women and girls in Bihar, another northern state, were raped when they had gone out to defecate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sex education is largely seen as a Western-influenced practice that would pervert Indian morality. Yet sex ed is vital for juvenile boys, who may have distorted notions of sex and consent through pornography. In\u00a0a recent case<\/a>, a 14-year-old boy sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl in Ghaziabad district, bordering Delhi. The girl sustained several injuries. He was booked for rape and assault.<\/p>\n In India, showing pornography to a child is a criminal offense. Bhuwan Ribhu, the national secretary of the childhood advocacy nonprofit Bachpan Bachao Andolan, who interviewed to the 14-year-old-boy, says that he committed the assault after watching pornography on his mobile phone, and that such incidents have increased in the past five years. \u201cPornography is readily available over the counters in the form of DVDs and on the cellphones,\u201d he says. Ribhu thinks there is a lack of awareness about sexual crimes among children. \u201cChildren are not informed about \u2018good touch\u2019 and \u2018bad touch\u2019\u2026 There needs to be a massive drive at the school level, to educate children.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Following the December 2012 gang rape and subsequent mass protests, the Justice Verma Committee was formed to review rape laws. Among its\u00a0recommendations<\/a>\u00a0were police reforms and rehabilitative measures for survivors. The committee also insisted on the need for gender sensitization of the police, dominated by male officers and governed by archaic colonial laws, and for the recruiting of more women officers. In September 2012, a low-caste woman from the northern state of Haryana was gang-raped. In April 2013, she was\u00a0imprisoned for 10 days on charges of perjury<\/a>. She had withdrawn her statement against the rapists because of an economic boycott by the upper-caste council on her family. Her family members worked as agricultural laborers. With no financial help from the government, she and her family, who were dependent on the upper-caste landowners for their livelihood, had to withdraw the case in exchange of employment. According to the\u00a0National Commission for Women<\/a>, a rape survivor receives up to 200,000 rupees (US$3,350) within a period of one year of filing a police report. This amount is too little and comes too late to fight a never-ending legal battle against rapists. The\u00a0conviction rate in rape cases<\/a>\u00a0across India is an abysmal 26 percent.<\/p>\n Published by Al Jazeera America on June 15, 2014<\/em> Sometimes photographs \u2014 even ones that go viral \u2014 aren\u2019t worth a thousand words. Here\u2019s what they won\u2019t tell you. Neha Dixit In a village called Badaun in the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh in India, two teenage girls, cousins, were gang-raped and hanged from a tree. One girl wore a bright orange tunic with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,103],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"yoast_head":"\n1. The caste system<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
2. Migration<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
3. Public spaces<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
4. Moral policing<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
5. Sex education<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
6. Property rights<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
7. Sectarian violence<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
8. AFSPA<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
9. Politics<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
10. Laws and reforms<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\nLink to the post:\u00a0http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2014\/6\/15\/rape-in-india-readingbetweenthelines.html<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"