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What drives the Indian male to rape?

January 02, 2013 13:49 IST

The Indian man needs to learn that he isn't in control, that he is no one to control and that it is not he who is more than a woman. There isn't a competition between the sexes, says Chirag Shah.

Sadly, it's for the same reasons that India bribes, honks unnecessarily, drives drunk and over-speeds, why it pushes and pulls and can't form a line, also why it spits and urinates where it wants and why it refuses to clean its hands before dishing out food with the same hands...

India rapes because it lets its kids throw tantrums in public while turning a blind eye, why it looks at foreigners as dollars and Indians as trouble. It also rapes because it makes fun of the handicapped, weakness and intelligence. It rapes for the same reason it cheats people of their money, treats animals without respect and lives for society.

The same society that would be the first to run you out of existence, to ensure that your life is not worth living and that rape means your life is over. The same society in whose fear we dare not fail our exams or grow our hair too long or sing a song or wear revealing clothes or come home too late. It's the same society that can't protect and is the first to blame the system.

The impotent system made of impotent self-serving politicians and the impotent police and the impotent water and electrical supplier and so on. If there was no crime, the police wouldn't be able to put their kids in school, the underpaid and under-equipped constable is not going to risk his or her life for you. That is the reality. To blame comes easy, but who are you blaming?

The police that can't fire a bullet without written consent, the one that can't use handcuffs, the one that in most cases carries a lathi? I don't blame the police and I don't hail it. It's an impotent symbol just like our ruling party and the non-ruling ones. I don't expect better from either and I won't cry hoarse about it either.

I will, however, preach respect and practice respect. I will also learn to live for myself, with respect to society. I will also teach myself to be equal. The Indian woman herself needs to wake up to a new India as well. She needs to stop cowering to society, to her own family and to herself. The truth is that man and woman can't function without each other. A woman can do anything a man can, it's the man who can't give birth.

From childhood we are told that our sisters' only purpose is to get married and then manage the household while the man works. The Indian woman covers her head and her face, she eats after her husband, she is weaker because she feels that she is. She needs to be shown that its not. She needs to be felt empowered and she needs to stop feeling like she's lesser.

The Indian man needs to learn that he isn't in control, that he is no one to control and that it is not he who is more than a woman. There isn't a competition between the sexes. When the Indian man lacks personally, he takes out on the woman physically. He takes it out on her for a sense of betterment and ego. For the lack of respect and self-respect. The Indian man rapes for the same reason he has no respect for himself, in the same way he has no respect for his job or work. If he can't respect his livelihood, how can you expect him to respect anything let alone a woman.

Preach respect, teach respect, respect your self and the other, man woman or child. Rape is not sex, sex is pleasure and for both, rape is brutality, there is no pleasure in brutalising someone, anyone. Any man who has ever looked at a woman and said "cover up" is as pathetic as the man who molests her.

What sort of impotent men are we that we can't protect our women. How unaware do we pretend to be that we can't stand up for her dignity and fight for her. Are we only looking to have sex with her? Are we only looking at demoralising her and showing her that we men can do what we want but she cannot? Instead stand up and fight for her. Raise her and protect her.

Travel a bus and be aware for her. Walk the road at night and keep an eye out. Open your ears and eyes to trouble for her. Not because she can't do it for herself but because us men have crushed her faith. Our sex has let hers down. We have historically raped her mind in to fearing. It's time now to change. To create change. To be the change.

Chirag Shah