“Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime” wrote Herbert Ward.
A little girl, not more than 11, has been standing at a red light hoping to sell all the flowers her mother has entrusted her with.She knows the evening meal depends on it. She knocks at darkened windows of cars that stop not able to see who is inside.The rich like to remain invisible. Most of the windows remain shut, the light turns green and she moves away a tad disappointed. It has been a bad day. She has not sold many flowers. A e-rickshaw stops by and drops its passengers. The little girl approaches the driver in the hope of selling him a flew flowers. He tells her he will help het to sell ALL her flowers and makes her sit in his vehicle. The little girl desperate to sell her roses agrees. The man takes her to a nearby forest rapes her and believing her dead leaves her bleeding and unconscious and flees. The little girl regains consciousness and manages to reach her family. Her parents rush to the hospital and contact the police. The girl still shell shocked cannot narrate anything coherently. She is now undergoing medical treatment and counselling. Rape leaves scars not only on the body but deep within the mind, spirit and the soul.
This is not an imaginary story. This incident happened in Delhi on January 21, 2026!
The police has managed to arrest the perpetrator who confessed that he has seen the little girl many times and had planned the abduction. He is 40 year old. She was 11!
We all know that the accused will at best spend some time in jail and will be set free. The little girl will carry this pain for the length of a life time.
When we started our work over two decades ago, there was a young girl who use to attend our classes but always sat away from the others and no one talked to her. I watched this for a while then decided to find out why this happened. The young girl in question had be raped when she was 3 by her neighbour. The man spent 5 years in jail and then was released to carry on his life as if nothing happened. The girl however was ostracised and branded as the ‘raped one’ as if she was responsible for the rape. This terrible unfair and abhorrent treatment was meted out to her for no fault of hers. That is why no one talked to her in class. I saw red and set out to rectify the situation by explaining things to her peers. Soon the issue was sorted and the girl sat with her friends.
This is the stark reality. Rape victims are often targeted. It seems to always be the fault of the woman: the way she was dressed, the fact that she was out at night. Recently a Chief Minister, who is also a woman held the same discourse.
I have recently been perusing the over 2000 blogs I have written over the past two decades. I realised with dismay that over 150 of them are about rape.
Way back in 2011 a young woman was raped in a bus in India’s capital city. There was a hue and cry. Civil society ‘woke’ up from its habitual torpor and some action was taken. But then we all retreated back and rapes continued mercilessly. From babies a few months old to women above 70, every one was rape material!
There are 92 rapes in India every day or a rape every 15 minutes, that is a whopping number of rapes between December 2011 and January 2026. ( 92 x 365 x 15 = 503700).
Does it take 503700 rapes to wake us up!
A little girl was raped last week. Quietly, without fuss. She was a flower girl and no one cares about flower girls at red lights. So there will be no lighting candles, holding placards, writing soul stirring poems, marching on the street, making noise, clamouring for death penalty and fast track courts. Just silence and a small snippet on page 5 of one newspaper.
When I expressed outrage on social media on the brutalisation, rape and murder of another child and asked the question we all want an answer to” WHEN WILL IT END?” a friend wrote back: never in India. I was shocked and angered but mulled the answer and realised that what he wrote was true.
It is not that ‘rape’ does not make news. It does time and again when the rape is brutal or when the victim is a child or even a baby. But still we do not take to the streets every time we hear of a rape. When the rape is laced with other overtones like politics or religion then it makes good copy for the TRP hungry media we hear about it relentlessly for a few days. But what happens. Nothing. A few empty promises by the powers that be, some noise by the opposition in true electoral game mode and we naively believe them and go back to our comfort zones while somewhere in India someone is raped every 15 minutes. No one is held responsible, neither we the civil society nor politicians and rulers. Our outrage is short lived. Or memory even shorter.
We are actually barking up the wrong tree.
It is not severe punishment like hanging, or even stringent laws that will bring the change we seek. We have ample proof of that. The journey is within, within each one of us, within our social mores, our so called traditions, our skewed beliefs, our education system, our ‘values’ etc. That is hallowed ground everyone is scared to touch. Who will bell the cat.
Our politicians? No way! This is the best electoral game fodder and no political party would want to lose it. It could bring down a government. So they use it to the maximum and will continue to do so. It has all the ingredients for the most toxic brew: caste and creed, who would want to give that up.
Our so called religious leaders? No way again. First many indulge in such acts in the name of faith. But there are more pernicious reasons: they need to maintain status quo, or else their power may decrease. I often wonder why our religious Godmen who have congregations of millions of followers, TV channels and so on never talk of gender equality, child marriage etc? They could bring a sea change. But they need to play to the gallery too!
No one wants to rock the boat.
To end rapes one has to address uncomfortable issues. Rape is about power. A power instilled in a male child from the moment he is conceived. he is born superior, superior to his female siblings, the ones living or the ones killed in the womb. The first person responsible for making him aware of his power is his mother, a woman. That is how it begins, across social classes, across religion, across caste. Genders are not equal. The boy is brought up differently: better food, clothes, schools; more freedom; more of everything. His escapades are forgotten, his aberrations too. Boys will be boys! he is brought up in an environment where girls/women are considered inferior. He sees it everyday. That is what he learns. That is the only value system he is made aware of.
Look at our blessings: may you have thousand sons! Never a thousand daughters. It is time we treated our daughters and sons equally.
Then there is the matter of honour! Who decided to burden the tender shoulder of a girl with the weight of the family’s honour. It is too heavy a burden. It usurps her right to childhood. It hijacks her right to laugh and run and play like her brothers do. Why does she have to bear te burden of a veil, the need to cover her heard, hide her ankles, sit demurely. Why is the subjected to the deafening code of silence should she dare mention any sexual abuse. Why is she made to be the victim.Why!
And if she dares break the code then why is she always asked what she wore, where she was, what she drank, what time was it as if each of these can condone rape. No perp is ever asked that is he. Boys will be boys and men will be men.
And then let us look at education. Surreptitiously and zealously sex education, the only weapon a child can have to protect herself, was taken off the curriculum in the name of tradition, of samskaras. I ask is rape in our samskaras! In our DNA. It is time we reinstate age appropriate sex education in every school. Growing children have to understand how their bodies change, what is normal, what is age appropriate. It is time to bring sex out of the CLOSET.
This will not happen in a day or maybe not even in a generation, but the ball has to be set rolling. Or else we can continue to cry RAPE every 503700 rapes ad infinitum as nauseam.
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