Opinion Victims forever
I Spit on Your Grave is a shocking rape-and-vengeance film that confronts you with many questions in the context of last weeks slew of violence reported against minor girls
I Spit on Your Grave is a shocking rape-and-vengeance film that confronts you with many questions in the context of last weeks slew of violence reported against minor girls. In East Delhi,a five-year-old girl was locked into a room for two days and raped by two men. A bottle and pieces of candles were found in her vagina. Another abandoned five-year-old girl,allegedly raped and lying unconscious,was found outside Delhis AIIMS. Flown to a Nagpur hospital was a four-year-old girl,kidnapped,raped and in a coma.
This new happening of child rape in India is excruciatingly painful. But people tell me its not new,it merely sounds new because TV channels are flashing it noisily. When toddler girls and other women are being raped across the country,what conclusion can we come to for the reason why? Is it lack of sex education,lack of on-time sexual experience,frustration from unemployment,illiteracy or poverty thats making people advance towards sexual violence? Theres a school that believes women dress indecently which provokes men,so its womens fault that they get sexually abused. Should we then say that five-year-olds also dress to sexually provoke? Or is digital technology advancement ultimately responsible as pornography proliferates through the Internet onto mobile phones,instigating men to seek immediate release of their sexual energies.
Perhaps our social law and order system is too lenient and lax. Rapists are somehow becoming national heroes,widely discussed. Remember the question about what will happen to the rapist who was still a minor,although he was the cruellest of them all in the case of the 23-year-old girl who was fatally gang-raped inside a moving New Delhi bus last December? In the classic Hindi movie Sholay,theres the good man hero Jai and the bad man hero Gabbar. But its Gabbars dialogues that are more remembered,enacted in school functions and quoted even today. Normally film audiences hate a villain,but here the villain is somehow eulogised and made into an icon. It encourages bad characters like rapists to puff themselves up as having been macho,and not done any wrong.
How long will women remain victims of sexual ravage? Newspapers report of rapes every single day. I believe that rapists should be subjected to mass humiliation. Rapists need to experience psychological trauma before being handed over to the police for justice to prevail. Here the film I Spit on Your Grave by Meir Zarchi comes to mind for revealing the raw brutality of rape that only women can experience. Five local hoodlums senselessly rape the protagonist; even the local police are in league with the rapists. Her endless victimisation makes you despise the male species. Men in general are not sensitive enough to realise the damaging mental residue of such crimes.
Films like this and Stanley Kubricks Clockwork Orange churns the viewers stomach even as they raise hot debates,public protests and commentary on how to raise social consciousness against virulent sexual crimes. Clockwork Orange,with its sadistic rape among other disturbing ultra-violence committed by the psychopathic delinquent hero and his gang of thugs,made the film an all-time classic as the ultimate symbol of hooliganism. In spite of people mouthing moralistic talk,theres an audience for such gruesome entertainment. Influence from watching cold-blooded torture can unfortunately result in real-life rape.
Another victimisation of women is the unborn girl child snuffed out before birth. Boys are more valued socially,so if parents illegally discover a girl foetus,an abortion is done. Do women have the right to abort? Yes,Indias law allows abortion as a fundamental right for women to take control of their own bodies. In France,it was only after writer-philosopher Simone de Beauvoir protested with 343 sluts who signed a manifesto for it,did Health Minister Simone Veil get the law enacted in 1975. She had to fight protests from males and the Catholic Church,which to this day does not allow abortion.
Even with abortion having no religious barrier,India lacks trained paramedical personnel and facilities. So every two hours a woman dies because of abortion-related complications. In the 6.4 million abortions taking place every year,almost 3.6 million are unsafe,performed in unhygienic conditions by untrained people. Its pathetic that poor health services make pregnant women die.
Women victims now have tough new laws for punishing sexual crimes against them,but savage rape attacks on young and old alike prove implementation is not perfect. When the legal system is not quick and responsive,should women take up radical action themselves? Obviously,no law-abiding citizen can advocate that. Nor should we helplessly consider women to be doomed as victims forever. Its only when men sensitise other men through the window of Respect,and Save Women manifesto that Im promoting can women emerge from persecution. A correction of societal attitude towards girls and women is the need of the hour.
Shombit is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)
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