Rape(d)

Naina Jha is a PR Professional and a travel hog, who loves to explore. She loves music, dance and sports. She has a keen interest in social work and has worked with an NGO for 5 years. She is actively working on the state of education in slums.

Naina is a part of The Writer’s Movement at Safecity because the incidents happening against women are infuriating her. She believes that if we won’t talk about it, the existence of women would be in danger. She says “I feel it’s high time that we should stand together against such acrid crimes against women, and Safecity is one such platform working on this.”

Rape has latched onto our consciousness and eaten into the comfortable fabric of our lives. Every time I hear about it, an impotent rage is uttered. The image it evokes is unbearably terrifying, even dooming.   I feel rape has become an acrid actuality of our times in our country. Though these brutal realities have been a part of India for ages. It’s just that we, now, get to know about such excruciating crimes happening around because of a powerful communication web called media.

Now if we see the major reason behind rapes, we will find our patriarchal society as well as set mindset of society since ages are guilty. For instance, we never tell our son to behave, instead we tell our daughters not to step outside because “zamana kharab hai”! We often see when a girl or women, even kids are raped, society develops a very substandard picture of them. You may hear people saying this girl has washed our name & respect. They see her as if she is a culprit and she invited those barbarian men to rape her. In addition, some proclaimed experts come with rubbish statements like short dresses provoke men. But hello the wrong has been done to us, so how do I become a culprit? We never wanted to be in that situation. And my suggestion to those who put their so called ‘izzat’ into women’s vagina; please change your mindset because we, women, never put our respect there. And rape doesn’t make us dirty because it has just wronged my body, not my soul or mind.

If we want to lower down the volume of rape, molestation and other such acrimonious crimes, we need to talk about it. Just candle marches won’t stop these crimes. We need to tell our daughters who have suffered such mishaps that they are not wrong and they have every right to live. We need to make our daughters understand the danger and to be able to read warning signs and enable her to cope positively in the event of an adversity. Make women confident about her body, not resentful of it. Make her feel proud of her feminity, not threatened or vulnerable on account of it.