On 14th September 2020, we witnessed a heinous crime. A 19-year-old Dalit girl was brutally gang-raped by four men from the so-called “Upper Caste” in Hathras. The girl is no more as she passed away later that night. Also, it was claimed that the body of the victim was burned into ashes without the family’s approval.

It is a new normal we are living in. Rape is no alien to us and somehow I think we are responsible for such a monstrous crime. We need to change ourselves as a human being. UP Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath has ordered a CBI enquiry while the Congress party has sought this case as an opportunity to shape the careers of Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

The death of an innocent girl has been channelized into a political battle between the parties where everyone is blaming each other for the heinous crime. Our political leaders should have seized this opportunity to knock some sense into the minds of the people, rather they are seizing it as an opportunity to create a vote bank by their little PR gimmicks. 

It is sickening to see all this happening in a democratic country like India. Our Constitution provides liberty, equality, and fraternity to all. Still, there is this inhumane desire in a man to prove his masculinity over a woman by raping her. There is this diabolical desire in an upperclassman to prove his superiority over a lower-class man by mob lynchings. We have created a successful mockery of our Constitution and of being humans. 

In 2012, the Nirbhaya rape case had shaken the entire nation. Nirbhaya was brutally raped by four men in a moving bus. The streets were filled with demonstrations and protests at that time, we felt that a real change was coming soon. But after 8 years, I realize that nothing concrete happened, we are still at the same place where we were 8 years ago. This time, only the name of the girl and the place has changed. The story loosely remains the same. 

In a country where the former judge of the Supreme Court, Markandey Katju, says that sex is a natural urge in men and that the reason behind the rising number of rape cases is the rising rate of unemployment, we know that something is fundamentally wrong about the thinking process of the people of our country. As long as these people, who can go to any extent to prove their patriarchal theories, are in power, women are certainly not safe here. 

–Ashish Satyam, BMC 5th Semester, St Xavier’s College of Management and Technology, Patna 800011

  letters, naked politics, Rape