SHAKTI STORIES

MP:  In your article for the NYT, the psychologist [who interviews rapists] Rajat Mitra said that it is still common for people to see rape as less of a crime and more of a social deviation. Could you tell me more about that?  Is it like an aberration against the family honor?

 

SR:  Yes. When I reached Chennai, I called up the father of the 11-year-old girl [in this rape case].  Obviously, the family was out of reach and the residents had put a literal wall of humans around the colony. They would guard the society and not let even like a fly in, you know, and they were not ready to talk about what it means for them to be living in that society [that had been responsible for the rape of this 11-year old] and the general fear or apprehension, they would not even want to talk about that.  Which was really worrisome to me. Because at the back of their minds this was getting their society a bad name.The police did not want to talk about it, the trauma that the girl might have been going through, or which way the investigation was going, or the profile of these men. And then the third place that I’d hit a roadblock was most unlikely of them, which is like “the place” to go to. It’s an NGO basically, it’s called Tulir, which is supposed to be dealing with children who suffer from sexual trauma.  And she did not want to go on the record and she kind of took offence to the fact that I was, in her mind, assuming these 17 men to be guilty of their crime even before they were convicted in a court of law.

 

MP:  Yeah.

 

SR:  These are the basic most important stakeholders, whom you want to reach out to, are just shutting you out, instead of saying “Okay, let's talk about this.” So then I tried to reach the girl’s family, the father.  And he initially refused to talk. But he passed on my number to his other daughter, and the daughter called me like in the next couple of days’ time, and the first thing she said is “I'm calling you because I want to set the record straight.”  The conversation here on social media and otherwise is on how did the parents kind of miss this whole thing. The parents were held responsible for what happened to the girl. Because here the question was about this little girl getting raped and sexually assaulted over a period of time in a place which is supposed to be the safest for their daughter.  She is not leaving the premises of their colony. She gets down and she goes cycling, and then she ends up getting raped by these guys who are supposed be protecting her. So she says that “the whole conversation is visibly so, and in a very disturbing manner shifting to my family”, pointing fingers on the parents. That’s how the whole story in my head changed.  And how the society had turned the table, it being less about the crime and the criminals, and more about the family. This is changing slowly, but this is what normally happens in a rape case.

 

MP:  Yeah.  Right, like blame the victim, not the criminal…

 

SR:  Like the Nirbhaya case, you know.  I mean, I interviewed Nirbhaya’s boyfriend at least a dozen times and initially he would not have even accept the fact that he was her boyfriend.  He even wanted to kind of… He saw some kind of a stigma attached to even that. So, he would say, “Oh, I was her friend, I was her friend. And I repeatedly told her not to stop for this bus, but she insisted, she insisted.”  Like even in death, he was trying to pass on the blame to her, you know. Which was the first time I was actually shocked at seeing how the victim-blaming starts. And then he said, “Oh, the girls’ family has got a job. They’ve a new house, they’ve got so much money.  I’ve got nothing.” And I was like, “But you’ve lost nothing.” You know, you are still alive, you are fine. He wrote for the Indian Express, kind of expressing his anger.

 

MP:  And what about you know the psychologist that you quoted said that he had worked with these convicted criminals, convicted rapists, their mindset.  What is that mindset? Can you talk about that?

 

SR:  Basically, he said that rape is not about passion, it’s about power.  And half the time we do not discuss the psychiatric disorder that rapists suffer from.  Like, in this case: pedophilia. So for all you know, he would have underline psychiatric conditions and maybe he is a sex addict. And rape is a tool of punishing. So one day when [rural men] migrate to cities, it's the same mindset that follows. Like one way of punishing women is sexually abusing them. This is supposed to be their right, more than something which they consider as wrong. In fact one fellow just told me, it’s exotic. It's very erotic. It's not really a gang rape technically because they raped [the 11-year-old] probably one at a time, 2-3 at a time, 3-4 at a time, then again one at a time. Instead of all 17 at the same time.  But it’s a gang, because they all had this hidden secret: they were all sexually perverse. Like “this is our secret”. And [rape] is okay for you, so it’s also okay for me to do it.

 

MP:  No, but there is something really deviant about that. The fact that 17 men can be lured and not one thinks that this is something wrong.

 

SR:  Exactly.Yeah.

 

MP:  What about the feminist and the whole gender movement in India? What impact have they had?I mean media is one big factor.

 

SR:  It's more like regional gender movement, which are the local voices, which put direct pressure versus like a few la-di-da women like sitting in these Delhi and Bombay-based studios waxing eloquent. For instance, I know this woman in Haryana who has been working for all these years, but she is hardly called now. She used to be called [to the studios], but she can't wax eloquent. She is not like an English born and bred, you know.  But again, people were doing more good through the cause of getting rape on this kind of platform. This is like a new thing. Like this gender thing. You know the Ranjana Kumaris of this world, no offence to her at all, are like a new phenomena. You know who are born out of these television studios.

 

MP:  Yes absolutely.

 

SR:  I prefer local women, local movements, which actually helped getting anything done. In fact the National Women’s Commission, that's another story actually. The National Bihar Women's Commission, they are the most limp body I ever saw.

 

MP:  So I’m asking, who are the heroes? You said the women at the grassroots level are doing the work.

 

Suhasini: The biggest hero here is the cops.  You know, local level police women. So there is a Mahila Thana.  Mahila Thana is a Women’s Police Station. But it’s like totally stuffed and it’s got a spritely set of Station House Officers and other women working under her. And she clearly does her job well. Superintendent of Police was another woman, who will not spare any.  And then of course the clear line comes from the Chief Minister’s office. You know, that’s where I kind of think that Nitish Kumar needs to get his due. That, A. He invited this private auditing players to kind of do an audit of shelter homes; and B. After that they did not try to leave any stone unturned in going after these guys.  

 

MP: I have one last question. You report for the New York Times, right? And the New York Times was of course an instrumental force in the #MeToo movement. What do you think the difference is between the Indian feminist movement and the #MeToo movement in America?

 

SR:  Well, the Indian feminist movement there's still a lot of hypocrisy. Like women for whatever reason, it's considered a social taboo, to go out and talk, although a lot of girls have started doing that, especially in cities. But it's true that initially it wasn't like as big as it is today. I think it's just about the cultural difference between the movements and it's just a matter of time when the hypocrisy is out of the window, and more and more women are encouraged by the families and spouses, and the people around them to fight it large, like just come out and talk openly about it. Once it is not shameful for you to come out and say that something like [sexual assault] happened with me, that day I think #MeToo would have arrived in India.

 

MP:  I see. And also you mentioned briefly a cultural difference. I assumed that you had mentioned it before that the village migrants are raised to dominate women, and think that women are their property.

 

Suhasini:  You can expand that to improve, it’s like the general male chauvinism which comes down from Manu's time.  You know Manu wrote the script of how women should behave in society. And that's a very non-centric mentality. And how men are supposed to be like the keepers of conscience and runners of household. And how women are supposed to be subservient, the one who should “must breed boys” in order to get liberation, for their souls to get liberated, is the kind of stuff that north Indian men and women are bred to believe in.And a lot of the times women too, like the mothers-in-law who are the perpetrators of atrocities on the daughters/daughters-in-law to kind of proof their point. So it's like the North Indian. In the south, it's like a society which run by women, for women, and of women. Here is the paternalistic society in the north. Like in the south the girl is going to be inheriting all the property, like she is the one who is going to be calling the shots and she is not going to change her surname to the husband's surname when she gets married. So it's like this fundamental strain in your conscience and your thoughts that you are born to and bred to believe, which is kind of... I don't know that's the cultural thing which is going to take probably…, it's changing but it's going to take generations for men to believe that women are their equals if not above them.