The Fighter

Recently, while I was working for my committee, The Legal Aid Committee at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Lucknow, I came across an FIR lodged by a 16 year old girl. The FIR was lodged by her against her father and paternal uncle. It gave a brutal account of  how she was sexually assaulted, molested and repeatedly raped by her father and uncle. They forced her to keep quiet and even her mother refused to help her. But she went against them all and lodged the FIR.
Why am I writing on such a sensitive topic? Because I personally think that this issue needs to be addressed. Our Government has made laws which are capable of protecting women in our country. The problem is with our society. A society which has always looked down upon women. A society which has always considered women to be inferior to men. A society which thinks that women are nothing but evil. Now that our mothers, sisters and daughters are dying at the hands of beasts, the society accepts the fact that women are important too and not just child bearing entities.
The people say that our society is a very cultured one and is being corrupted by western ideas. What culture are we talking about? While the rest of the world was busy studying, discovering, inventing and voyaging, we gave them a book on Kama, the Kamasutra. Culture where temples depicts pictures considered objectionable? Take a look at Mr. Nitin Gupta at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiOTwYIO5f0.
Article 21 of our Constitution provides us Right to live with dignity. A woman suffers in the society after she survives a rape. Dignity hurt. Fundamental Right violated. We take months to bring her to justice and treat her as if she was responsible for whatever happened to her.
Rape is not caused by women, provocative clothing, mobile phones, chowmein or anything else other than men with mental problems, a hurt ego and a desperate drive to prove their manliness.  A real man would never inflict pain on any other being. The people who rape are nothing but desperate perverts with an ego problem.
After we hear about a rape case through a T.V. channel or a newspaper, what is the reaction of the society? "Zarur usne chhote kapde pehne hongay!!" (She was surely wearing small, provocative clothes!). "Raat ko akele ghoom rahi hogi" (She must've been roaming around at night), "Usne sharaab pii thi" (She was drunk), "Arre uska Charitra hi aisa hoga" ( Oh! She must've been of a lowly/ loose character!). People, seriously? A five year old girl was raped. So now you want to make little girls wear sarees or salwar kurtas? A journalist was raped while she was going back home from work. So now you want women to stop working and being independent? You want to punish women for standing on their feet? You want to take away our rights? I am really sorry but that is not going to happen. Will the society understand that women are central to everything in this world. Why? Because they give birth to you. They raise you with all their love. They never even flinch when you cause grief or give them pain. Instead they try and take your problems and make them theirs. We do not want any other woman, a mother, sister or a daughter to die to teach the society a lesson. We have already had a lot of "Nirbhayas" and we cannot afford to have any more.
I wrote this post. I am not asserting any new fact. Just stating the bare, terrifying truth.  A lot of people will remark that they already know what is happening. My question to you, So what are you doing to save our mothers, sisters and daughters? Don't sit quietly make some noise. Women are not asking for a special treatment. But an equal and just treatment. Acts and laws protecting women do not grant us special rights. They just help women to enforce their existing rights which are denied to them by our so called "cultured" society.
And the 16 year old girl that went through all this, she is traumatized but she is still fighting. Proceedings are going to start and I will be there with her at each and every step cause now I have taken her responsibility. She is a Fighter. She will have justice.