In an interview to BBC, Mukesh Singh, convicted along with five other men for the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh (Nirbhaya) in Delhi in 2012, said: “She invited the rape because she was out too late at night and would’ve survived had she submitted to the rape.”
The other day, as I was explaining an unsavoury situation at office to a man friend, I was struck by his nonchalant suggestion, “If you’re going to get raped, you might as well enjoy it.” I did get the import of the phrase in the context. It was supposed to mean to make the most of an unfavourable situation, to laugh through the pain, to make the process bearable. It had a similar meaning to ‘if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade’. However, the truth could not be farther off in this proverbial phrase.
The term rape originates from the Latin word rapere which means ‘to snatch, to grab, to carry off’. The fist rape law emerged in Babylon (modern day Iraq) during 1900 BC in the Code of Hammurabi. The view of the act of rape being forced and against the will of the person has remained constant throughout as the law changed its outlook from seeing the woman as the property of her father or husband to her being considered as an independent agent. Thus, the crucial premise in the case of a rape is the unwillingness of the person who is raped.
Rape is a non-consensual act. There is no iota of enjoyment in the act. When one is asked to ‘enjoy’ rape in case of its inevitability, the ground on which the definition of rape stands, collapses. It no longer remains rape. It becomes an act of sexual intimacy where the parties involved feel safe and respected, and work with each other in harmony to derive and provide pleasure from the act and from each other. None of these conditions hold true for rape.
Sexual intimacy involves coming together of partners for a physical act of sex with or without emotional closeness, and trusting the partner(s) with each other’s vulnerabilities. In complete contrast, in the case of rape, one is trying to escape from the violator. The environment is hostile and feelings of safety, trust and respect are replaced by fear, hatred, anger and despair. Instead of making each other comfortable, there is a total disregard for the victim’s emotions. It is not a mutually beneficial exchange. There is no aspect of giving in this interaction; it only involves an act of taking away by force (thus the etymology of the word). The interaction is an act of violence. It entails transgression of boundaries of both bodily as well as mental integrity. None of these evoke enjoyment in the slightest degree.
According to the World Population Review data on rape statistics by country, approximately 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced sexual harassment in their life. The stigma and blame attached to rape survivors prevent people from coming forward to report their cases. Thus, these statistics are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg of the rape epidemic. India does not feature among the top 10 countries such as South Africa, Botswana and Lesotho, but has been categorized among the countries with high rates of rape along with Bangladesh, Pakistan, Japan, China and the USA.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 31,677 rape cases were reported in India during 2021 – or around 87 rape cases every day on an average. There was a 19 percent increase in rape cases in 2021 when compared to 2020. Rajasthan recorded the highest number of rape cases in the country followed by Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The data also revealed that across India, in 97 percent of the rape cases, the offender was known to the woman. Of the total cases, 10 percent were committed against minors and nearly 64 percent were against women in the age group 18-30 years.
The aftermath of a rape is different for different people. Physical injuries may or may not be there, but the mental and emotional after-effects are many. Post traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, depression, suicidal thoughts, helplessness, disorientation, and rage are just some of the repercussions that a rape survivor experiences. Individuals who are survivors of sexual assault face social stigma which is a social devaluation leading to judgement from others, loss of status, and exclusion from other people and society at large.
Traditional gender roles expect men to be active or initiators in a heterosexual encounter, while women are expected to be passive and responsible for making the decision to engage or not in the encounter. Stereotypes and prejudices guide the way survivors are viewed by the society. Rape myths such as the survivor ‘must have done something’ for getting raped abound. Victim blaming, shaming, and not believing in the stories of the survivors are common. The social stigma attached to rape is so high that the law requires that the identity of the survivor should not be disclosed.
The first reactions to the Park Street rape case of Suzette Jordan in Kolkata (in 2012) were very telling of the victim blaming and shaming prejudices that run deep in the society. Questions were raised about her character because she, being a single mother of two, went to a pub to have drinks and then took a lift from men in a closed vehicle. The infraction of traditional gender norms and roles overwhelmingly took over the psyche of the civilized society and the breach of the stereotype was considered a crime which overwhelmed the crime of rape. I had girlfriends (all of them proud feminists) from one of the foremost educational institutes in India shrugging their shoulders in dismay, “What do you expect getting into a car full of men, and the men being drunk?” In a single swipe the woman was made accountable for what happened to her.
The tendency of not believing rape survivors and blaming them for the incident is quite common. When Mukesh Singh, one of Jyoti Singh’s rapists in 2012, doubled down on his claim that the girl is more responsible for rape than a boy, godman Asaram Bapu, who was himself convicted of rape in 2018, had infamously aired his views on the former case saying if Jyoti Singh had addressed her rapists as bhaiya (brother) and had not gotten into the bus with her boyfriend, the misconduct would not have been committed.
The judicial system too places the burden of proof on the survivor. The process can be extremely humiliating as has been witnessed time and again. One of the most recent cases is that of writer E. Jean Carroll accusing Donald Trump, the former President of the USA, of rape. Trump dismissed the allegations saying, “She is not my type.” Added to that was the impunity of Trump’s lawyer asking why did she not scream during the act.
Clearly, the allegations of the survivors are handled with insensitivity and callousness. This disbelief in the stories of the survivors adds to their trauma and is itself a damaging force. Not only does it put the credibility of the survivor in question, it also forewarns other people that reporting cases of sexual assault may put them in similar unpleasant situations, thus deterring them from reporting their experiences. This leads to even more impetuous behaviour by the violators.
The violence of the act of rape is exaggerated by the violence of the tedious and mortifying legal processes heaped on the survivor. At the end of the gruelling journey, one may still not be assured that justice will prevail as was seen in the case of Bilkis Bano, where the 11 convicts serving life sentences were prematurely released by the Gujarat government (in a course correction, on January 8, 2024, the Supreme Court quashed the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to the convicts and directed the convicts to surrender before the jail authorities within two weeks).
One cannot even begin to imagine the anguish and utter helplessness Bilkis Bano had to endure while the convicted were set free owing to ‘good behaviour’. This amounts to mental violence wrecked upon a survivor by a society that judges a rape survivor but becomes ‘emotional’ for the accused! Former Samajwadi Party supremo and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the Late Mulayam Singh Yadav, in his opposition to capital punishment for rape once said: “Ladke, ladke hain . . . galti ho jati hai, kya rape case mein phasi di jayegi?” (Boys will be boys . . . they commit mistakes . . . will they be hanged for rape?)
I might be labelled a feminist killjoy for reading too much into a phrase which was not meant to offend anyone. However, the trivialization of rape is also an act of violence. Rape is not something that should be talked about in a frivolous manner. Even the ‘not so serious’ acts of molestation leave a deep scar on the minds of the survivors.
Belief in the survivors’ accounts and empathy are of utmost importance in cases of sexual assault. Making light of rape not only adds insult to injury, but also strips away the violence integral to the act itself. This is not something that should worry women alone. Transgender people also deal with sexual assault, and yes, men get raped too.
The rape and horrific murder of a college student at Kamduni had generated a lot of public anger at that time. But 10 years later, the perpetrators have got away with much lighter punishment than expected. Some of them have been released, and the victim’s family is still under threat.
I get amazed over and over again how something so clearly violent as rape is not seen as “serious crime”. Worldwide most survivors are women, it is so much telling of the power game that patriarchy continues to perpetuate. And that is most obvious when rape is used in war to dehumanize and no one talks about it.