BBC documentary India's Daughter - Defaming India

         Recently, we have seen people from Israel and Britain worried about the conditions of women in India. Moreover, as a token of sympathy they have come up with a film to expose Indian men and the Indian culture. According to them, women in India are in a very depressing situation. They are deprived of human rights. They are attacked, molested and murdered by the male dominated Indian society, thus concluding and accusing the Indian culture to be a demonic one

 

        How do they jump to such conclusions? I still wonder! They blame the complete society, the complete civilization, without giving a look in their own house. It is sick to interview a criminal and determine the entire society on that basis. If so bothered ,why did the documentary producer pay Rs Rs 40,000 to the rape convict. Why wasn’t a documentary made based on Jimmy Savile, who is accused of hundreds of sexual assault cases ?

        Interviewing a criminal minded person, and judging a whole society is just a naive act. Do they expect divine preachings from criminals in their country? 
Didn’t the interviewers see the whole nation on the streets the very next day? How many times such events of public anger have taken place in their country. People in India came on street because women's are actually respected in India. And I truly believe every Indian shared the same feeling of utmost anger against the convicts and wanted them dead or worse.

        No society is free from evil. Whatsoever, we should be ashamed of ourselves if there is even a single case of assault. There is no emergence of feminism . Feminism is inherent in the nature of this country. Indian mothers still look after the budget of their families in maximum Indian households.

So I feel the reason, they still look at India as their colony because of the branding of less researched media , tagged intellectuals and feminists.

Rapes do not take place only in India. Facts show a different story.

Above chart represents the countries arranged on the basis of Human Development Index. Let’s have a look at the statistics about the countries accusing India of being ill cultured.

1.    UK standing at 14th position, has 28.8 rape cases per 1,00,000 population.
2.    Israel at 19th position has 17.5 rape cases per 1,00,000  population.
3.    Equipped with high tech policing system and bolstering Stanford, Harvard, MIT ,United States stands on 5th position having 27.3 rape cases per 1,00,00 population.
4.    Sweden placed on 12th position is the worst among them with 63.5 rapes per 1,00,000  population.

One second, where is India? Where is the country of illiterates? Where is the country having 6 lakh 38 thousand villages but only 15 thousand police stations to patrol the population?
Well, India is placed on 135th position and has 1.8 rape cases reported per 1,00,000 population.
Some will argue that ratio is small but total number must be huge considering its population.

Consider Sweden with 63.5 rape cases per Lakh. Scale Sweden population to India's population and now calculate the rape rate. This simple calculation blows out ones mind!
Doesn’t this statics shame the US , the UK , the Germans or the Israelis ?

Now who is barbaric? Wasn't the case of 16 year old girl in Steubenville, Ohio dragged and raped from pub to pub by High School Football team. Isn't this monstrous? Did it even make it to the news? Forget the punishment, not even a single convict was arrested until January, 2013.

Now who is ill-cultured? Where are women rights?

As I had mentioned it earlier , the problem is with the media and tagged intellectuals. Indian news channels portray rapes as stories and run them like movies. How many times have you seen the British channels showing rape assaults? How many times the news channels and the newspaper talk of 28 rape cases per population in United States? Have you ever heard of any rape cases from Switzerland or Israel or Norway or Sweden?  Rarely. Right!!

While we are busy de-branding ourselves. Immediate effects are already in place. A German university has banned an Indian student accusing him to be a potential rapist just because he is an Indian. Professor must be saying 'We have seen it in the BBC documentary' it in his mind. Does it not sound racist?

There is no media who publishes stories of  hundred Crore people in India taking care of their parents, stories of  brothers respecting  their sisters, stories of students respecting their teachers.
We should take note of one thing, we are far more civilized and decades ahead of them. But our enslaved mind does not let us think of these things. Every moment we are reiterated of being barbaric, being corrupted and so on.

And look who does the talking?

    A  country standing on the skeleton of 20 million natives.  A  country who has experienced the worst civil war in human history, where slavery was legal right upto the twentieth century.
 It is astonishing to know the status of women in Europe and in Middle East. They are considered inferior to men. In Islamic countries, a rape victim requires at least 4 witness for it to be proved. An organisation in Pakistan even rejects DNA samples as primary evidence. Women cannot exercise their vote in Saudi Arabia even today. Women are not allowed to vote for electing pope in Vatican city.

Women received voting rights in US no later than 1920. Whereas women in Switzerland, France, Germany and UK received voting rights in the years 1971,1944,1918 and 1918 respectively.
Can we even imagine a debate over women’s voting rights in India? Women's in UP voted to elect their CM Sucheta Kriplani after India's Independence. No one even thought of questioning it.

Perhaps India is one of the few countries where we have feminine gods. In fact according to Bharatiya tradition cosmic energy is feminine in nature and is called Shakti. We celebrate numerous festivals to worship feminine power. This is the reason why we say “yatra nariyatav pujyante tatra ramante devta” which means “Gods exist where women are worshiped”.

We have to stop demeaning ourselves and try to find out a solution to reduce the crime rates.
What is the solution then? Its not simple but not impossible too. Some critics say that women are themselves responsible due to their provocative clothes. This cannot be completely true. If clothes were responsible there wouldn't have any cases of rapes in Islamic countries with Sharia implemented. But they too have number of rape cases. Strict policing system too doesn't help that much as in the case of US. Only clue taking closer is the loss of moral values. Again what is causing the loss in moral values?  Talking of India, its the Macaulay education which is primarily responsible. Also provocative movies and idiotic comedy shows adds oil to the fire. But again these are my views, we can discuss and debate on this.

- Niraj Yadav, Abhay Soningra.

References:

1.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/01/delhi-rape-damini 

2.http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/03/professionals-blamed-oxfordshire-girls-for-their-sexual-abuse-report-finds

3.http://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/article1453514.ece

4.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/09/clinton-founded-group-sponsors-u-s-premiere-of-banned-indian-rape-film/?postshare=2451425901670760..The

5.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/100000-assaults-1000-rapists-sentenced-shockingly-low-conviction-rates-revealed-8446058.html

6.https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates#.VPgcAGZkWCE.twitter

7.http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/BBC-Banned-Investigative-Programme-that-Threw-Light-on-Sexual-Assault-by-Its-Own-Employee/2015/03/07/article2702538.ece

8.http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15635#.VP5kk47hrK-

9.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-369262/Women-blame-raped.html
10.S Gurumurthy public discourses.