As a part of all the heated discussions on rape, one theme has been of harping about the pleasant past where no harm happened and the negative changes in the society that have taken place in the Indian society at the behest of the western thought and untamed women.
It is not a different take, it is the age old take. one which makes women responsible for all that happens to them even though she is restricted in most ways in her options and society abdicating its responsibility of holding men responsible for their actions.
It is risky for any body to be out in the night. Most attacks including murders by strangers happen in the night for both genders. But clothes and timing do not explain the following all of which have existed since time immemorial but is usually covered up
1. rape by relatives/known persons - this actually constitutes 90% of the rapes
2. pedophilia - you cannot truly think that a 2 year old or a 4 year old got raped because she was in a frock or was running naked
3. rape in war - where the sole purpose is - to show it to the men on how their property can be defiled with impunity, alongside looting and burning of houses and shops.
Rape of male children by known persons is sadly still not acknowledged in most places including India and hence very little is done to provide support to such survivors and victims.
The myth of the grand safe centuries is just that in most places including the rural areas. In both West and East, letting the landlord sleep with a servant's wife on the wedding night was a practice. For a king to see a beautiful girl and ask for her to be sent over, was again a practice. Then it may have been considered normal but it was still rape. Acquiescence due to the power difference in the relationship does not make it consensual.
Even today in North India a widow who stays back in the husband's home, is reduced to the family chattel. I heard of it first about 20 years ago from a gynecologist friend in an urban setting, of her patients who undergo various inhuman treatments when they continue to live in their marital homes since they don't have the option of returning to the parental or filial homes and no means of earning enough to bring up their children. In rajasthan, the younger brother "keeps" her . In punjab, at least the unmarried brother, marries her. If these acts were the norm, Sati actually begins to look like a rational option for the widowed woman.
30 years ago, one of my brother's friend from Haryana told him, that when the eldest brother gets married, its like all brothers now have a wife and all have access to her. I still remember my brother's shock even hours later when he was narrating the conversation to us. Khushwant Singh's joke books had i remember a joke in the same vein, where a daughter-in-law asked the mother-in-law to help her identify her husband, and got the reply, in all these years, i don't know who is my husband.
The South is hopefully better. At least i have not heard of such practices there, though there were rumours of a politician, when i was younger, who asked for girls he spotted on the roads to be sent to him. I have not checked whether he still does so but the thought that he could one day be the CM of Tamil Nadu is not very comfortable.
To hold western thoughts and ideas responsible is a pure head-in-the-sand reaction. India is as bad if not worse. Even apparently educated people tend to look at explanations and research that suits them. It is a rare academic who probably looks at all aspects and a rare reader who reads all the literature to see what makes most sense.
Recently I got into a Facebook spat with a stranger who sent links of research showing that men use aggression to help spread their genes. In actuality, there is also a lot of research that show that rape rarely leads to a healthy happy child that will survive long since the mother is not as keen to take care of the child even if she manages to carry the child to term after the traumatic experience. Research in various animals in fact shows that adultery and cuckolding is the best form of ensuring safe transmission of genes outside of a marriage. The consent of the mother is critical to the health of the child. And adultery and cuckolding are also age old practice. When there is a rule that says - don't practice adultery - you know that it happens often enough in a society.
As much as many people world over yearn for the yester-years when social rules went largely unquestioned, the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be forced back. More and more, people will be held responsible for what comes out of their actions. it is indeed time, they started acknowledging that and acting in consonance with the new society.
