Editor's Note
This article is similar to the one written by the author six years back and published in Fauji India Magazine ,July 2018 issue .
The author has brought out several additional happenings and linked issues that have surfaced during this 6 years gap .
Do read and circulate widely as these issues concern the nation and the affected citizens .
Editor ,MVI
1. Introduction. Indeed why? I ask because all of us are not isolated from the mainstream. I walk, eat, travel, commute and enjoy leisure in the very same space, as do others. Every working man or woman and their daughters, sons, mothers, sisters, aunts are exposed to sexual marauders who prowl Indian cities, towns, villages, buses, taxis, cinema halls, trains, highways. The predators hang around schools, colleges, lonely roads, restaurants, places of worship; they are omnipresent yet invisible. The dissatisfaction over making death a possible punishment for raping a child must be looked at differently. The irreparable injury, both physical and emotional, that the rape of a child causes cannot be translated into words. The crime needs swift disposal without a second visit, if proven beyond doubt, that a child has been raped.
2. Look at the Number of Susceptible Children. India’s area of 3.287 million square kms is only 2.4% of the earth’s landmass, but holds 16.7% of the world population. Statistics of 2004 say that of the 194 million kids between the ages of 6 to 14 years, at least 8 million do not attend school, today after 20 years we can deduce that about 190 million kids attend school. The death penalty is to protect these 190 million children, our future. Include the children of nomads and refugees and we get about 200 million kids, with about 90 million daughters. A staggering number available to be raped by men. The death penalty is targeted against those men who wilfully, repeatedly, cruelly, sadistically, knowingly, premeditatedly, assault our girls. What can we do about such brutality? Even teenage boys have indulged in such cruelty. What turns an ordinary male into a fervid predator that banishes all sanity? As long as the rapist remains free, he will repeat his act. Because for him it is a victory. It is this truth that commentators, analysts, netas, self styled influencers, right to life champions ignore. Why?
3. Bombastic News Reporting. The 24/7 TV space has a problem to fill the 8760 hours in a year. How the rape and murder of a child can be ‘breaking news’ is reprehensible. It is heart breaking news, but ‘breaking’? The sensationalizing of horrific brutal events is valueless, but ask media to show restraint, and they cry murder of freedom and cramping of the right to report. When stringent laws, including death, are proposed, this very same media protests, asking whether it will end child rapes? A more stupid query could not have been posed; does any law anywhere on Earth, stop crimes being committed? Media gives so much visibility to rapists, that it glorifies him with attendant shame to the child and her family. This is what Right to Report does to a violated girl. Did the Report stop further rapes?
4. What Really Transpires and Why? Seems to be unanswerable. Debates, articles, seminars, sociologists, psychologists, legal experts have no answers. Parents, teachers, legislators, police, jurists do not have answers. That adults rape kids in India is a fact. That most victims are known to the rapist is a truth. That victims’ family invariably hide the crime is well established. That adult rapists escape exposure, punishment, and persist in their heinous acts on the very same or other kids is known. Then we must conclude that child rapists commit their crime because they know that punishment is impossible. The dishonour that will descend upon the girl child, parents, grandparents and siblings if the rape is revealed, keeps the rapist secure. He feels no remorse or guilt, and does not get chastised by his wife, his children, his parents, his siblings. While everyone in the village, basti, hamlet, housing colony, biradari, know of the crime, they maintain a stony silence. Life goes on. Often the victim is chastised for alluring the man, and no efforts are made to ensure that the two are never left together again. In sheer desperation the girl rebels, speaks out, gets pregnant or suffers serious gynaecological problems, the media blasts the story, history repeats itself. Which raises the elementary question, why do adults rape small children? An issue never debated, or mentioned by media stalwarts and experts. Because the cause for the rape of a child, its continuation, assured absence of punishment is so rampant that no one wants to answer that embarrassing query, why do men and boys rape small children?
5. What Could be The Cause of Rapes? This needs investigation without overbearing high profile technical, psychological, neurological, anatomical lingo that hides more than it reveals. A question that troubles everyone is, has India run out of prostitutes that men have to descend to raping kids to satisfy their lust? Any police chowky will tell you that prostitution is flourishing anywhere in India, including Delhi, Kathua, Kolkata, Badlapur, Unnao, in fact all over India. Then why does not the rapist go to a harlot? Can he not afford her? Does he not have the time? Is he afraid of infection? Is he scared of being seen and damaging his izzat? Is he scared of being inadequate with the sex worker? Why these queries by the author? The simple reason is that such matters are never mentioned on TV, editorials, articles. The so called experts, specialists, NGOs, guardians of morality, netas, police officers, ordinary citizens and parents of victims shy away from such issues. Are they not intrinsic and pertinent to the rape? Despite all these facts, men still pay for casual sex with prostitutes in the thousands, every day. Thus it is difficult to infer why men; married or not, resort to this heinous act.
It is disturbing that many child rapists have daughters, and the irony that the father of a girl will violate another’s daughter is devastating. Another factor is the ancient cultural pillar that men will be men; they must show their virility and power in all activities, including sex. Experts never talk about this, saying that it is an inappropriate issue and they turn child rapes into a mystifying issue for confidential debate. These rapists are not unstable men, they have families, hold jobs, enjoying reputable standings in community, yet they commit such heinous crimes? What then triggers him? What external stimuli impinge on his normal intellect; and coerces him to rape the very girls who are being raised within his family, biradari, village, mohalla? The rapist watched these girls grow up in front of his eyes, along with his own daughters, yet he rapes them. Baffling, is it not?
6. A Major Stimuli is On-Line Pornography. When authorities try to control free access to pornography there are loud screams, “hands off my porno”. Most surely, porn cannot be banned but it can be controlled, because porn is a powerful stimulus to impose sexual control over women. The verbal and visual contents spotlight the overbearing ability and methods available for man to sexually exploit women. It is not necessary to say any more about how watching porn gives an impetus to male ego; and encourages men to exercise that physical and emotional power, over any woman, even a girl child. There can be no contrary view, because porn is created to titillate the sexual urges in men and women, it is not an art, nor a science, it is not engineering nor economics, and certainly not humanities or literature. Porn is made to sexually excite men, and sexually excited men look for sexual release, it is as simple as that.
One does not need a doctorate in human relations to get to this truth. Nothing extraordinary, it has been around for millions of years. Then how to divert this excited man away from the girl child? The professional protester always asks for a deeper study, which only delays stating the correct solution to deter the child rapist. Sustained porn builds that ‘vasana’ which can be expended on the wife, but is also paid out on the unsuspecting girl child. Witness the rape of a girl child at a school lavatory in Badlapur, Navi Mumbai. That is the ordinary girl child who needs protection by a strong deterrent, sadly that deterrent is being held back for wrong reasons.
7. Protection From Porn. The lovers of ‘freedom of everything’ in a democratic India will quote the Constitution without having ever seen it, will say that porn can be controlled, which we all know is false. Mobiles can show porn anywhere. Recall some legislators sitting in the Assembly and viewing porn. This is Hindoostan ki netagiri? And we give these legislators a salary and pension? The powerful, rich, informed are able to protect their children and family from porn. How does a dhobi, carpenter, tailor, clerk, mason, housemaid, sweeper, school teacher, grocer, fruit seller, postman and such likes create that barrier against easily accessible porn? Without doubt freely accessible porn is a major contributory factor in children being raped. To compound this, we have the awful truth that many wives and mothers wrongly consider their men indulging in such acts as ‘mardangi’ or manliness. The complicity of women in not outright condemning and not ostracising rapists is why they roam our ‘gullies’ as the strongest of the strong. Regrettably across our land, rapes committed by their brave, strong, hardworking, fathers, sons, husbands, brothers; are brushed aside by their women, till it hits their daughters, by then it is too little too late.
8. The Vexing Award of Death Penalty. The clamour against death penalty for child rapists is flabbergasting. The cacophony is that it will not prevent further child rapes, true. It will be against the principle of right to live, maybe. Such a law could be misused for revenge, possible. Finally, false allegations may send an innocent man to the gallows, unlikely. What the objectors have not weighed in is that the death penalty is to be added as one of the many punishments for child rapists, and not the only and mandatory punishment. The death sentence is not being given by High Speed Summary Courts without due process. Our majestic judicial process assures Indians that a child rapist’s trials with appeals; could carry on forever, ending in the accused dying of old age. Witness the shameful delay in the Narbhaya case, and now in the Kolkata and Badlapur cases Then why the clamour? Because what else can the professional protesters do in their free time? What else can TV anchors do to use as ‘fillers’ for those 168 hours every week and raise TRP ratings? Intellectuals and human rights activists insist that the correct and humane solution is to educate the Indian male to respect Indian womanhood, and not add death penalty to the statute books for child rapes. Forget Indian males, the world has been trying to educate all males on Earth to respect women, and have failed for millions of years. It is foolish and naïve to believe it can be done now.
We have already established that mothers are disinclined to discipline their ‘darling’ sons on this horrifying subject and hurt their male egos. If mothers will not guide their endearing sons and allow them to roam with their sexual desires running amok, then someone else has to intervene and terminate this horrendous child raping industry.
9. Who Is This Rapist? The fellow is an adult who commits the act with deliberate intent to violate the girl child and destroy her innocence. He certainly does not act in a fit of extreme passion and provocation, for what enticement can a girl child inflict upon a male adult? The rapist commits his act not just once but repeatedly, lustfully and lecherously. He knows what he is doing, the child does not. He knows that the child is incapable of resisting him; he knows he has immense power over her, he knows very well that the child is not of an age to have sexual intercourse. He is supremely confident that the child will not complain because he puts fear of violence and shame into the child. Should not such a man be given the death penalty if all this is proven beyond doubt? Then what is wrong with such a law? Should not such vicious immorality suffer just as much, if not more, for the pain, humiliation, violence and eternal shame he has thrust upon the innocent child? Each protestor against death penalty would embrace it if their daughter, sister, niece, cousin, were at the receiving end of the rapists adventure. Without doubt such actions are the rarest of rare, demanding death. We are talking about an innocent, defenceless, sinless, guiltless girl child traumatised by a cruel, violent, self indulgent, pitiless, conceited man who is unafraid of the consequences of his vile action. Such a man should get ‘karuna’? Idealists propound the principle that both punishment and prison are naturally reformatory.
Accepted but do ruminate that, here the act is a premeditated violent act with cunning for exploitation of an unsuspecting child who is familiar and known to the rapist, and in many cases even related. Appreciate the dastardly intent of this rapist and observe his crafty manoeuvring within the family to assault the child, and for what, just a ‘screw’, such a man will get reformed in jail? And the child would live in perpetual infamy heaped upon her, because everyone in the biradri will say it must have been the girls fault. Scandalously, after the rape, the whole family, except possibly her parents, will make no efforts to keep the girl and rapist separate; and ensure that the two can never be alone again, under any circumstances. These stories are never secret, and the gossiping ensures it is passed around and discussed threadbare, even down generations. The scales are heavily weighed against the raped child, and the protesters against death penalty, including mothers of daughters, do not want death for a man who rapes a child? We all know that a poisonous snake can never be reformed to produce nectar instead of venom.
10. Conclusion. Death penalty for raping a girl child is not discriminatory, not unconstitutional, does not violate the basic right to life. Death must be included as an option punishment for the guilefully planned vicious sexual act that scars a child forever. The rape is not a reaction to sudden grave provocation. A girl child cannot indulge in sly seduction. The rapist would have plotted and contrived his loathsome sickening act while in full control of his faculties. That he repeatedly rapes children, is abundant evidence of his overbearing lust and uncontrolled urge to impose power over the child only, for sex, nothing else. There is no affection and concern in this. It is certain beyond any doubt that this rapist has no remorse, guilt, regret or repentance within even a single cell of his toxic mind and body. Is it not strange that those who oppose the inclusion of death penalty for raping a child are unable to see their gross naivety? Most certainly the rape will have to be proved with all its shaming details and shocking facts; that the court will irretrievably damage the life of the victim is sealed. Do not hold a candle to support the perpetrators of child rape, anywhere, any time. You are shielding a man who has committed a heinous crime against a defenceless child, and when such a man is assured, because of your objection, that he will live and can do it again and does it again, then, you are complicit in the rapes of all his innocent victims. Can the death penalty protesters and rapist reformers, live with that?
The wise have always advised us; Punishing a Cruel Criminal by Execution is exactly like Gardeners Removing Weeds.
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