The world’s largest democracy has an image problem. When it comes to women. Or rather when it comes to taking men to task for crimes committed against women. We don’t say this to gloat at our neighbour. We know what we are talking about. It is an image problem that we, on this side of the border, share.
Over the weekend an Indian court found guilty of rape a self-styled spiritual leader. It was a long journey to get here. Fifteen years to be exact. Though this was not due to judicial laxity. But, rather, to the power wielded by Ram Rahim, leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda religious sect. The journalist who first reported the rape allegations was found fatally shot not long after.
This power, borne of a toxic mix of politics and what some Indian commentators have termed synthetic spirituality, is said to be eroding Indian democracy. And it is true. That a crowd, 200,000-strong by some accounts, came out to support a man charged with rape (not to mention one who faces separate charges of murder and forced castration) is an embarrassment. That this happened just five years after Joyti Singh was literally raped to death on a New Delhi bus is nothing short of criminal.
Criminal in the same way that 15 years after Mukhtaran Mai stood up to patriarchal system of codes and so-called customs as well as to the state apparatus itself, after she shook the latter to the core after refusing to fade away, or worse — two girls from the surrounding area found themselves at the centre of a locally-sanctioned revenge rape. Full story...
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Over the weekend an Indian court found guilty of rape a self-styled spiritual leader. It was a long journey to get here. Fifteen years to be exact. Though this was not due to judicial laxity. But, rather, to the power wielded by Ram Rahim, leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda religious sect. The journalist who first reported the rape allegations was found fatally shot not long after.
This power, borne of a toxic mix of politics and what some Indian commentators have termed synthetic spirituality, is said to be eroding Indian democracy. And it is true. That a crowd, 200,000-strong by some accounts, came out to support a man charged with rape (not to mention one who faces separate charges of murder and forced castration) is an embarrassment. That this happened just five years after Joyti Singh was literally raped to death on a New Delhi bus is nothing short of criminal.
Criminal in the same way that 15 years after Mukhtaran Mai stood up to patriarchal system of codes and so-called customs as well as to the state apparatus itself, after she shook the latter to the core after refusing to fade away, or worse — two girls from the surrounding area found themselves at the centre of a locally-sanctioned revenge rape. Full story...
Related posts:
- The strange deaths around India’s ‘godman’
- How many more "Godmen" must we tolerate?
- Indian guru booked for forcing minor girl into unnatural sex...
- Kashmir's self-styled godman arrested for rape of young girls...
- Swami Nithyananda implicated in serious video sex scandal...
- Hot yoga's Bikram Choudhury accused of sexual harassment by protege...
- Psychic faces jail for conning women into performing naked sex acts...
- Exposing India's fake god-men and gurus...
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