The 23-year-old Indian rape victim, whose name has not been released by police, has been compared to Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set off the Arab Spring – the term given to a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests. There are strong indications that her tragedy could mark a turning point for gender rights in a country where women are often scared to leave their homes at night and where sex-selective abortions and even female infanticide have wildly spread.
Police have accused six men with murder in the Dec. 16 attack on a New Delhi bus. They face the death penalty if convicted, police said. The case has sparked massive protests daily forcing politicians to call for stricter rape laws and major police reforms. The biggest advantage is that Indians have started seriously thinking of ways the country treats its women.
Indians consider females as a burden because of the dowry that they have to pay for their wedding. Young Indian girls are forced to leave their homes and live in factory compounds to help their parents accumulate dowry funds. Instead of going to school and enjoy their youth, these girls have had to enter the market as child labour. There are no shortages of stories about Indians wishing to have sons instead of daughters. Women are considered inferior because of that and the rape case has placed the gender issue right in front.
`’To change a society as conservative, traditional and patriarchal as ours, we will have a long haul,” Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research has said in an interview. `’It will take some time, but certainly there is a beginning.”
`’She has become the daughter of the entire nation,” according to Sushma Swaraj, a leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper, wrote in an editorial that it cannot be business as usual anymore. And it was right; a wind of change has been blowing across India.
A special session of parliament has been called to seek ways to increase punishments for rapists and to consider setting up courts to handle rape cases within 90 days. A public database for convicted rapists has also been proposed and the government has set up two committees to suggest changes in the law.
New Delhi, branded as the rape capital of India, has started a new helpline for women and an officer has been appointed to ensure that concerns of women’s groups’ are heard without any problems. Proposals have been made to initiate police sensitivity training and to ensure that one third of Delhi police are women.
According to published reports, a rape was reported on average every 20 minutes in India in 2012. Just 26 percent of the cases resulted in convictions, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, which registered 24,206 rapes in 2011, up from 22,141 the previous year.
The incident has even touched the Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh, who told the nation that “while she may have lost her battle for life, it is up to us all to ensure that her death will not have been in vain. We have already seen the emotions and energies this incident has generated. These are perfectly understandable reactions from a young India and an India that genuinely desires change. It would be a true homage to her memory if we are able to channel these emotions and energies into a constructive course of action.”
Men and women in every state of India have united, perhaps for the first time to condemn the rape incident. Even lawyers have refused to defend the accused men. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the Indian Spring long overdue.
