Not a zinda lash: Don't stigmatise rape victims
It might be unfair to Sushma Swaraj to attribute to her the view that rape victims are the living dead (zinda lash): her comment in Parliament could well have been with specific reference to the woman whose entrails were poked out with an iron rod by her enraged rapists —how dare she resist her biological purpose? — and who now battles death in hospital. But it is entirely in keeping with Indian tradition and culture to blame and shame the victim of rape rather than the rapist.
It might seem presumptuous for a man to analyse a traumatic subject like rape, so let me clarify at the outset that all I seek to do is paraphrase well-known feminists on the subject. Regardless of who says this, it stands to reason that the trauma of rape goes up with the level of social stigma attached to the crime. If a woman were subjected to violent assault, say, hit upon the head with a hockey stick, she would feel angry and hurt, not ashamed. But when the assault takes a sexual form, she is made to feel that she has been defiled, violated, shamed, with the public at large, including women, singing laments for the zinda lash. Sympathy and support for a victim of non-sexual assault, stigma for a victim of sexual assault. This schizophrenia stems from social control of female sexuality.
Chaste is a value-loaded term, imbued with a normative elevation that takes it beyond the scope of personal choice. Thus, fidelity and chastity are not voluntary individual choices but socially-ordained virtues that are essential for women. Women with such virtue are goddesses. Those without are little better than whores. Since fidelity is not a voluntary, individual matter, being raped can also make you unchaste and, thus, put you in the company of whores. Gautam, in Ahilya's tale in the Ramayana, cursed his wife and turned her into stone because she made this descent from goddess to whore by being made love to by Indra, who expended his amour in Gautam's guise, deceiving Ahilya. Sita had to prove her chastity, after being rescued from Lanka, through trial by fire, but still had to be abandoned by her Lord because she was not above suspicion in the eyes of at least one subject in his kingdom.
That being sexually assaulted can debase a woman is ingrained in Indian culture. This norm has to be challenged and overthrown, to reinstate the balance of justice, for the assailant to bear the burden of shame. The point is not to argue that Indian culture is specifically misogynic. Almost all pre-modern value systems around the world have sought subjugation of female sexuality to social control. But in many parts of the world, society has changed, and so have values. The value system must change in India, too.
Protests rage across the country over the Delhi rape. The sound bites chomp and chew to pieces the rapists, the police, the laws and the lawmakers. You hardly hear a voice of cultural introspection. When mothers give preferential treatment to their boys over their girls, in little things and in big things, they replicate the values that stigmatise the victims of rape. When women peer into that plateful of water through a sieve on Karva Chauth, they see what they have been trained to see, filtering out a value system that offers them binary slots of goddess and whore, and stonily gives the task of sorting to a random assault.
Source : T K Arun, ET Bureau
It is entirely in keeping with Indian tradition and culture to blame and shame the victim of rape rather than the rapist.
It might be unfair to Sushma Swaraj to attribute to her the view that rape victims are the living dead (zinda lash): her comment in Parliament could well have been with specific reference to the woman whose entrails were poked out with an iron rod by her enraged rapists —how dare she resist her biological purpose? — and who now battles death in hospital. But it is entirely in keeping with Indian tradition and culture to blame and shame the victim of rape rather than the rapist.
It might seem presumptuous for a man to analyse a traumatic subject like rape, so let me clarify at the outset that all I seek to do is paraphrase well-known feminists on the subject. Regardless of who says this, it stands to reason that the trauma of rape goes up with the level of social stigma attached to the crime. If a woman were subjected to violent assault, say, hit upon the head with a hockey stick, she would feel angry and hurt, not ashamed. But when the assault takes a sexual form, she is made to feel that she has been defiled, violated, shamed, with the public at large, including women, singing laments for the zinda lash. Sympathy and support for a victim of non-sexual assault, stigma for a victim of sexual assault. This schizophrenia stems from social control of female sexuality.
Chaste is a value-loaded term, imbued with a normative elevation that takes it beyond the scope of personal choice. Thus, fidelity and chastity are not voluntary individual choices but socially-ordained virtues that are essential for women. Women with such virtue are goddesses. Those without are little better than whores. Since fidelity is not a voluntary, individual matter, being raped can also make you unchaste and, thus, put you in the company of whores. Gautam, in Ahilya's tale in the Ramayana, cursed his wife and turned her into stone because she made this descent from goddess to whore by being made love to by Indra, who expended his amour in Gautam's guise, deceiving Ahilya. Sita had to prove her chastity, after being rescued from Lanka, through trial by fire, but still had to be abandoned by her Lord because she was not above suspicion in the eyes of at least one subject in his kingdom.
That being sexually assaulted can debase a woman is ingrained in Indian culture. This norm has to be challenged and overthrown, to reinstate the balance of justice, for the assailant to bear the burden of shame. The point is not to argue that Indian culture is specifically misogynic. Almost all pre-modern value systems around the world have sought subjugation of female sexuality to social control. But in many parts of the world, society has changed, and so have values. The value system must change in India, too.
Protests rage across the country over the Delhi rape. The sound bites chomp and chew to pieces the rapists, the police, the laws and the lawmakers. You hardly hear a voice of cultural introspection. When mothers give preferential treatment to their boys over their girls, in little things and in big things, they replicate the values that stigmatise the victims of rape. When women peer into that plateful of water through a sieve on Karva Chauth, they see what they have been trained to see, filtering out a value system that offers them binary slots of goddess and whore, and stonily gives the task of sorting to a random assault.
Source : T K Arun, ET Bureau
