Bharat Jhunjhunwala
The entire country is disturbed by the brutal rape of an innocent woman in a running bus in Delhi. There is an all round demand for more police protection to working women and stricter law enforcement. I doubt though that these measures will be of any avail. A medical student was similarly raped in Delhi in 2000. The police could not prevent that from happening then, it could not prevent it from happening now and it will not be able to prevent similar events from happening in the future because the problem has become all pervasive. We continue to read news about more rapes happening at regular intervals after the Delhi event. The problem of rodents cannot be managed by placing traps in every corner of the field. The solution comes from removing the food that attracts the rats. Similarly it is necessary to remove the causes that give rise to rapes.
Radical feminist anthropologist Evelyn Reed says that the female is the initiator of sexual activity: “When the female is in heat… she give the sexual ‘signal’ which inaugurates a new estrus season for the species…” She quotes Phyllis Jay: The female “is the sole initiator of sexual activity…” Thus women are genetically oriented to solicit. They wear bright clothes and ornaments, put on scents and walk provocatively. This system of female soliciting and the male responding was suitable for the animal kingdom because role of the male ended after impregnation. This was unsuitable for the human society where male and female have to make a unit to nurture children for 15-20 long years before the child can stand on his own. Problem is that this genetic attraction goes beyond the husband and attracts unwanted persons leading to incidents of rape. It is not necessary that the woman who is raped has worn attractive clothes. The attraction is spread through advertisements, TV and cinema. The agitated male rapes the woman accessible to him. The movie stars are adding fuel to this fire by giving provocative scenes. They ensure that they are protected by security guards. But put other women into danger by creating provocation among common men.
The woman is moreover presented as a sex object as a part of the capitalist system’s pursuit of profits. There is no need to display a provocatively dressed woman in an advertisement of soap or while launching a new model of a car. Such display of women fuels a desire among men to get women-if necessary by rape. Eldrige Cleaver touched on this in his classic Soul on Ice: ‘All our lives we’ve had the white woman dangled before our eyes like a carrot on a stick before a donkey: look but don’t touch.’ Expressing his torment, he concluded, ‘I became a rapist.’ We must make a strict advertisement policy to manage this problem. The Muslim society has found a solution to this in the burka. Modern girls often wear a scarf around their face. We need to develop a social consensus on how to restrict male-female attraction within the marital space. A strict law should be made to prohibit indecent exposure in movies, TV serials and advertisements. There is also a need to create a social audit of movies and serials. An independent group of auditors should examine the moral impact of the movie on the viewer.
Second factor leading to increasing incidents of rape is the demand for cheap labour by the capitalist system. The modern economy wants a large supply of labour to keep wages low. It encourages women to ‘work’. Bringing up own children in the home is denigrated while bringing up children of another as a housemaid is encouraged. Reason is that work done through the market enables businesses to make a profit. The agency providing maid services and the bus ferrying the maid from her house to work can make profit only if women bring up children after entering the marketplace. Thus capitalism tries to destroy all human relationships that are not mediated through the market. This has led to an increase in the area of contact between the male and female. Solicitation was previously undertaken at specific location such as parichay sammelans. Now it takes place all day long. The restraint in solicitation has been broken rape is only the next step. All religions segregate men and women in religious ceremonies. Churches, mosques and temples-all have separate seating places for men and women. Idea is to reduce unnecessary contact between them. We need to devise a system to honour and respect in-house motherhood. This is not to deny opportunities of work to women for their development and economic needs but there is no need to push every woman into the labour market.
Another factor providing encouragement to rape is the low sex ratio. India has about 940 women for 1000 men. This means that 60 men do not have access to women for marriage or sex. They have to satisfy their desires in some other way-including rape. Rod Van Mechelen writes in an article titled ‘Causes of Rape’: “During the past several years, women’s expectations have risen in step with advertisements. When female expectations rise to the point where a significant number of men cannot afford the ticket to women’s hearts, incidences of rape increase.” He tells that there had been two famous mass outbreaks of rape in Gusiiland (Kenya), once in 1937 and once in 1950. Robert LeVine, an anthropologist from Northwestern University, investigated and discovered that in both years the price of a bride had soared beyond the reach of Gusii young men. The point is that rapes will increase if large numbers of men are deprived of legitimate sex. This problem is difficult to handle. Ideal solution is to increase the sex ratio but we are clueless how to go about achieving this.
The uproar that has followed the rape in Delhi is entirely justified and welcome. The demand for death penalty for the rapists and more police protection is also justified. But these will not beget us a solution. We will have to remove the root causes of rape. In this direction we need to develop a social consensus on how to restrict male-female attraction within the marital space. We need to devise a system to honour and respect in-house motherhood and reduce the unnecessary ‘forced’ entry of women into the market.
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