The Other Side

Returning from my hostel after months of isolation, alienation and separation, I returned to my birth place. The first glorious face, which I saw the moment I came out of my train station, refreshed all my childhood memories and times in this awesome city. It was my driver’s. I sat down in my car, and we started talking about my newly acquired French beard (oh yes, imma bragging!). It then, eventually reached to the most talked about event in India presently, the Delhi rape case. Now before you close down this window thinking this article to be more about how wrong rapists are and how their groins should be torn out in the public, let me say that this one is absolutely different. This is the other side of the story. From the mouth of my driver, who has lived among people who believe that rape incidents occur because of the girl’s doings. And he justified it quite well too. I hope you comprehend this side well.

I started the conversation by saying how sad and inhumane the event was. The driver replied “the girl should have seen that coming, if she was dressed that way, like that will only happen.” Being the typical law student that I am, I started asking him questions, eager to hear this other side of the argument and found myself frantically searching for appropriate replies, at the brink of failing to do that even. I told him that merely wearing an inappropriate dress cannot be used to hold the girl responsible for the brutal rape. A girl should naturally enjoy the freedom of wearing whatever she wants. He replies “yes but it depends on the region. Here in Mumbai, people are bored of seeing all that. Even if a girl roams around naked, nobody cares. But there such dresses are uncommon. If a girl wears them, the think she is a slut.” I was visibly moved by this statement. He continued, “See, there, if a girl wears a Salwar suit, she is understood to be from a big and respectable family. But if girls go out in this small shorts (putting his hands way above on the thighs) people are bound to see her in a wrong way and do things.” I replied, “but you cannot possibly say that this was her mistake! They did the wrong thing, why blame the girl for it?” He says “It’s the human mentality related to the type of dress, especially there. And, for example, if I don’t own a car, I’ll of course greedily look at another person’s car. Same way, the men look at the women. Then slowly, they build up the courage to do that thing. So, the courage is lifted not by the men consciously, but is lifted by the woman’s clothes. Because they think that if a woman is wearing such a dress in public, she is a slut and hence should not complaint against sex. If a woman wears such clothes at home, or her car it’s fine. But she should understand that if she walks out like that in public in such places, people will cast a bad look upon her.” I was astonished but tried to understand such a point of view and almost did. However, the next line by him completely blew my mind- “it is completely understandable. Here nobody can do anything hence nobody does. I bet to you that most of the men doing this must be from reputed families and hence will get away without a scratch. Hence they say that they haven’t been able to catch two of the rapists. The two must be having some contacts in high places. Else how difficult it is for the police to catch two people when it has successfully grabbed four of them. There they are not scared of anything. Who knows, if I would have been in that place, even I would have……” what followed was laughter by him.

I know it may sound shocking the first time, but if you see closely, this logic does make sense, even if in its own demented way. Such is the psychology of rapists in Delhi and Haryana. So the people who say that rape happens because of provocating dresses, are not complete dumb asses and do have a strong reasoning to back up that line of thinking. Think about it.