The Moderate Mahila Mandate: If sanskari men are raping women, what must sanskari women do?

I will never forget the first time I saw a man masturbate in full public view. It was 1991. I must have been 10 years old. I had gone out to eat ice-cream with my cousins. He stood at a bus stop opposite the ice-cream parlour, watching us––without moving, without blinking. We were four girls. He was one man. But we were the ones who were petrified. We didn’t dare rebuke or stop him. In fact, no one stopped him. Not the people passing by. Not the cars speeding away. No one said anything. We girls were left alone to fend for ourselves. We ran for our lives.

Till today, more than thirty years later, I cannot forget the sight of that perpetrator, or that feeling he’d left us with––of having a thousand strange men’s hands all over our body. He had made us feel dirty. Ashamed. Disgusted. Sick to the stomach.

That same feeling was felt by millions of women after hearing that the monsters convicted of rape and attempt to murder in the Bilkis Bano case were not just released but also felicitated!

To see a man touch the feet of these rapists, reminded each and every girl in our country of a stranger’s hand groping her breasts. To see a man garland these rapists, reminded each and every girl in our country of a gang of boys putting their hands all over her body on the pretext of Holi. To see a man feed sweets to these rapists, filled me with such horror vacui that I couldn’t speak of it for days. That image stayed inside me like a decaying corpse.

This is what a man can do to a woman. This is what men do to women every single minute, all over our nation, as our rape numbers demonstrate. But we are not statistics. We are real people, real women, who suffer in every corner of this country, every single day at the hands of sadists, molesters and rapists. Imagine my incident times a million, and maybe, maybe, you can then comprehend even a fraction of what Bilkis went through. Of what she is going through.

Our gritty, strong, jaded selves have seen it all, haven’t we? We need the rarest of rare cases, the horror of all horrors to shake us up, don’t we? But if you are not apoplectic with rage at what’s going on, if your blood is not boiling, and if this does not make you feel like someone has plunged a knife inside your heart and slowly twisted it, then you should really question your humanity.

Women’s bodies are not sites of public violence where your sickening misogyny comes to rest. Our bodies are not rehabilitation centres where your disenchanted phallus come to play. Our bodies do not belong for you to bludgeon, ply and annihilate, as per your whims and sycophants. We are sick of mollifying your patriarchy.

How much can one woman bear? How much burden can she carry alone? No. No. She mustn’t. We must all carry that burden with her. Let her individual pain be our collective call to grief. To action. A reminder that our fight for justice will never end. A reminder that tomorrow this could happen to any of us, when we’ll need our sisters to be there for us, as we must today be there for Bilkis.

Because the men we thought were ‘despos’ and ‘cheapos’ and ‘roadside romeos’ and ‘monsters’ have now been condoned and become ‘sanskari’. Never thought I’d see the word ‘sanskari’ used to describe rapists, but here we are. They roam freely among us––whether in the case of Bilkis Bano or Nirbhaya or Shakti Mills or Kathua. Our thinkers tell us that capital punishment is not humanitarian, so we must show humanity to monsters who didn’t show their victims any. Between these two extreme unbecoming ideologies we have no recourse, nowhere to turn to.

We’re left with nothing but disturbing anecdotes, more onus, more diktats­­––“you are at fault if you’re raped or molested”, “carry a folder in front of your chest”, “don’t wear short skirts”, “don’t wear ‘provocative’ clothes”, “don’t go out at night”, “don’t laugh loudly”, “don’t wear makeup”­­––and gross injustice. Our vaginas have been declared the fountainhead of shame over and over again.

This throws into light a simple question: can we women ever be safe? Can we walk where we want? Wear what we want? Assume our safety as a fundamental right? No. If incidents of sexual violence are not rebating, but instead increasing, what must we, me, or you, or every girl in India––who has been told to be ‘sanskari’ to avoid rape––do now?

First, acknowledge the truth. The truth is that perpetrators––men––are granted impunity, because ‘boys will be boys’, making the victims––women––repositories of shame. We cannot immediately change our men, our boys. We cannot expect the police, judiciary or government to grant us justice. It’s a cultural impairment we have to contend with. Therefore, our survival rests with us and within us. The only person who can protect us is us. How?

By changing the conversation. Every discussion about women's safety focuses only on women, only on deciding ‘appropriate and inappropriate’ female behaviour. Who decides what is appropriate?  From today, resolve to stop telling women how to avoid rape, instead tell men not to rape. Shift the focus to perpetrators, not victims. Forcing women to cover up, adjust and stay quiet is counterproductive. Because when you say changing a woman’s behaviour will prevent her from getting raped, what you’re really saying is that “if not you, he will rape another”. End this vicious cycle. Let’s teach our daughters that female modesty does not protect the whole world’s honour, while teaching our sons how to behave because male modesty does.

The next time a teacher is sacked for wearing a swimsuit, speak up! The next time a judge says women wearing ‘provocative clothes’ deserve to be raped, don’t tolerate it. Deconstruct this misplaced sense of righteousness that puts the onus of personal safety on women themselves. Women in India do not have public agency. Let’s end this sly proscriptive rebuke of women owning public spaces. Go occupy public spaces. We need non-polarising gender-positive legacies, not sophomoric ones. We need you to raise hell!

We have fought so hard. For so long. Give us our break. Give us our respect. Give us some shred of dignity. India’s sisters and daughters deserve it.

Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning and bestselling author, screenwriter, columnist and speaker, whose latest novel BOYS DON'T CRY (Penguin Random House) will soon be seen on screen. 

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