Recently I had asked a question on social media networks that how many of my friends knew about any rape victim. My question raised eyebrows, people thought what am I up to and why do I want to even discuss this. Some thought I should have been more prudent in taking this up offline. Now firstly I never asked for the names of the victims, I just asked are we aware of such a crime around us. My purpose was simple. If anyone of us are aware of such a person who is suffering silently or needs counselling or can share her experience and help others in any way, wouldn’t that help the cause we are all into?
I did get in touch with a rape victim. Such a courageous lady who came forward and told me she has been raped twice but she was fine now and wanted to help others but people thought that she was trying to garner attention. Some of my friends are trying to do something on the ground level for this cause. Why I say ground level is because we all are shocked and want to do something about it, we all are going out of our way in doing that. But shouldn’t we ask ourselves how this will help the person who is already tormented or maybe tormented in future. Can we be of any help to them and how that can be?
I hear about outrage on social media, events, groups created on Facebook, hash tags there on Twitter. Of course all this is justified but what next? For how long this can be sustained? We will not hold candle light protests for long, we will not do away with other our celebrations for an extended period of time then what happens to our purpose? We all have good intentions and yes we have been jolted that such a thing can happen in a civilized nation. We are afraid that if we don’t put a stop on this then it would be difficult to survive peacefully in future.
We need to devise ways for the self protection of women, we need to shrug off our mindset which tells us rape is something about which you are not supposed to report as it would lead to more embarrassment of you and your family. We need to change our attitude for this crime where the criminal roams freely and the victim is pushed into oblivion. One who is raped should not be ashamed but one who has committed the rape should live in fear. We need strong rape laws. We need counselling sessions for the victims, we need awareness classes for the girls in schools and colleges how they can be aware of the danger as sometimes it lurks within close quarters. We need strict laws against sexual harassment at the workplace. We need to realize eve teasing is the first sign and that can translate into crime one day. There are so many needs of the society right now but what are we going to do about it? Can we along with lighting the candle hug a tormented person? That would spread light around. Isn’t it?
