Still a Country of Villages - Manila Bulletin

Last December 16th, a 23-year-old medical student in New Delhi was brutally beaten and gang-raped by six drunken men armed with an iron bar, on a moving bus, then dumped, along with her male companion who had been knocked unconscious, under an underpass. Taken to a hospital by the police, she lived two weeks before she died.

This shocking case set off a wave of protests in India's cities against the government for failing to make New Delhi safe for women. It also stirred a wave of international outrage. True, there are rapes reported in other major cities around the world but not on a bus, and seldom resulting in the death of the victim. This was far more appalling than a case of sexual assault. This was murder.

Which makes the world wonder: What are the social conditions in India that would allow such an outrage against a woman? Are women valued so little that they can be attacked with impunity in public?

India, as one Indian writer tried to explain, despite its progress, is still a "vast country of villages." There is a "village mentality" in which traditionally women are valued less than men. Female fetuses are often aborted because of the preference for male children. Men are customarily fed first and the caste system, which is still practiced in villages, puts women on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Politicians and the police, according to Indian author Manu Joseph, tend to blame attacks on women on the women themselves. They have become too modern. They wear short skirts that reveal their legs. Instead of staying in the safe confines of their homes, they are often seen in public.

An Indian woman who once lived in New Delhi wrote that sexual harrassment is a daily occurence in the city, with whistles, catcalls, hisses, and rude sexual gestures commonplace. Rural India, from which many men come, remains a patriarchal and misogynist society that assumes the worst thing about rape is that the woman will have a harder time finding a husband.

Following the December 16th atrocity, thousands of protestors, me and women, gathered in the streets of New Delhi to face down the police in protest – the largest such gathering the city has seen.

All six of the victim's attackers were eventually captured and charged with murder. The victim's body, which was returned to her family, was cremated and the ashes scattered in the Ganges River.