A VILLAGE RAPE SHATTERS A FAMILY, AND INDIA’S TRADITIONAL SILENCE

[As in many countries, silence often follows rape in India, especially in villages, where a rape victim is usually regarded as a shamed woman, unfit for marriage. But an outcry over a string of recent rapes, including this one, in the northern state of Haryana, has shattered that silence, focusing national attention on India’s rising number of sexual assaults while also exposing the conservative, male-dominated power structure in Haryana, where rape victims are often treated with callous disregard.]

By Jim Yardley

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A 16-year-old girl, right, who was gang-raped, sitting with her mother. 

The girl’s father killed himself.

DABRA, India — One after the other, the men raped her. They had dragged the girl into a darkened stone shelter at the edge of the fields, eight men, maybe more, reeking of pesticide and cheap whiskey. They assaulted her for nearly three hours. She was 16 years old.

When it was over, the men threatened to kill her if she told anyone, and for days the girl said nothing. Speaking out would have been difficult, anyway, given the hierarchy of caste. She was poor and a Dalit, the low-caste group once known as untouchables, while most of the attackers were from a higher caste that dominated land and power in the village.

It might have ended there, if not for the videos: her assailants had taken cellphone videos as trophies, and the images began circulating among village men until one was shown to the victim’s father, his family said. Distraught, the father committed suicide on Sept. 18 by drinking pesticide. Infuriated, Dalits demanded justice in the rape case.

“We thought, We lost my husband, we lost our honor,” the mother of the rape victim said. “What is the point of remaining silent now?”

As in many countries, silence often follows rape in India, especially in villages, where a rape victim is usually regarded as a shamed woman, unfit for marriage. But an outcry over a string of recent rapes, including this one, in the northern state of Haryana, has shattered that silence, focusing national attention on India’s rising number of sexual assaults while also exposing the conservative, male-dominated power structure in Haryana, where rape victims are often treated with callous disregard.

In a rapidly changing country, rape cases have increased at an alarming rate, roughly 25 percent in six years. To some degree, this reflects a rise in reporting by victims. But India’s changing gender dynamic is also a significant factor, as more females are attending school, entering the work force or choosing their own spouses — trends that some men regard as a threat.

India’s news media regularly carry horrific accounts of gang rapes, attacks once rarely seen. Sometimes, gangs of young men stumble upon a young couple — in some cases the couple is meeting furtively in a conservative society — and then rape the woman. Analysts also point to demographic trends: India has a glut of young males, some unemployed, abusing alcohol or drugs and unnerved by the new visibility of women in society.

“This visibility is seen as a threat and a challenge,” said Ranjana Kumari, who runs the Center for Social Research in New Delhi.

In Haryana, the initial response to the rape after it was disclosed ranged from denial to denouncing the media to blaming the victim. A spokesman for the governing Congress Party was quoted as saying that 90 percent of rape cases begin as consensual sex. Women’s groups were outraged after a village leader pointed to teenage girls’ sexual desire as the reason for the rapes.

“I think that girls should be married at the age of 16, so that they have their husbands for their sexual needs, and they don’t need to go elsewhere,” the village leader, Sube Singh, told IBN Live, a news channel. “This way rapes will not occur.”

The most vulnerable women are poor Dalits, the lowest tier of the social structure. Of 19 recent rape cases in Haryana, at least six victims were Dalits. One Dalit teenager in Haryana committed suicide, setting herself afire, after being gang-raped. Another Dalit girl, 15, who was mentally handicapped, was raped in Rohtak, according to Indian news media accounts, the same district where a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a neighbor.

“If you are a poor woman who is raped, you cannot even imagine a life where there will be justice,” Kalpana Sharma, a columnist, wrote recently in The Hindu, a national English-language newspaper. “If you are a poor woman and a Dalit, then the chances of justice are even slimmer.”

Haryana is one of India’s most entrenched bastions of feudal patriarchy. The social preference for sons has contributed to a problem of some couples aborting female fetuses, leaving Haryana with the most skewed gender ratio in India, 861 females for every 1,000 males. Politically, the upper Jat caste largely controls a statewide network of unelected, all-male councils known as khap panchayats, which dominate many rural regions of the state.

Elected leaders are reluctant to confront the khaps, given their ability to turn out voters, and often endorse their conservative social agenda, in which women are subservient to men. Khaps have sought to ban women from wearing blue jeans or using cell phones. One khap member, Jitender Chhatar, blamed fast food for the rise in rape cases, arguing that it caused hormonal imbalances and sexual urges in young women. Mr. Singh, who suggested lowering the legal marriage age, is also a khap leader.

“They are working the blame-the-victim theory,” said Jagmati Sangwan, president of the Haryana chapter of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association. “They are diverting attention from the crime and the criminals, and the root causes.”

Yet public anger is clearly bubbling up. Small protests have been staged across the state, including one this month in the town of Meham, where about 100 men and women picketed the district police headquarters over the rape of a 17-year-old girl. They waved signs demanding “Arrest Rapists!” and “Justice for Women” and chanted “Down with Haryana Police!”

Here in Dabra, about 100 miles from the Pakistan border, villagers say there is no khap panchayat but rather an elected village council where the leadership position, known as sarpanch, is reserved for a woman under nationwide affirmative action policies. Yet the male-dominated ethos prevails. The current sarpanch is the wife of a local Jat leader, who put her forward to circumvent the restriction. During an interview with the husband, the official sarpanch sat silently in the doorway, her face covered by a gauzy scarf.

“No, no,” she answered when asked to comment, as she pointed to her husband. “He’s the sarpanch. What’s the point in talking to me?”

The gang-rape of the 16-year-old girl occurred on Sept. 9 but remained a secret in the village until her father’s suicide. Dalits formed a committee to demand justice, and roughly 400 people demonstrated outside the district police headquarters, as well as at the hospital where the father’s body was being kept.

“We told them that unless you catch the suspects, we would not take the body,” said a woman named Maya Devi. “We do not have land. We do not have money. What we have is honor. If your honor is gone, you have nothing.”

Since then, the police have arrested eight men — seven of them Jats — who have confessed to the attack. There are discrepancies; the victim says she was abducted outside the village, while the suspects say they attacked her after catching her having a tryst with a married man.

“She was raped against her will,” said B. Satheesh Balan, the district superintendent of police. “There is no doubt.”

Officer Balan said villagers told the police that other local girls had also been gang-raped at the same stone shelter, though no evidence was available. Often, a girl’s family will hide a rape rather than be stigmatized in the village. Even sympathizers of the teenage victim doubt she can assimilate back into Dabra.

“It will be difficult on her,” Ms. Devi said. “Now she is branded.”

In an interview at her grandparents’ home outside the village, the victim said she believed other suspects remained at large, leaving her at risk. (Female police officers have been posted at the house round-the-clock.) Yet she has actively pushed the police and joined in the protests, despite the warnings by her attackers.

“They threatened me and said they would kill my family if I told anyone,” she said.

Many Dalit girls drop out of school, but the victim was finishing high school. Even in the aftermath of the rape, she took her first-term exams in economics, history and Sanskrit. But she no longer wants to return to the village school and is uncertain about her future.

“Earlier, I had lots of dreams,” she said. “Now I’m not sure I’ll be able to fulfill them. My father wanted me to become a doctor. Now I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.”

Hari Kumar contributed from Dabra.

@ The New York Times

THE PLIGHT OF INDIA TRAVELLERS: 'DO INDIAN AIRPORT PEOPLE MANGLE TRAVELLERS PASSPORTS ?'

[Below posted is a forwarded email message from one of the contributors of The Himalayan Voice. The content of the message is 'horrible' that India travelers must remain alert at all times while in Indian airports as "Indian Immigration, Police, Customs and Air India staff with networking at all the Indian International Airports" and they can tear away any of those travellers' passports. The message further reads, "Be careful whenever you give your passport to Immigration/ Customs/Air India staff. The passport can be easily tampered and can create trouble to you. They have found easy way of making money from Non-Resident Indians also known as the NRIs." It can't be tolerated at all. So without having tried to verify the facts and which by no means is possible from down here but the issue reported being so serious in its nature, we have therefore decided to post as it was received. - Editor]

______________________________________________________

----- Original Message -----

From: 

To: undisclosed-recipients:

Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2012 4:40 PM

Subject: [Passport Tearing at Indian Airports]

Passport Tearing at Indian Airports. Read it Carefully.!!!

Be careful at the Indian Airports ! This is a well organized conspiracy by Indian Immigration, Police, Customs and Air India staff with networking at all the Indian International Airports. Be careful whenever you give your passport to Immigration/ Customs/Air India staff. The passport can be easily tampered and can create trouble to you. They have found easy way of making money from NRIs. This is the way it works:

At the time of the passenger's departure, if the passenger is not looking at the officer while he is stamping the exit, the officer very cleverly tears away one of the pages from the passport. When the passenger leaves the immigration counter, the case is reported on his computer terminal with full details. Now all over India they have got full details of the passenger with Red Flag flashing on the Passport number entered by the departure immigration officer. They have made their money by doing above.

On arrival next time, he is interrogated.

Subject to the passenger's period of stay abroad, his income and standing etc., the price to get rid of the problem is settled by the Police and Immigration people. If someone argues, his future is spoiled because there are always some innocent fellows who think the honesty is the basis of getting justice in India.

Please advise every passenger to be careful at the airport. Whenever they hand over the passport to the counters of Air India, or immigration or the customs, they must be vigilant, should not remove eyes from the passport even if the officer in front tries to divert their attention.

Also, please pass this information to all friends, media people and important politicians. Every month 20-30 cases are being reported all over India to rob the NRIs the minute he lands. Similar case has happened with Aramco's Arifuddin. He was travelling with his family. They had six passports. They obtained  the US visas to visit United States of  America and decided to go via Hyderabad from Jeddah. They reached Hyderabad, stayed about a month and left for the States.

When they reached the States, the page of the American visa on his wife's passport was missing. At the time of departure from Hyderabad it was there, the whole family had to return to Hyderabad helplessly. On arrival at Bombay back, they were caught by the police and now it is over 2 months, they are running after the Police, Immigration officers and the Courts. On going in to details with him, he found out the following: One cannot imagine, neither can believe, that the Indian Immigration department can play such a foul to harass the innocent passengers.

All the passengers travelling to and  fro India via Bombay and Hyderabad must be aware of this conspiracy. Every month 15 to 20 cases are taking place, at each mentioned airport, of holding the passengers in the crime of tearing away the passport pages.

On interviewing some of them, none of them was aware of what had happened. They don't know why, when and who tore away the page from the middle of the passport. One can imagine the sufferings of such people at the hands of the immigration, police and the court procedures in India after that. The number of cases is increasing in the last 2-3 years. People who are arriving at the immigration, they are questioned and their passports are being held and they have to go in interrogation.

Obviously, the conspiracy started about 2 to 3 years ago, now the results are coming. Some of the Air India counter staff too is involved in this conspiracy.

KINDLY TELL THIS TO AS MANY AS YOUR FRIENDS ACROSS THE WORLD AND ALSO REQUEST THEM TO CHECK THE PASSPORT AT THE CHECKING COUNTERS BEFORE LEAVING THE AIRPORT !!