Kajol Said She Is Glad Women Are Not Letting Rapes Go Unreported. Which Is Great But The Reality is So Grim
India has been brimming with rage and disgust, more so since Dr. Priyanka Reddy was raped and killed in Hyderabad. That kind of brutality left all of us in shock and every person in whatever capacity they could, contributed to the upheaval, which should have occurred ages ago. Well, a few years ago it did, when in 2012 Jyoti Singh was raped in a bus in Delhi, gutted and thrown out of the moving vehicle, mercilessly. After every rape, our nation gets agitated and then it fizzles out and the authorities get lackadaisical too. While we wait for India to make laws more stringent and security tighter because prevention is better than cure, we as women are doing our bit and that’s exactly what Kajol pointed out.
She expressed how earlier women would not report rape and sexual crimes and their families would discourage them as well. However she pointed that this is gradually changing, so that rapes don’t go unreported. Women are garnering the strength – mental, physical and emotional – to speak up and put the rapists behind the bars. Kajol told IANS, “I think there is a lot being reported right now. There are a lot of talking and chatter about it right now. This chatter is good because I am hoping it will change the mindset of the entire country and society. It’s not new. It’s been happening from time immemorial but we are talking about it today and only now we have cases being reported. That’s the good thing.”
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Kajol said that we are not letting things be; we are debating and fighting. Why should we let gender-based crimes and toxic masculinity slide by? “It’s good that people are talking about it. Conversations and debates are happening and, yes, this mindset is being brought to light. Our society has been patriarchal for ages, so we have only recently started talking about it openly. We are shining a big, strong spotlight on it and, hopefully, that will burn away some of the debate around it, some of the hard angles around it. Somewhere down the line (it will) burn our ideas also, of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man,” Kajol further added.
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ALSO READ: Jaya Bachchan Called For Public Lynching For The Hyderabad Rape Case Accused. We Don’t Know If That’s Right But We Feel The Same Rage.
After the Nirbhaya rape, in the 2013 amendments to section 376A, Indian law made it mandatory to give twenty years or life imprisonment to the convicted. In “extreme cases” they asked for death penalty to be given. I don’t understand – rape is rape. It’s an extreme act in itself. Also, in the same amendment, the two-finger test on victim was done away with because it invaded the privacy of women. Of course, not having to go through that has encouraged more women to come forward and report crimes. That and several other factors. Either ways, we as a society are doing our bit and now it’s high time the lawmakers do their bit. And quick so justice is delivered.
