Figures of rape and more : A call to change mindset
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 31, 2012 -

Figures tell a story though not the whole unalloyed story. In the last five years, cases of rape reported in the State media stand at 68. This works out to 13.6 rape cases per year, which again means more than one rape case in a month.

Manipur is not Delhi, which is infamously known as the Rape Capital of the country, but the figure of 13.6 rape cases in a year is alarming enough, given the fact that the population of the State must be lesser than a district in States like Uttar Pradesh.

Though statistics do not tell the whole story, this is worrying and top this up with the fact that out of the 68 cases reported in the last five years only 20 cases have been tried and the whole picture should become clear.

This is about cases which have been reported and for each rape case that has made it to the media and registered with the police, there must be two or more such cases, which have gone unreported.

Even as the Chandel and Napetpalli incidents were setting off chain reactions across the nook and breadth of the State came the news of the alleged rape of a housewife by a neighbour at December 27 night.

Clearly the winter of angst is complete.

Couple this with the tragic death of the rape victim at Delhi and gradually it becomes all the more clear that women are no longer safe in this country, where the most powerful individual is perceived to be a woman in the person of Sonia Gandhi.

Women being molested and raped and killed in the most horrendous manner in the land of Nupi Lan, the meira paibi movement and Ima/Nupi Keithel and the stereotyping of women is painfully clear.

Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam has called for stringent laws to ensure the protection of women. Something which everyone has been demanding. However it is not the enactment of laws alone which will suffice.

Other than making the police more gender sensitive, what is needed is also speedy delivery of justice whenever a crime is committed against women.

Perhaps the most important point lies in educating the sons, the male species. Rape is not only about libido or the need to get sexual release.

It may be this and more. Dominance. A show and assertion of power, raw brute force.

A sort of a weapon used to tell women where they belong. It is the social system which nurtures such a mindset that has to be addressed to and the lesson should start from the smallest unit of society-the family.

Teach all the sons to respect women. Do away with the social hypocrisy, wherein women are placed on a pedestal in the public domain but are more often than not reduced to punching bags within the confine of one's house.

It is this mindset which needs to be addressed to and fast.

Not only for nothing is there the widely held belief that it is society which breeds and nurtures criminals.

The figures given above are indicators but significant indicators and the people can afford to overlook this only at the expense of the safety of its sisters and daughters.