The Rape Narrative

‘Niharan’ workshop was organized by a national organization named ‘No Country for Women’ (http://nocountryforwomen.org/) during ‘Kshitij’ – the techno-management fest of IIT Kharagpur held in January 2015. I had the opportunity to attend the deliberations made on the second day of this three-day workshop. The team discussed the rape narrative in detail.

To start with, the participants / audience were asked to submit few keywords associated with rape, such as – abuse of the weaker sex, non-consensual sexual activity, etc. Noted below are the few fundamental questions which were raised at the forum.

‘What will be the attributes of the person one who gets raped, the one who rapes?’

The usual narrative in vogue, as constructed and popularized by media, paints the rapist as an underprivileged, uneducated stranger-man from rural hinterland, but living in an urban slum; and the one who works as a taxi-driver or an industrial worker. On the other hand, a scantily clad elite woman standing outside a pub late in the midnight trying to find a taxi home is usually being assumed to have provoked the man to rape her.

However, this narrative is seldom true. On the contrary, responding to the question above, the house concluded that it could be anyone who rapes and gets raped - irrespective of gender, age, class, and caste. Contrary to the popular belief, in most of the cases the rapist has been known to the victim.

‘When and where does rape happen?’

Again, as per the popular narrative, rape almost always happens late in the midnight, out on the dark streets, in the less inhabited areas of the city and its periphery.

With the responses gathered, it was agreed by all that rape may happen at any hour of the day, even within the so called ‘safe’ confines of home.

Summarily, the deliberations underlined that the popular rape narrative is just a part of the complete picture, even that being a skewed one. It doesn’t consider many other forms of similar atrocities - namely marital and custodian rape; rape of a man; sexual abuse of vulnerable classes such as children and LGBTQ individuals – which seldom get highlighted. The question of morality was left being discussed.

(P.S.: This discussion shall be seen in light of the recent controversy over Indian Government banning the screening of the documentary ‘India’s Daughter’ which uplifts the sameness of rapist’s mind-set - ranging from the rapist to defense-lawyers and many others.)