It appears to be shocking to the world but it is not to my friends in India. They say they know this happens all the time but nothing is ever done. Will the incidents that have gone on recently affect India? How will they deal with this?

There have now been two very high profile gang rapes in India, the one in Delhi in December and the recent one in Madhya Pradesh of a 39 year-ols Swiss woman.

 

The first one has seemingly caused a lot of soul-searching in India and probably everything that can be said has been said already. The rape of the Swiss woman on Friday appears to me to be a simple opportunistic crime. Two tourists were camping in an isolated place in or near a forest. They were spotted by some men (six have been arrested) who carried out the attack. So yes, if rape or robbery is on your mind then this couple must have seemed perfect targets, but why would that be on any man's mind in the first place? And not just one 'rogue' male, but six! I can understand a poor villager, desperate to feed his family, committing robbery . . . but rape? That's another level of awfulness altogether for my western mind to accept. So that brings me back to the often mentioned fact that such violence is ingrained somewhere in the male psyche. At least for those men living in certain parts of India and of a certain class. But why? Is it because they know they can get away with it, do such things with impunity because women are held in such low regard? Do they even stop to think whether their attitude towards women is distorted? If not, then why not go all the way and treat them like animals? If you can get away with it, and especially if you know you are not alone - either by doing it in the company of other men, or knowing of other men who are or have done similar things - that to some men may make it, if not right, then at least justifiable to themselves. I am sure we can all think of similar 'crimes' committed against vulnerable individuals in every country. Many of these crimes went largely unpunished for a very long time, maybe even centuries, before in many cases extremely unfavourable publicity opened people's eyes. Society was outraged and the guilty were condemned.

 

So I think there is hope, that some things that have persisted for a very long time can be reigned in by public outrage. The media are often criticised but the way news is broadcast nowadays means that what at one time might have been known to only a few - swept under the carpet syndrome - is now in the public domain for us all to tussle with.

 

The well-known quote: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes - attributed to Mark Twain - can be corruped to:  The truth can travel all the way around the world while the guilty are still protesting their innocence.