Rape, caste and politics: Foolish attempts to change the narrative may never work, writes Tavleen Singh

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says it registered 32,033 rape cases in 2019, which means 87 Indian women were raped every day. Of these, 15% were children. (representative image)

things in the prime minister Narendra ModiThe ‘New India’ which has become worse than the old India. One of them is the false story spread on social media by their spokespersons and supporters every time a child or woman is brutally raped and murdered.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says it registered 32,033 rape cases in 2019, which means 87 Indian women were raped every day. Of these, 15% were children. The figures are shameful, but it is not the figures that worry us as much as the drastic efforts at the behest of political leaders to change the narrative at the highest level in the ‘New India’.

Last week, when Dalit activists took to the streets in protest, arrests were made in the case of a nine-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly raped and murdered by a priest and three of his accomplices. The alleged rapists deny all charges and claim that the girl died due to electric shock received from the water cooler. But this does not explain why they were in such a hurry to cremate the child’s body when his mother tried to stop them.

The story is told in detail in this newspaper and does not need to be repeated. This is the politics I want to talk about.

This is because I was hurt by the insensitivity with which Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons reacted to the child’s death. they were more upset than Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi Went to express my condolences to the family of the deceased girl in comparison to the horrors of what happened to her. Sambit Patra, who is the face of TV BJP, spoke in lewd, ugly details about the rape of Dalit women in Rajasthan and asked with his decidedly self-indulgent smile why Rahul Gandhi didn’t visit their families.

If he believes that this strengthens his case that Rahul went for political reasons and not for compassionate reasons, he achieved the opposite result.

This column is not a fan of Rahul Gandhi or Delhi CM Arvind KejriwalBut I appreciate them for visiting this poor Dalit family home and offering them financial and legal help. This is little that political leaders should do as they are unable to prevent these most shameful crimes from happening with such a relentless routine that India is sometimes referred to as the rape capital of the world. Shame on all of us that this is not a big political issue. And that none of Modi’s women ministers thought they needed to offer help and condolences to the family of the deceased girl.

Smriti Irani was the bitterest critic of Sheila Dikshit’s government when Nirbhaya was brutally raped and murdered. She is now the Minister of Women and Child Development but didn’t even care to tweet about the tragic death of this little girl. Was it because she was a Dalit or was one of the alleged rapists a priest in a temple adjacent to the crematorium in which the girl died?

Not that Mrs. Irani was staying off Twitter last week. He found time to tweet this about the women’s hockey team. ‘Inspiration! Each one of you has raised new hopes, raised aspirations… Each one of you is a symbol of strength, skill and perseverance. You are our girls, our pride, towards a stronger future ahead. The Prime Minister and several other ministers tweeted about the hockey team in a similarly triumphant manner. But, not a single tweet was made about the little Dalit girl. Why?

Is it because the Delhi Police comes directly under the Home Minister and it was necessary to bury the story at the earliest? Changing the story when a rape becomes political and reflects the horrific realities of caste and poverty is something that has become the norm in the ‘new India’. When another Dalit girl was raped, murdered and cremated by the police in Hathras last year, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister tried to make it an ‘international conspiracy’ against his government. A Muslim journalist who was arrested on his way to Hathras was implicated in this so-called ‘Jihadi’ conspiracy. A year later, he remains in prison.

These foolish attempts to change the narrative can never work. The story will change only when our political leaders stop turning away from the horrific truth that not much has changed in the ‘New India’ in terms of crimes against women.

Another terrifying truth that we have to face is that usually the women and children who are victims of rape and murder come from Dalit families. At the risk of being accused once again of being ‘anti-Hindu’ and ‘anti-India’ by BJP trollers, I am going to say something that our political leaders do not want to admit. The victims in rape cases are usually Dalits and the rapists belong to the upper caste.

So there is little justice. That is why the police threaten to drop the charges. If rape cases go to trial, more than 90 percent of rapists escape their barbaric crimes. What has changed in the ‘New India’ is that the BJP uses false narratives to hide facts in the states. Unless the victim is a Hindu and the rapist is a Muslim. Then we have made arrests under the new ‘love jihad’ laws.