RG Kar verdict has left many clamouring for death sentence. But will that stop sexual assault?

When protests erupted successful Bengal aft the incident, it was noticeably antithetic successful tone. It came from the upper-middle-class people, the bhadralok, the socio-economic people that finds information successful high-rise apartments and gated residential spaces. The ghastly incidental had jolted them retired of their reverie – it had happened to a doctor. In a authorities wherever regular employment has dried up, middle-class parents person thing to aspire to but the aesculapian assemblage arsenic a imagination job. And this transgression successful the bosom of the superior shook the instauration of that dream.

Would the incidental person evoked the aforesaid absorption if it had happened astatine the periphery and not successful the bosom of the state? After the incident, we saw the “reclaim the nights” question instrumentality implicit the city. But connection tin often necktie itself up successful knots. When were the “nights” ever ours? And if we didn’t ain the “nights” successful the archetypal place, could we adjacent “reclaim” them? Perhaps, we could “claim” our involvement successful them. But, for that matter, were the “days” adjacent ours?

The “reclaim the nights” question was besides protesting against the unfortunate shaming that follows aft lawsuit of intersexual battle – wherefore was the unfortunate retired precocious astatine night, wherefore was she dressed a definite mode – but it could ne'er breach the metropolis walls and interaction the tiny towns and villages.

On Monday, the perpetrator of the incidental was sentenced to beingness successful prison. There are murmurs of dissent successful the metropolis that would person preferred a decease sentence. But would that halt different battle connected a woman? Every 16 minutes, determination is simply a rape successful India. In astir cases, the perpetrators are the victims’ kin. When the unfortunate belongs to the periphery, chances are her dependable mightiness not adjacent scope the centre. The voices of the marginalised ne'er transverse the heavy gated walls of the mediate and precocious classes until and unless the incidental shakes their ain interests.

But adjacent then, the moot question that remains unanswered is what leads to rape? Rape is the instrumentality of the powerful, the powerfulness translating into antithetic forms: Caste, religion, gender. And if you are a woman, you are already astatine a disadvantage. Patriarchy tin amusement you your aukat – your spot – successful galore antithetic ways, carnal unit included.

My student’s anxious call, arsenic I deliberation backmost to it now, was not a mistake. My lingua and my pen endanger patriarchy and fundamentalists alike. But notwithstanding that, she knew wherever we stand, simply due to the fact that we are women.

Alam is simply a writer and writer based retired of North Bengal