These Khap Panchayats do serve a purpose. Solving trivial disputes in a village at no cost to the taxpayer is an important objective. However, most of these men are have little formal education. I am quite sure, without running the risk of sounding elitist that these men have no training to opine on topics like rape. To say that by lowering the age of marriage a solution to rape, they are exposing their ignorance at best and a sick mentality at worst. State government or the Central government need to step in and take charge of the situation in the rape-infested areas and come up with ways of solving the problem.
However we are seeing an alarming trend in the rest of the country as well. Recent rapes in West Bengal and a public assault of a girl in Guwahati are some examples. Mamata Bannerjee made some reckless remarks about the cause of rapes being the free mixing of the two sexes. I am sure that she will be at a loss for explaining rape of very young girls, old women and kidnapped girls. Better stuff is expected from a woman chief minister of one of our most literate states!
To make my point I have to discuss a TV show that I was made aware by a US based friend. On a TV channel called MSNBC, there is a show where they run a sting operation. Essentially, a police officer poses as a teenage girl and lures sex predators to a house where the TV show host waits for them along with the police. When the show was hosted in Silicon Valley, a large number of Indian techies were arrested. I am attaching two urls for you to see. The percentage of the techies caught was disproportionately higher than the Indian population in that area. And to think that all these guys thought that it is OK to have sex with a thirteen-year-old girl tells you something about them. I have struggled with a possible explanation for this depravity.
One possible explanation could be that boys in India are raised with a different degree of entitlement than girls. Preference for male child drives this kind of behavior. If a child is instilled with this attitude from infancy then what is going to be his attitude towards those whom he deems lesser people (girls, servants and other domestic / public help)? Does this kind of attitude objectify the girls, making their exploitation and rape acceptable? It does bear looking into.
Maybe the middle class boys who are raised in almost cocoon like atmosphere when exposed to public mixing with girls, mistake friendly overtures as loose behavior. Since when is a smile invitation for aggressive sexual behavior?
The point I am trying to make is that as a society, we need to drastically modify our view and way of raising sons and daughters. We clearly have lost our Hindu way of life where our goddesses are as revered as gods, where “Kanyadaan (giving away a daughter)” is deemed as a “Punya (grace)” and where the country is referred to as “Bharatmata”.
I am not a psychologist but a concerned father and an Indian. I can only talk about my angst in the matter. I do not have a solution for this problem other than what I can tell and teach my own kids. I tell and teach my son that no matter what the provocation, IT IS NEVER, EVER OK to strike or behave improperly with a girl. I thought that I was just doing the common sense thing here. Apparently it is not such a common sense thing after all.
A NY Times article on the matter can be read at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/world/asia/a-village-rape-shatters-a-family-and-indias-traditional-silence.html
An eye opening article on the psychology of rape can be read at: http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/rapefeat.html
Mamata Bannerjee comments on the topic can be read at: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rapes-happening-because-men-and-women-are-interacting-more-freely-says-mamata-banerjee/300585-37-64.html
The Indian pedophiles article can be read at (and in the url within the articles): http://rivr.sulekha.com/indian-sex-predators-in-america_190725_blog
http://niralimagazine.com/2006/10/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places/
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