India’s problems are our problems

The gang rape and murder that occurred in New Delhi last month shocked the world and put Indian culture under a microscope.

It is easy to point at a foreign culture and argue what it’s doing is wrong. Americans are especially good at it.

Critics worldwide wondered how something like this could happen and what Indian authorities were doing to fix the problem.

They cite the prevalence of child brides and the frequency of domestic abuse.

Indian officials have been condemned for their poor handling of rape cases in general, as another victim killed herself after her case was mishandled by the authorities, and she was asked to marry one of her attackers.

The devaluation of women may seem particularly egregious in India, but it is not solely an Indian problem.

This is a trend seen worldwide. This is an everyone problem.

An editorial in the New York Times asserted that India “can never reach its full potential if half its population lives in fear of unspeakable violence.”

While this criticism rings true, limiting it to India is facetious.

It feels ridiculous to disparage others for making the same exact mistakes we are still making.

Our country is no stranger to gang rape, insecurity in female mobility, police apathy toward victims and insensitivity in the trial process.

One in six American women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape. American women who walk home alone after dark are consistently berated for acting irresponsibly. The majority of rapes that occur in the United States go unreported.  Only 3 percent of American rapists ever spend a day in jail.

Half of our population lives in fear of unspeakable violence, but these fears are perhaps ignored because they do not exist in the context of arranged marriages and Hinduism. They don’t exist in the context of the other.

India should be censured for the societal norms that have caused a 25-percent rise in the number of sexual assaults during the past six years. We should challenge practices that silence women and take away their autonomy.

But we cannot become complacent just because things are worse elsewhere. We cannot reserve our outrage for Indians, Saudis or Egyptians. We cannot continue to find fault solely with those who are racially, culturally and religiously different from ourselves without looking in the mirror.

India does need to make changes, but we cannot forget that we, too, still have hurdles to overcome.
 
­— casefarr@indiana.edu