Rape Culture in India and Great Britain

No one has much of anything to say about India. Curiously. The world’s largest nation, population-wise, is also the world’s largest democracy. When you ask why certain other large countries reject liberal democracy, you might consider how well it is working in India.

In principle, liberal democracy involves human rights. Fair enough. And yet, the rights of women-- to choose a group almost at random-- are being systematically trampled by India’s pervasive rape culture.

Vidya Krishnan explains it in horrifying detail in The New York Times. We await the anguished feminist outcry. Of course, feminists have been notably silent about honor killings and child marriage in Muslim countries, and have failed to militate against the Pakistani grooming gangs that have brutalized young girls in Great Britain.

Krishnan explains:

… sexual terrorism is treated as the norm…. This culture contaminates public life-- in movies and television; in bedrooms where female sexual consent is unknown…. India’s favorite profanities are about having sex with women without their consent. 

In 2011, she reports, an Indian woman was raped every twenty minutes. In 2021 the number had risen to one rape every sixteen minutes. In 2021 the number of reported gang rapes had risen to 2200.

And this does not count the cases where the rapes are not reported. 

As it happens, rape victims are oftenmembers of lower castes, or are Muslims. 

It is not much better in Great Britain. There, Pakistani men have groomed young British girls. They have raped and sex trafficked them. And yet, the punctilious Brits have chosen to ignore it. They have saved their ire for those men who have tried to put an end to it all. When some of the perpetrators are brought to justice, that justice is minimal.

Especially now, with the Labour government in power, the impulse is to ignore the grooming gangs because to do otherwise would be Islamophobic. Worse yet, the man who is most responsible for failing to prosecute grooming gangs is current prime minister Keir Starmer. In a previous incarnation Starmer headed the Crown Prosecution Service. The CSP would have had to sign on to allow prosecution of rapists. Under Starmer it refused to do so.

Of course, Britain is a Democratic country. It is the birthplace of human rights. It has militated for women’s rights since the eighteenth century. And yet, it is allowing grooming gangs to function, almost unmolested. 

Strange indeed. Keep in mind, when we denounce the totalitarian tyranny of China, where human rights are not well respected, the world’s largest democracy countenances gang rape and the violation of the most basic of human rights for women.

The more salient theoretical point is this: does the persistence of these atrocities represent the truth about patriarchy? Does India countenance rape because it is patriarchal? Does Great Britain punish only those who call attention to the horrors visited on British girls by Pakistani men because it is a patriarchy.

Here a little straight thought would be useful. In truth, the role of father in a patriarchal society requires a man to protect and provide for women and children. When men sit idly by and allow their daughters to be raped and sex trafficked, they are failing at one of the most fundamental manly tasks.

Nations countenance rape culture when they are turning away from patriarchy, when women insist that they do not need to be protected or provided for. 

Remember the old saying: be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.