What India is going through at present is not so much a rape explosion as a rape awareness explosion. The 2012 Delhi bus rape generated unprecedented levels of public outrage and seems to have broken the longstanding stigma against discussing rape as a public policy issue.
I was wondering about that so I did a search on India stoning. This came up. Indian Girl Who Reported Rape Threatened With Stoning After Being Placed Behind Bars | HuffPost The World Post
I nominate this for “Weirdest Set of Trivial Pursuit Categories”.
Sadly, this is true.
To be clear, you have spotted that a country with a thousand million people in it had more than six rapes.
Panic!
I have to disagree with some of that.
I agree that the there is no reason to believe that there would be a difference in the number of rapes per capita between urban and rural areas. But there are many reasons to believe that rapes that do occur in rural areas would be under-reported.
[ol]
[li]much lesser access to police in rural areas vs urban areas[/li][li]local bodies in rural areas may not deal with rape cases for many reasons[/li][li]more stigma against rape in rural areas[/li][li]lower rates of prosecution in rural areas[/li][li]vicitim is less likely to know the law and protections available[/li][/ol]
I remember watching a documentary on BBC on India and Rape. This British-Indian girl in Delhi, complains to the police that a guy at a store touched her inappropriately. Within the course of the documentary (few weeks), the man was arrested and prosecuted at a fast track court. This wouldn’t have happened outside of a big city.
Can’t prove it so don’t ask me to but I’d be willing to bet that the definition of rape in the US is much different than in India. Everything we consider rape isn’t such in India. Or Pakistan. Or Nigeria. Or whatever backward ass country you want to throw in the mix.
You would lose that bet. An amendment passed in 2013 makes the rape laws in India one of the strictest in the world.
I don’t know about Pakistan or Nigeria. Why are they in the same pool as India?
I don’t think it’s just that there is a lot of rape in India, but there have been a lot of high profile gang rapes followed by the murder of the victims.
I’m not saying that rapes in rural areas would not be under reported. I’m saying there’s no reason to believe that incidence of rape in rural areas is much higher than urban areas. In fact, there is reason to believe that rapes in rural areas could be lower because(rightly or wrongly) social norms and conventions have had time to adjust to conservative values. Indian rural areas are not like American rural areas. Villages are small clusters, houses are tightly packed together. Large families live together, women are married early and rarely alone.
Cities are places where many people from this world co-exist with many women who are independent, who go to work everyday, go out with boyfriends, and are not bound by the same restrictive social structure that exists in villages. Most react to this by gradually changing their social norms. Unfortunately some react to it by raping. I think these sort of rapes(I’m not saying there are no others) also tend to be big news partly because they feed into inter-class fears. The highly publicised Delhi rape and killing is an example.
What’s your point? One anecdote that the rapist’s family attempted(unsuccessfully) to intimidate the victim is equivalent to rape victims being “generally speaking” stoned to death in India?
Oh really? Stoning a rape victim to death happens in India? Dude, you dont happen to believe the badlands of Waziristan belong in India, do you?
And that single cite you provided - is that all you could come up with, to support your sweeping statement about stoning rape victims to death?
To the OP: nothing extraordinarily evil is going on in India. Not to say rape is not evil and violent, just that India is by no means the rape capital of the world. As noted upthread, that distinction belongs elsewhere, with the US not too far behind. Considering the US considers itself the pre-eminent civilization in the world, possessed of love, light, knowledge, yada yada, it really shouldn’t be in competition with Lesotho and India in rape statistics, but it is.
Media in India highlight every known instance of rape, to increase awareness in society. I do not agree that blanket coverage is effective (beyond a point) but that’s how it is. The US is so used to rape that for the media it is a non-event.
Rest assured rape is taken very seriously in India, and as pointed out upthread, the Indian Penal Code is very harsh in rape punishment.
Typical first-world arrogance. Your ridiculous comment on the definition of rape being different in India is plain BS. Oh, and I see you stated you couldn’t be bothered to post cites.
Only because you are excluding marital rape by fiat.
Here’s Pakistan’s rape law:
and here’s Nigeria’s
Willing to bet, but not willing to look it up. Yeah, that’s plausible. :dubious:
As I said I was wondering do I did a search. That story came up, thought I’d share.
Why are you so hostile?
Did you read the comment on stoning that I was responding to, and in continuation of which exchange you posted your anecdote? Did you read the OP? I’m the one that’s hostile?
And in our interaction, I’ve not been hostile to you at all. I’ve asked you to clarify your point, and particularly if you believe it supports the contention that got this exchange started. If you did, then perhaps I might be hostile.
To further clarify, I did not intend to be hostile at all, and I apologise if I came across as such.