The rape of the 23-year old medical student, Ms. Jyoti Singh Pandey, in New Delhi in December 2012 outraged many around the world. Sadly, for those of us with ties to India, this crime, as horrific and shocking as it was, did not come as a complete surprise. More recently, the same act was perpetrated on a young woman doing her job in Mumbai-in the daytime and accompanied by a male colleague. We did not even have time to recover from the shock waves when news of an infant being sexually abused elsewhere in the country filtered through. Babies, young girls, older women, nobody has been spared.
Hardly a day passes when the nation's dailies do not carry stories of domestic violence, the rape, stripping, and parading naked of mostly lower caste women, dowry deaths, acid attacks on unsuspecting housewives, and the harassment of women everywhere. Ignorant politicians, village leaders, police officials, even magistrates are quick to assign blame to the victim. If only the woman had stayed home that night instead of accessing the public space as an equal citizen, if only her skirt had been a few inches longer, or her dowry a little fatter.
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