Wednesday, March 20, 2013

I'd like to hear the news of no one being gang raped in India one day

    To read the news from India lately, rape would seem to be the pastime of a good percentage of the male population. And the general attitude of the authorities is that the women are at least partly to blame.
    So when an Australian couple was "foolish" enough to go camping and ended up with the woman gang-raped while her boyfriend was tied up and forced to watch, the official line is that she was partly to blame for going camping and tempting potential rapists.
    This isn't to suggest that women shouldn't act prudently. But in India the general consensus seems to be that just by being a woman one is asking to be raped, and is thus partly to blame.
    A British tourist recently jumped from her hotel room window because she said the hotel manager and another man were banging on the door demanding to give her an oil massage.
    And, of course, there is the case which brought worldwide attention, where a woman was brutally gang raped on a bus while the driver apparently did nothing. And until there was an outcry, law enforcement was bound and determined to do nothing. The woman died.
    Few things are more grating on Western ears than Indian music. But I got to thinking that some Indian singer might do a rewrite of this Anne Murray's song from the early 1980s:
 

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