I Think: Rape stories are pulling down India’s reputation in the world
Amol Dethe, financial journalist, Mumbai
I mostly access news through newspapers or television, but I don’t go into the details of stories on sexual violence. You can know what the story is just by reading the headline. So why do you need to wade into cruelty and torture? When you can’t do much, you just suffer. It’s violence that has happened to someone else. You feel bad, you feel emotional, you feel guilty for being part of society.
In 2008, I was working with a news channel. Sitting in the newsroom, I saw footage being broadcast of a woman being beaten in some place in UP. I couldn’t put my thoughts together for some time. How could a cameraman shoot this? How could our society accept the fact that a woman, tied up and in torn clothes, was being thrown stones at? I don’t remember the details but it was a breaking story, which was then followed by other channels. This was one of the most horrible acts of violence I had seen. You don’t need to go to hell. You see this happening and you know you are already in hell.
It is the duty of a cameraman to shoot whenever there’s a big story. But at the end of the day, he’s a human being. He could see people throwing stones at her. Had I been in his place, perhaps I would have tried to intervene, no matter what. It would have been my job to shoot, but I would have tried to stop what was happening. I don’t know… but that’s what I feel.
I guess there are two ways of reporting rape stories. One is to write in a very simple way. But then no one will read. When you say, “A girl was raped,” it is not as attention-grabbing as, “An innocent girl of five was raped.” Such headlines make you question the condition of the country you are living in.
Giving a meaningful headline and writing in an attention-grabbing way is very important. For example, in Nirbhaya’s case, the public took to the streets only because of the media! Had the media simply reported the news, perhaps society would have ignored the story.
Yes, the media should use words carefully and not go to extremes, but the problem is that society jaagti nahi hai, murde ho gaye hain saare (society doesn’t wake up, we have become like corpses). Society needs to change. I always ask this question — if you leave your house and spit on the wall on your way downstairs, how can you expect the government to come and clean it?
When we write such stories, we must maintain the confidentiality of the victim. Instead of writing about the victim, we should publish the picture and credentials of the criminal. Importantly, we should focus more on the misogynistic attitudes of the people. If I am robbed, people will point at me and say that I have been robbed. Instead of me, point fingers at the robber! The robber robbed me.
After the Nirbhaya story, I happened to go abroad. In random discussions, many foreigners pointed out that, “India is not safe for women.” When you’re in foreign land and have to listen to this about your country, it hits you really hard.
When you are reporting these stories, the negative side is that the world is also reading them. And the world is interested in only these stories. Does the world know how India has given Aadhaar to more than 95% of its population? Do they know the growth stories of Indian IT companies? But Nirbhaya’s and other rape stories are known everywhere in the world. And there’s a reason. The West has been dominating Asian countries. The media industry is absolutely dominated by the West. So they will not look at stories of success and achievements of Asians but focus on the negative ones. I am not saying the West shouldn’t report India’s rape stories… my observation is that they are interested only in these ones, because they pull our country down.
