Don’t blame women for the violence they suffer

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s remark in the context of the rape of a medical student in her state, that the latter shouldn't have been out so late at night, is worrying.

- Lalita Panicker

This is nearly always the unthinking response from many people when sexual crimes against women are reported. In Deepa Mehta's gripping documentary on causes leading to the Delhi gangrape of 2012, Anatomy of Violence, one of the convicts kept reiterating — almost indignantly — that the woman who died of her injuries after a horrific rape inflicted on her by him and his friends should not have been out that late. In the case of domestic violence too, the oft repeated claim is that the woman is somehow responsible because of her behaviour, her inability to cook the right type of food or her not being able to produce a male child. This violence against women is so normalised that ina survey of lower court judges some years ago, many of them said that it was perfectly all right for a man to slap his wife for misdemeanours at home.