Do Religious Tendencies Divide or Unite?

While the rape of the eight year old girl from Kathua District has recently been enshrined on social media and had yet again brought forward a surge of youth activists, it has also moved the shrouded nature on Indian secularism. I am not going to talk about the horrible and inhumane acts of the rapists here, but rather on how these acts were defended.

Many supporters of the rapists, and yes it is a very sad truth that every rape story has an undeniable line of people who support the rapist, said that this gang rape was done in the name of religion.

The Hindu-Muslim communal conflict has predated Partition in the Indian society, and many religious extremists treat human bodies as commodities to be conquered in order to establish religious supremacy.

Asifa was drugged and raped in a temple with policemen and priests being the perpetrators. When her body was being taken for burial by her heartbroken parents, they were tantalized by near-by conservative Hindus and were forced to bury their daughter in another a village.

This entire situation really brings up the question whether religious tendencies divide or unite. As an agnostic, I left my belief of religion purely because I did not support an institutionalized form of antiquated ideals that were dictating how I should live my life. And while I do believe that there should be a very clear distinction that separates religion from the state and from how we treat others, I always thought that religion created a community that could bring people together for their own  mental well being.

But when communities like this start taking their freedom and respect from the state for granted, I do start to wonder if the flaw is not in the religious institutions but in the government apparatus.

Religious tendencies have done nothing but divided us in the political arena. While they do unite us in our social lives, we must realize that our religious beliefs have led us to support organizations whose actions we might have otherwise condemned.

When it comes to coming together for the sake of humanity, our wants from our state are the same: we wants our fundamental rights to be respected and ensured. But it is our tenacious grip on religious “morals” that hinders us from giving the same rights to others that we wish to get.

So I stress again on the inherent flaw in my country’s legislative apparatus: the state-controlled secularism. India is secular only within the fading lines of its constitution, but in reality it has been perforated with religious supremacists from our neighboring houses to important offices in the government. What India needs is not another candle march, but a cohesive amendment to its executive bodies.

Victim Blaming: Gender, Race, and Class

Rape victims aren’t the only assault victims that are blamed for the crime that was committed against them. Many black and Hispanic people are blamed for theft that happened on their property or held accountable for the kidnap of their child.

However, in the same situation, white men and women have a much lower chance of being blamed. This suggests that there is a discriminatory pattern among police officers and court verdicts.

For the same reasons women (and men) are blamed for their sexual assault so as to relieve the sex offender from their due punishment. And even in this case, reports show that men of color are much more likely of being charged of sexual assault than white men.

This basically means that if you are a white man, getting away with crime is comparatively much easier for you.

It’s a given fact that racism goes hand in hand with sexism. I, for one, know that even though we are living in the twenty first century and people like Ruby Rose are redefining gender roles, I am going to be looked down upon in the workplace, not only because I am a woman but also because of the color of my skin.

There are a lot of rape cases on college campuses (and in private organizations) that are largely underreported because of the universities’ want to protect their reputation rather than their students. Reports have shown that many rapes that occurred on campus were by members of fraternities who were legacies and contributed a lot to the universities’ financial funding and rankings.

So now let me rephrase the sentence that I have earlier mentioned: if you are a white, rich man, getting away with crime is definitely much easier for you.

I am not trying to make anyone feel bad about their racial or gendered privileges. Our society has been historically shaped in a communist way, some people are more privileged than others in a few walks of their lives. But instead, I am asking these people to use their privileges to support those who don’t have them.

If there is one thing we can learn from socialism in Russia and China, is that socialism eventually dies. So I am not asking for a society that is socialist, but I am asking for us to redefine communism.

We should be equally accredited according to our contribution to the society and we should be equally punished for our crimes. Our gender and our race shouldn’t interfere in this.

There are several instances in college where women report their assault to campus security, and the campus security does not take it seriously and casually dismisses it. And all of this is done solely to protect the university from media criticism.

According to one 2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics/Department of Justice study, fewer than 5 percent of completed and attempted rapes of women in college were reported to law enforcement officials, and that number drops still lower for other forms of sexual assault.

(src: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/182369.pdf)

Victim blaming is, thus, the rawest form of discrimination, and here’s why:

1. Women are often blamed for their sexual assault when the reported sex offender is an accredited white male.
2. Men are blamed for their sexual assault because society thinks that they should be strong and they should have fought against their rapist; if they didn’t then they had been ‘asking for it.’ This is sexism at it’ finest.
3. Women of color are more likely to be blamed than white women because of prevalent racism.