Insensitive bandwagon
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: January 30, 2014 -

In a major embarrassment for not only her political outfit, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which is an alliance partner of Government of Maharashtra, but also for the Maharashtra Women Commission (MWC), of which she is a member, Dr Asha Mirje has sparked off a controversy with her remarks that women themselves are to be blamed for the rise in the number of rapes.

Speaking at a programme of the party's women wing attended by NCP chief Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule, who also heads the NCP's women wing, at Nagpur on Wednesday, Mirje literally has stirred a hornet's nest by her loose tongue, saying that 'a woman's dress', 'her behaviour' and 'her presence at inappropriate places' are the three main factors responsible for provoking incidents like rape on women in India, and hence girls should be very careful about what they wear and at what time they move out from home and with whom.

To prove her point, Mirje even went on to ask the gathering “Was it necessary for Nirbhaya (Delhi gang-rape victim) to go to cinema with a friend at 11 in the night? Was it necessary for the girl (woman journalist) to go to an isolated spot like Shakti Mills in Mumbai at 6 pm?”

According to Mirje, every girl should mull over four questions before venturing out: where I am going, why, with whom and is it necessary for me to go there?

Predictably, Mirje's remark over a sensitive issue like rape has drawn a lot of flak, forcing her to apologize.

However, she is not the first person nor would be the last to accused women of causing their own rapes, and this is a tragedy for India, which is fast becoming a no country for women with a new rape case reported every 22 minutes.

Before her, there have been many other so-called Indian leaders, who need to be given crass course on rape issue, starting right from President Pranab Mukherjee's own son and Congress MP Abhijit Mukherjee, who could see nothing but many beautiful women with highly dented-painted protesting against Delhi gang-rape at India Gate to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who feels that rapes happen because women are interacting with men freely unlike in the past, and from senior BJP Minister from Madhya Pradesh Babulal Gaur and RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, who blamed adoption of western culture for rape of women to the self-acclaimed god-man Asaram Bapu who claimed that the Delhi gang-rape victim was as guilty as those responsible for the barbaric sexual assault on her as one hand cannot clap.

So, Mirje has only joined the long list of insensitive bandwagon.

But what was really surprising in her case is that she is not just a woman politician but also a member of the Women Commission of a State which has been instituted to take up women issue and protect their rights but she did not know that rape is committed by a diseased mind, who would not even spare a minor girl that knows nothing about seductive/suggestive body languages.

With such kind of mindset, surely, there is little or no hope at all for women in India in the days and years to come.