Blaming the rape victim in India

Most Indians still think much like the killers in infamous 2012 New Delhi bus case

New Delhi, Mar.6.─ When a rapist and killer said a woman who had been brutally attacked on a New Delhi bus was responsible for what had happened to her, he shocked people around the world. But not in India.

Here, blaming women for rape is what hundreds of millions of men are taught to believe.

And the code for women in this country is simple: Dress modestly, don’t go out at night, don’t go to bars and clubs, don’t go out alone. If you break the code, you will be blamed for the consequences.

When one of the four men sentenced to death for the high-profile gang rape of the woman in 2012 was quoted in a new documentary as saying “a girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” he was repeating something that community and religious leaders in this nation of 1.2 billion routinely say.

“A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. . . . Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes,” Mukesh Singh said in the documentary, “India’s Daughter,” (...)

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