Selective Outrage - An irresponsible Trend

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In 2012 it was the most terrifying and heart-wrenching Nirbhaya incident and in 2016 it is a similar incident in Perumbavur, Kerala. It was Jyothi then and it is Jisha now. I shuddered when I read the details of Nirbhaya and I felt the same fear when I read about the Perumbavur case. It is not within the capability of any normal human being to even imagine the kind of cruelty that these two girls have suffered . The whole nation was on fire in 2012 and it is again on fire now in 2016. And it is right to be on fire.

When these incidents were brutal enough to shake the human within us, how many of us have thought or even heard about much much more such rape cases that have been reported in media between 2012 and 2016? I am very particular about the period between 2012 and now because 2012 was when the "common man" of the nation woke up from their self-induced peaceful sleep to the horrible reality of sexual assault and fatal cruelty meted upon a woman in this country. Do we know how many cases of rape are being reported every day? Just to give a fair idea, I am listing few cases that have garnered some media attention after the Nirbhaya case.

"In August 2013, a 22-year-old photojournalist, who was interning with an English-language magazine in Mumbai, was gang-raped by five persons, including a juvenile, when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound, near Mahalaxmi in South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment.

In May 2014 two girls aged 14 and 16 were allegedly gang-raped in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and girls were then hanged from a tree.

On 14 March 2015, a 71-year-old nun was allegedly gang-raped in Ranaghat, West Bengal by intruders at Convent of Jesus and Mary. "

- Source of information Wikipedia

In its annual report, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) said that the number of rape cases in the country has risen by 9 percent to 33,707 in 2014 - Source of Information in.reuters.com
These records are available on the NCRB website and is open for all of the public to see.

Aren't these data enough proof to show that 'Rape' is not a rare issue but a recurring and continuing crime in our country. If for the sake of argument I say that I am ignorant about the statistics, aren't we supposed to react with the same fervor and emotions when any rape case is being reported in the media? Some cases do get media attentions either due to the rareness of the case itself or because of the courage showed by the victim to bring it to the media attention. So many cases go unreported in our country.

But why was no social media campaign for these cases? Why was there not so much of hue and cry over these cases? Why was there no public demonstration in support of these victims or any change.org campaign for these people? I guess these people should have had a horrible death so that they would have got so much of public support. So does that mean that the victim should die a horrible death for us to react with so much of fervor? Doesn't a rape victim who did not die deserve this kind of support? Had Nirbhaya not been so cruelly attacked and left to die, had not Jisha been torn to pieces, would we have given them this much of our time and emotions? Isn't rape a cruel enough act for us to react?

Does rape not kill a person emotionally? Does rape not put the victim through serious physical and emotional pain? The continuous scrutiny by the society, ostracism that the victim and the family members suffer is beyond many of our understanding. I feel that many times we look at Rape as a lesser crime than murder. But in reality in a society like ours where chastity is the base on which a woman is judged, where morality of a woman is considered more important than her real talents and her achievements, where a woman is pushed to commit suicide because of the shame of having been raped, where a rape accused roams around freely but a victim has to live in fear, rape should be considered a crime worse  than murder.

I am not trying to belittle the outpouring emotions of the public in any case but if only we could react with the same emotional outrage for each rape incident in this country, if only we could influence our judicial system to bring the accused of every rape case under the law and get the deserved punishment, if only our emotional outbursts in the social media could target each and every rape case in this country, If only we as a society could support each Rape survivor morally to fight back for justice and stop making them a victim, I feel we will be taking a step ahead towards building a much safer place for our women where they can really live without fear. Every woman deserves it.