Mahmood Farooqui is a convicted rapist, a well-known exponent of Dastangoi, a Rhodes scholar and a cultured historian. It’s a simple enough sentence, but hugely problematic for some.
How could a man like Farooqui (and also Tarun Tejpal and RK Pachauri) be accused of sexual assault?
Strengthened by years of newspaper reports and ingrained class prejudices, the stereotypical rapist in India is a stranger, mostly lower-class male, prowling on the streets at night. Yet, most rapes in India are committed by known persons; ex-boyfriends, someone within the family, a co-worker at the workplace...
But the image of a potential rapist as a stranger, lower-class male is too strong to let go of. Which leads to two troubling implications.
One, when the potential rapist is a stranger, the onus of preventing rape and being safe in a public space is on the woman.
Two, it makes reporting rape committed by known persons even more difficult, whether to establish in a court of law or to garner emotional support.
Preventing Rape, Thanks to Pepper Spray
“Don’t come back from work so late at night.”
“Be careful and don’t make eye contact. You have the pepper spray, na?”
If you’re a woman in India, such advice from well-intentioned family members, friends and relatives is a rite of passage. Customised according to geography (different when you’re in Delhi or Rohtak) and unconsciously imbibed, they are essential diktats on accessing public space. Why? Because the threat of rape is unknown. Cue, stranger rapist lurking in street corners.
Instead of making public spaces safer for women to access, the stereotypical image of a ‘stranger rapist’ pushes her further away from it. If she doesn’t know who could be a potential rapist, surely it is her responsibility to take care of all possibilities and prevent it, no?
No. In their book Why Loiter, Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan argue for a woman’s right to take risk in a public space. From an emphasis on ‘protecting’ women from rape, the focus should shift to ensuring their ‘freedom’ of movement in public spaces, despite the threat of rape.
But what about the stereotype of a potential rapist? Yes, lower-class stranger men have been implicated in certain rape cases, but it is dangerous to think only of them as capable of committing rape. Access to public spaces is a tricky thing. If a woman has the right to be in a space of her own free will, so does a lower-class man without fear of unfair stereotyping.
When Rape Has a Familiar Face
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2014 figures, 86 percent of rapes in India are committed by people known to the victim; family, friends and co-workers. But so much emphasis is given to the threat of rape outside (which undoubtedly exists), that when a familiar face is convicted as a rapist, a feeling of doubt and surprise emerges.
One of the arguments used by the defence in the Mahmood Farooqui rape trial was that the survivor knew Farooqui and was friendly with him and his wife. Quite apart from the defence counsel’s propensity to save his client using any argument, the fact that a lot of courts do take familiarity into account while judging rape trials is significant.
It is as if our society hits a ‘Disbelief’ button when faced with the knowledge that the rape survivor knew the perpetrator.
“It must be consensual, there is something more to this than meets the eye.”
“But she knew him, how can he rape?”
The state of disbelief reaches its maximum level when confronted with a rapist who is a husband.
Disbelief turns into deafness.
When Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said that marital rape cannot be applied in the Indian context due to a variety of factors, including the ‘mindset of the society to treat marriage as a sacrament,’ she was echoing the deafness of Indian society that refuses to acknowledge the rapist at home.
Stereotypes are hard to look past; ingrained notions even more so. Educational qualifications, sophistication and intellect are no justification whatsoever of dismissing a rape charge. Neither are familial relations, whether by birth or marriage.
A rape is a rape.
Just as a rapist is a rapist.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)