There was very legitimate outrage when a 71 year old nun was gang-raped at Ranaghat in Bengal. We at The Quint were outraged and expressed it in our coverage. A few days later we read an article in the Kolkata Hindi daily Patrika, reporting the rape of a ‘sadhvi’ of the Ramakrishna Mission in Bengal’s Malda district. Similarly outraged by this crime, we carried the story as well.
A few days later, it emerged that the lady who had been raped was not a sadhvi, but a deekshita at the Ramakrishna Mission, and had been initiated by the guru maharaj of the Ramakrishna math. This was also pointed out in an article on a news website, which also seemed to ask why The Quint was outraged by the rape of the deekshita.
If a lady is a deekshita and not a Sadhavi, is her rape any less reprehensible? The gang-rape of a 71 year old nun makes us sick, so does the rape of a lady who happens to be an initiate of the Ramakrishna Mission. It would have made us sick if she was Class 5 girl who was raped by her seniors in a field where she went to relieve herself, which are the tragic details of yet another rape that The Quint has covered in just the last few days.
The afore-mentioned article ends with a very apt quote from Swami Divyananda, Secretary of Ramakrishna Mission’s Belur math: “sabar upare manus satya tahar upare nai. [The supreme truth is humankind, there is nothing higher than that.] All incidents of violence should be condemned, and none should be compared.”
At The Quint, we’re confident we won’t need to corroborate that universal truth.
Violence against women, in any form, inside our homes, offices, streets, schools, fields, convents or maths… anywhere... must outrage us. And it does, at The Quint. #FreeYourMind.
(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.)