Strip Me of my Manhood because I am a Rapist

Bobbitization, hanging, life imprisonment or chemical castration to the Delhi gang rapists, asks the newspapers to its readers. If I could pass my judgement on those people who have raped a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi on a cold December night (16^th December 2012), I ask them to be chemically castrated first, torture them with all the possible tortures that they could get in a life time, cut their organs and hang them with immediate effect. They don’t deserve a dignified trial even. I am not asking us to reverse the clock of civilization and go to a brutal era where instant punishment could be handed out to the culprits in full view of the public. But it is the voice of a helpless man who has a daughter, wife, mother, sister, girl students and female friends. I am utterly helpless and if something happens to any of these people so brutal like what happened to that girl on that night, I would bray for their blood and nothing would stop me. I will leave all my secular credential behind, I would keep all my Gandhian thoughts aside and I will forget all my scepticism on capital punishment in a civilized country and would ask for immediate justice, though the decimation of four culprits will not bring eventual justice to all the women in the world because like these rapists who are caught now, many are walking scot free here and many intend to do this heinous crime when their reason betrays them with momentary pleasures of hunting and forced intercourse.

If my sentences could carry the legal vehemence of justice, I sentence these rapists to death. If my words were gallows I would have hung them from each word till their ugly necks snap in the noose of my agitation. If my words were razor blades, they would have cut their male organs. If my life could raise strong walls of darkness and loneliness I would have pushed them into the dungeons that I have created for them. If my words were chemicals I would have castrated them by now. I am outraged not because I have a daughter, wife, mother, sister and female friends but because I see myself as my gender as brutal one capable of committing any kind of atrocities on females. I am ashamed of calling myself a man who could fall back to savagery with an excuse of being drunk or intoxicated or I could feel like a hunter when I am there with a few friends whose presence would provide me all the courage on earth to hunt down a hapless woman and molest her like a beast. I do not want to exist in this world like a savage if my gender is not giving me any indication of civilization. My place is in the jungle.

Have you ever had sex with a woman, my male friend? If you are civilized man, your woman could stop you with one single word, ‘no’ if she does not want to have a union with you. One single piece of cloth or a single look of defiance, reluctance or non-approval or even a single pressing of thighs together could dissuade you from forcing yourself on her. And you try to do it without her approval either she will offer your body as if she were a corpse or she will have it with you in utter state of dejection. Again you try it without her consent, it will be the most brutal act that you could ever commit in the world even if she is your legally wedded wife. Then what do you actually do when you attempt a rape? You become a beast that kill for pleasure, you forget reason and wipe out all kinds of humanity from your heart and brain and you become a mass of muscles fitted with limbs that could be used as pincers, chains and gagging equipments. You hurt your partner beyond any measures when you force yourself upon her.

I see so many young and old men in the street who all look harmless even when some of them look so arrogant and capable of doing anything bestial. But all of them do not rape. The idea of rape comes from the momentary lack of reason and refuting of human nature, its sophistication that took eons to develop and manifest. The courage to do an act of rape comes from the notion of power that the man feels is naturally invested in him. The force of it comes from the primitive ideas of hunting. Such people do not deserve to live. You look at history; history is a narrative of rapes that are not explicit but are summarized in one or two lines. All the wars resulted into rapes because the weapon wielding soldiers found women as the potential objects to shame the opponent. Woman’s body was a location to play the politics of men who are at war with each other. Nations captured women and sent to the warfronts as service women who were destined to satisfy the sexual hunger of soldiers in war. They were brutally raped not by ten men but by hundreds of them in one day.

Our two major epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana revolve around the conquest of women’s body. Had it not been Sita’s abduction by Ravana there would not have been any Ramayana. Soorpanakha was disfigured because she was sexually potent and was desiring a handsome Rama. We never asked why a woman was punished like that only because she desired a man of her choice. Has she not got any power over her own heart and body? Had it not been Panchali’s humiliation in the Kaurava court, there wouldn’t have been any Mahabharata. When Pandavas were playing dice with their half-brothers none asked Draupadi whether she was ready to stand in as a guarantee. Today, a woman even in the company of a man is not safe because she does not have the right to go out with him, watch a movie and go back home happily. Her body is violated because she is denied any kind of social standing as an individual. Rapists whether they are influenced by liquor or not, are obviously drunken by power of being a man.

Shame on you my gender. I am ashamed of calling myself a man because under the influence of alcohol I could turn into a brute. I could forget all those years of civilization and refinement for that momentary act of exercising power over a body which looks different from my own body. I see the beast in me and if I need to continue living I should kill that beast now, right now. Otherwise my place is in the jungle. I should be like Ashwathama, who has this unhealed wound on his forehead. I should have my wound between the legs, a blood dripping token of my brutality; a reminder of my unworthiness being a man in the refined world. Now, dear third gender friends, you should not let me in your tribe only because I am castrated because I don’t even deserve your painful existence because I am a man, a rapist.

(apologies to all those men who are not rapists)