If you run a quick search on rape statistics in India, the first result reads, ‘Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India.’ The popular headlines and the number of articles that follow it is deeply disturbing – 2,34,00,000 results in 0.48 seconds.
While our timelines are filled with news of brutal rape cases, women protests and men smirking or worse passing outrageous rape comments, the concerned authories’ devil-may-care attitude on the issue is sickening. History shows that India was once a country who was unafraid of waging wars in order to protect a woman’s honour. How did we come down to the sorry state of affairs today where women are abducted, raped and killed mercilessly? Are the archaic and regressive patriarchal practices alone responsible? Or are there other factors such as economical and political policies that have played a role in aggravating violence against women?
Kalpana Sharma, in her new book ‘The Silence and the Storm’, aims to answer some of these questions on the increasing acts of violence against women. The book uncovers the deep-rooted mindsets that impact the perception of a woman directly affecting her place in the society – and her safety along with it. Backed by concrete research from Kalpana’s journalistic experience spanning more than 25 years, the book argues how the laws have failed to reform the societal structures – justifying the violence carried out against women. The book elucidates the direct impact poor developmental and environmental policies have on women’s lives, how women end up paying an unbearable price in a currency – ‘violence.’
“These ‘deep roots’ are the unmoving structures of patriarchy. We have dented some, but not dismantled them. As a result, women continue to be questioned and victimized,” says Kalpana on prevailing perceptions about sexual violence in a Twitter chat with IWB.
To understand violence against women in the larger context of politics and economics, IWB hosted a live chat with Kalpana Sharma on 25 November, 2019, as a part of #16DaysOfActivism:
Excerpts,
On intersection of caste politics and violence against women
On media’s response to caste and gender violence
On the central argument in ‘The Silence and the Storm’ is that violence is not just sexual assault but it includes the impact of developmental and environmental policies on women
On reformative ways of dealing with violence against women
On ‘the questions that remain unresolved in the context of sexual harassment’
On important attributes that are missing from the current dialogue with men