Mamta Sharma, a writer and a mother based in Bengaluru, says empowerment means that a woman doesn’t need to carry the shame for a crime committed against her. Her views:
As I was flipping through the news about the main accused in the Kolkata rape case being charge-sheeted , a couple of details in the CBI report have been haunting me: after the horrific assault, Monojit and his friends reportedly roamed around freely, stopped at eateries, and acted as if nothing of consequence had happened. The CBI charge-sheet, according to several media reports, indicated that he was cocksure that the victim wouldn’t report the crime; silence was guaranteed.
I shudder to believe which world we are living in!
What kind of power must a man feel to carry this kind of certainty after committing a heinous crime? How deeply broken must our systems be for a rapist to believe — and often correctly — that the woman will not utter a word?
What enrages me more is that this isn’t some abstract, rare occurrence. This is the lived reality for far too many women. It took this survivor speaking out — courageously and publicly — for others to come forward with their own stories of assault, molestation, and harassment by the same man. It took her pain to unlock the trauma of many. And even then, we have to be careful — to protect her identity, her dignity, her safety — because the society we live in is more likely to point fingers at a survivor than at a perpetrator.
What does that say about our collective conscience?
This is not an isolated incident. It never is. Ask any woman — most of us carry in our memories two, maybe more, incidents of being groped, stared at, touched without consent — in a bus, a train, a lift, etc. Some of us fought back. Most of us chose silence, because we were taught that ignoring is easier. Or safer.
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I have been thinking about all those speeches we hear about “women empowerment.” The ones that proudly proclaim our rising economy, our growing defense systems, our global achievements. But what about our everyday safety? What about the right to walk home without fear? To speak up without being vilified? To exist without being violated?
Empowerment isn’t tokenism. It’s not a buzzword for social media campaigns or panel discussions. Real empowerment would mean that a woman doesn’t have to carry shame for a crime committed against her. That the burden of silence doesn’t fall on the victim. That no man walks around after a rape, smug in the belief that nothing will happen. I so wish I could wipe that smirk off the face the alleged rapist.
But this is where we are. A girl gets assaulted, and the accused is said to have previously stood in protest against another rape case. The irony is cruel. And the society — our society — often chooses comfort over confrontation.
So yes, we can keep boasting about our growth, our milestones, and our promises to women. But until justice is swift, survivors are believed, and power doesn’t shield predators — we are fooling no one. Least of all, the women of this country.
As told to Shashanka Roy
