The macabre carousel of Indian misogyny has spun once more, disgorging another victim into the maw of its relentless machinery. A woman in India has been gang raped, and the ghost of the 2012 Delhi bus attack has clawed its way back from the shallow grave of public outrage. British judges, those paragons of detached concern, have now deigned to opine on stronger laws for women's protection. The sheer velocity of their collective tutting would power a small turbine.
Let us set the scene: a country of 1.4 billion souls, where the number of reported rapes in 2020 was 28,046, a figure that is, one suspects, the editorial tip of a truly colossal iceberg of unreported horror. The 2012 case, you'll recall, involved a woman so brutally assaulted that her intestines were damaged. She died. The perpetrators were hanged, a spectacle of judicial theatre that was meant to signal a new dawn. But dawn, it transpires, is a recurring loop in India, and the sun rises again on yet another violated body.
The response from the British judiciary is a masterpiece of well-meaning futility. They call for stronger laws. How novel. How profoundly, achingly, obviously necessary. One can almost hear the scratch of quills on vellum in the hallowed halls of the Old Bailey. The problem, however, is not a lack of laws. India's rape laws were amended in 2013 after the previous outrage: quicker trials, harsher punishments, death penalty for repeat offenders. The law is a robust shield, if only it were ever wielded. The issue is a culture of impunity, a police force that still, in 2024, tells women not to go out at night, and a society that blames the victim for wearing a skirt.
Let’s talk about the judges. They sit in a country where the conviction rate for rape is around 32%, a figure that would be laughed out of any civilised courtroom. They call for stronger laws while their own legal system struggles with backlogs of millions of cases, where a rape trial can take years, grinding the victim through the gears of a justice system that is neither swift nor sure. The British judges, of course, are not alone in their armchair activism. The usual parade of diplomats, NGOs, and Twitterati will now line up to express their 'shock and sorrow'. They will demand 'action'. They will then return to their gin and tonics, feeling virtuous, while the next woman is being dragged into a ditch.
But let us not be entirely cynical. Perhaps the British judges have more impact than we give them credit for. Perhaps their words will be printed in the Times of India, eliciting a brief surge of indignation before the next cricket match or Bollywood scandal pushes it aside. Perhaps a politician will make a speech. Perhaps a committee will be formed. The wheels of performative concern grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The horror is not that this happens. The horror is that it happens with such tedious regularity that we have a schedule for our collective response. First, the news breaks. Then, the outrage. Then, the calls for change. Then, the forgetting. It is a ritual, a sacrament of modern media, an offering to the gods of apathy.
So here we are again. A woman is violated. British judges tut. And I, Biff Thistlethwaite, sit in my shambolic office, surrounded by empty bottles of Gordon's, and try to fashion a sentence that does not taste of ash. The absurdity is that nothing will change. The laws will be strengthened again, in some incremental, bureaucratic fashion. The police will be 'sensitised'. The judges will return to their dockets. And another woman will be sacrificed on the altar of a system that is terminally, incorrigibly, broken.
But the gin is almost gone, and so must be this column. The only conclusion I can muster is this: if you are a woman in India, may the gods watch over you. Because the law sure as hell won't.
