The British Foreign Office, that venerable institution of colonial nostalgia and lukewarm tea, has issued a statement. It condemns violence against women. Again. This time, the prompt is a brutal gang rape in India that echoes the 2012 Delhi assault. Because nothing says 'progress' like a decade-later remake nobody asked for.
India, a nation of 1.4 billion people, has apparently decided that its national sport is not cricket but the systematic failure to protect women from sexual violence. The latest victim, a young woman, was assaulted in a manner so grotesquely similar to the 2012 case that it feels less like a news story and more like a bleak, repetitive nightmare. The suspect is at large. The police are investigating. The Foreign Office is condemning. The script writes itself.
Let us pause to savour the exquisite absurdity of the British Foreign Office's moral posturing. This is the same government that arms Saudi Arabia, that sold weapons to Israel during the Gaza bombings, that treats war crimes like a minor accounting error. But by Jove, they will write a strongly worded letter about rape in India. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a man who sets his own house on fire then tuts at his neighbour for leaving the gas on.
The Foreign Office statement, no doubt drafted by some underpaid intern who dreamed of being a poet but ended up a eunuch of state, will achieve precisely nothing. It will not catch the rapist. It will not heal the victim. It will not reform India's creaking justice system. What it will do is provide a warm, fuzzy glow to British taxpayers who can feel their taxes are being used to express 'grave concern' rather than, say, funding rape crisis centres or prosecuting domestic abusers.
But let us not be ungrateful. Without such statements, how would we measure the precise temperature of international outrage? The statement is a barometer of nothing, a thermometer in a toaster. It exists to make the speaker feel virtuous and the spoken-to feel judged. It is the linguistic equivalent of a man in a pinstripe suit shouting 'Stop!' at a tsunami.
The real tragedy, of course, is that the victim is reduced to a statistic, a footnote in a diplomatic cable. Her name will be forgotten. The case will become a data point in a report. The Foreign Office will move on to condemn something else, perhaps the price of petrol in Nigeria or the lack of vegan options at the G7 summit.
India's problem is not a lack of condemnation. It is a lack of conviction. Literally. The conviction rate for rape in India is abysmal. The police are often corrupt, the courts slower than a sloth on mogadon. The solution is not more strongly worded letters from London. It is for India to actually, you know, do something. Arrest rapists. Try them. Convict them. Lock them up. But that would require political will, which in turn requires the electorate to stop voting for men who view women as property with legs.
The British Foreign Office should perhaps look closer to home. The UK has its own rape crisis, with a conviction rate that would make a banana republic blush. The Metropolitan Police has investigated itself and found itself not guilty. Again. But that's a matter for another day, another statement.
For now, let us raise a glass of airport gin to the victim whose agony funds diplomatic careers. Let us toast the Foreign Office for its tireless work in the field of expressing sadness. And let us hope that next time, the statement includes a typo, just to keep us amused. God save the queen, the state, and the meaningless, beautiful charade of international condemnation.
