Delhi gangrape: Verdict not the end, let's not forget the crime

Editors note: This is a reader comment that we got on Facebook. Kaustav has written a thought provking comment about how the Delhi gangrape verdict should be treated as a beginning to change, and not the end. He points out that it is unfortunate that most people refused to turn their heads and seek change, without the death of an innocent. However, he hopes that this verdict brings about the change we needed in our society. By Kaustuv Datta Death is often not the best reply to violence, after all violence does usually beget more violence. But, sometimes when considering a case such as this, it is a pivotal moment for justice to show its harsher face. The case was a microcosm of the problems faced by Indian women, on a daily basis and it needed to be made an example of. We would have loved these men to be brutalised, castrated, tortured, burnt at the stake, et al, but a quick death at the gallows is a just enough end to their lives. Let’s not call the young lady India’s “daughter”, or our lost “sister”, and let’s not deify her and generalise her identity. She was the daughter of a family who worked hard to give her all she had, and she was a girl who just wanted to watch Life of Pi, she was a paramedical sciences student, and she was just another girl making her way through life. She was who she was, she had a name and she had an identity. Let us respect her now, with silence. [caption id=“attachment_1107773” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] We are not born knowing what we will achieve in our lives, or what we will achieve by our deaths. It is unfortunate that we the people refused to turn our heads and seek change, without the death of an innocent. It is unfair that a girl, with her life ahead of her had to die to make a nation care. The convicts were born the same as us, and they will die in the harsh glare of a public spotlight, which is of course no less than they deserve. With their deaths they will have achieve more than what generations of politicians and leaders and citizens of this country have managed to - they will have shown that justice can be meted out fairly, that the sleeping behemoth that is our India does have a collective conscience. Let us not forget this crime, and rest happily on the back of justice being handed out fair and square. It is our duty to not let the fires of awareness and change burn out. It is our duty as Indians to stand by every woman, in life, as we have done for this young lady, in death. However, the path to change lies not in retrospective action, but in dynamism of our morals and ethics which would not let such crimes happen in the first place. I do not believe in life after death, and I will not call upon a God to let that young lady rest in peace. However, I will thank her for having helped bring change to this nation with her last words, that helped track down these criminals. It is sad that our country was such that her life should have so much more value in death, than when she lived. I truly hope that the dynamism that has come about with her passing, is not just something that will fade away. I hope that this shock to our systems will be enough of an impulse to help us move forward, as a nation and as a society along the correct moral paths of respect and love. Justice has been served, now let us make sure that we do not require more deaths to bring about and sustain change.