Gangrape: Why we must look at the crisis of masculinity

In parts of South Africa, there is a term used to describe recreational gangrape that youngsters get rather competitive about – jackrolling. A decade-old study by a non-government organization that found every fourth youngster interviewed admitting to have tried it also found there was considerable pressure to complete what was almost a rite of passage – those who had not done it were just not considered man enough. As investigations and forensic evidence-gathering progress in the Mumbai gangrape case, it’s emerging that there is little or no empirical data available on the incidence of gangrape. Even if we are reading about more cases, ever more brutal, more shocking, the state and city police departments, and consequently the NCRB, in fact do not record gangrape as a crime distinct from rape. So, while there is data available on cases where the rapist is a blood relative and on cases where the victim is a minor, there is no statistical evidence whatsoever to suggest that gangrapes are on the rise. Despite that absent substantive testimonial in the form of numbers, there is a vague acknowledgement that more such crimes appear to be coming to light in recent times, both before and after the Delhi incident of last December. Some accounts late last year said Haryana witnessed 19 gangrapes in a month. According to the NCRB report for 2012, the state of Haryana recorded 668 cases of rape during the year, a monthly average of over 55 cases. If 19 of these were indeed gangrapes, it would constitute a significant percentage. Troubling similarities also pop up in reports of individual cases across the country. (Read them here and here ) [caption id=“attachment_1066461” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Was the gangrape merely a rite of passage for the accused? The site of the gangrape in south Mumbai. Reuters[/caption] There are no simple answers to the question of just what leads men to such apparent misogyny. But cities and towns, where new and extreme inequalities of income, power and access to power have overthrown old structures, may provide some context. (The circumstances from our unique growth pattern playing out in the urban milieu may be worth noting even though only a relatively small percentage– 3,025 out of 24,923 cases in 2012 – of rape complaints in India come from urban centres.) In this piece in the Times of India, Srijana Mitra Das writes about the rising sexual violence in Gurgaon amid a “crisis of masculinity” that is rooted in a newly urban, urbanising society. “Two Gurgaons thus grew,” she writes. “One was a new Millennium City of dazzling buildings, artisanal bakeries, discos, designers and stylish desires - and against it, an older millennium existence where farmers-turned-rentiers leased shacks to migrants, started cab companies or, lying back lulled by Haryana’s generous alcohol supply, did nothing. Except get angry.” That anger is plainly visible on any evening out in Mumbai too. You’ll see it in the youngsters, having found the new economy’s employment market beyond their reach, zipping around the suburbs with a studied disregard for traffic rules, on bikes that are yet another investment from an older generation. They are among the risk-takers atop railway trains, among the more bitter players at card game parlours and pay-by-quarter bars, and they are often the professional agitators and stone-throwers. Understanding what fuels that rage, and what should be our collective response, is critical. For, when amid that context of rage operate other psycho-sexual and familial factors, what you have is a lethal cocktail that views women, and especially women with some economic independence and belonging to what these youngsters believe to be the Other in the Us-Vs-Them battle, as an enemy who deserves to be subjugated. “Mehmaan aaye hain, khatirdaari ke liye aa jao,” is what one of the accused reportedly told a co-conspirator on the phone according to this Mumbai Mirror report. Obviously, the subtext of the Mumbai incident is not very different from the peer pressure among Soweto’s jackrollers – the prey had been spotted, show up if you expect to measure up. Gangrapes are not just men hunting in packs, they are men strutting their macho stuff. You can safely assume that had any one of the five attempted to call it off, he would have been tagged the sissy. That explains why social activists who have worked with victims of gangrape talk about victims in trauma recollecting not just the violence, but also specifically the perjoratives used to address her during the crime, most commonly variants of Hindi words for prostitutes. If rape is about violence and subjugation, then that is arguably even more so for gangrape. It is occasion for a performance of masculinity, measured by who brutalises the enemy worse. And yet, demonising the accused in this and other gangrape cases helps nobody. In an evocative piece in Mint Lounge, Cordelia Jenkins warns that India will never begin to tackle the problem if we fail to see the perpetrators’ context. “How do you begin to “sensitize” a boy who has been abandoned as a child, grown up in abject poverty, been told all his life he will never amount to anything, got hooked on drugs and drink…?” she writes. A gangrape is the final subjugation, often not just of the victim but of an entire community or class she represents, a fact endorsed by gangrape cases from the Congo to Kunan-Poshpora to khap-ruled Haryana. And whether it’s Khairlanji or Mumbai, placing the crime within our current reality is the first step to finding a useful response.