When The Band-Aid Gives You Cuts

Written and made by Stuti Rawat

Here we are, celebrating the 73 rd year of Independence. Independence day is one, that is marked as the day, after which everyone was free to live as they wanted to. But this Independence Day, I ask myself a question: Are we actually free, as we claim we are? Some might consider it to be funny, as to why I am asking this  question in the first place. I am asking this question because I am compelled to do so! On August 4, 2020, as I was reading the newspaper, I came across a news which read “Three cousins booked for raping an 8-year-old girl on Raksha Bandhan day”. Ironically, the incident occurred on the day of Raksha Bandhan, when brothers vow to protect their sisters from evil. The news disturbed me greatly, and still does so. 

The girl could have never thought that people around whom she used to consider herself to be the safest, would do something like this to her. A few days back, I chanced upon another piece of news, which read, that a girl in Madhya Pradesh was raped by her father, and when she told people about it, her father raped her again. It scares me to think that the girl wasn’t safe even in her own house amidst the people she should have been able to trust the most!

Made by Stuti Rawat

Every time a girl steps out of her space - consciously or unconsciously - she is insecure. A girl is not free to live her life the way she wants to, fearing that someone might consider her way of living to be something that gives him the permission to do whatever he wants to with her. The girls don’t do anything inappropriate! It is we as a society, who don’t teach our boys, that some things are not acceptable. I have often seen people hesitating while talking about rape cases or sexual harassment. I personally think that talking about such things and educating the students about it, would help reduce this heinous crime. What makes it all worse is that the victim is the person who is considered to be at fault, and so the victim can’t even talk about it freely. 

This is something that makes me feel ashamed of living in a world where you can’t trust anyone. I feel ashamed, when the girl is blamed, that her inappropriate gestures and/ or clothing lead to what happened. I feel ashamed, that even after all that is happening around us, we teach our daughters to be appropriate and not our sons to be so and do not make them understand that they don’t have the right to do whatever they want to, to whomsoever it may be! 

Lastly, I would request you, on this independence day, to ask yourself, whether  everyone is free to live the way they want to, without fearing about what will happen if they actually do so?