Psychology of Rape in India

In all my experience as a psychologist, I can safely say that the one key to comprehend human nature is to understand that there is never a ‘one key explanation’ for any human behavior. It’s always a combination of several keys. Our challenge is to find the largely functional master key of explanation of an issue.

 Largely, it’s because of three main reasons:

1. The biological make-up (predispositions, temperament, etc.),
2. Present and Past environment and individual experiences;
3. And most importantly our own thinking patterns which govern our behavior choices. (That’s why we hold people accountable for their actions.)

The above factors can have varying degrees of influence depending upon what we are talking about.

Since there are no reliable ways to check and correct certain rape fantasies, neurological collapse in empathy and regret, relationship with aggression, we have very limited scope of change in the persons biology and past experiences.

However, we are not slaves to our anatomies. Biological understanding of a problem just helps us maintain a problem-solving perspective.

In the context of rape, analyzing Delhi’s culture, even on the face of it, gives you an understanding that it is a precarious soup of the four strongly male chauvinistic cultures of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

Now, the first tenet of male chauvinism is that men are superior to women. This ideology gives rise to an entitlement and privileged mentality: men deserve better and more in terms of pleasure and prosperity than a woman. Women are merely the instruments through which to achieve those desires. When this claim to power is thwarted, men believe they have the right to express their frustration and anger by forcefully asserting their dominance in a violent sexual act.

Now add to this mixture the warped traditional and religious projections of a proper woman: a non-ambitious, non-adventurous, non-assertive, non-person. Woman having been created from a man’s rib and the promises of virgins in heaven as reward and skies full of seducing apsaras like Menaka and Rambha, who have no apparently real purpose in life but to entertain and distract men.  Then there is also that bromide of what acche ghar ki ladkiya (women of good character) should do.

In fact, this purposeless and chattel-like status of women is clear in the old understanding of the word ‘rape’ itself, which in its Latin roots, “rapere” means ‘to steal or seize’ property.

Yet another ingredient to this poisonous soup is the lack of a rational education in sex and emotions. This results in a woefully underdeveloped regulatory mechanism in individuals, which is essential for personal and societal development. Our faulty understanding of what it means to be a “masculine” man also can make us look at this deficiency of a human regulation on an animal brain, as a good thing, as a real “male” thing.

Asli Mard toh (aisa) hi hota hai. Real men are supposed to be like this. Substitute “this” with whatever comes to mind and you will identify a dominant belief of a culture. We might get several answers from the chai stalls to board rooms to movies like DEV D and Rowdy Rathore, where its okay to pinch a woman’s waist because the character of Akshay Kumar had no regulatory mechanism over his animal instincts.

Emotional and sexual education is very important for us to know that a girl’s dress is not a ‘yes,’ that the time of the night and your mood (in or outside the influence of alcohol) are no licenses to violate another person’s body, and that an iron rod cannot compensate for the self-worth you have attached to your penis size and that a woman’s moans and cries under you are no mark of your greatness as a male-bodied person.

Low self-esteem and the entitlement mind-set among men who are sexually repressed and immature and who live with misogynistic ideas are crucibles of explosive mixtures of beliefs that lead to undesirable behaviors.

Patriarchy is not restricted only to the mind-set of men; most often, we find that women are willing subscribers to the patriarchy of society. Many Indian women not only believe in such ideas, they also have warped the idea of what it means to be feminine—to the point that women are complicit in the impoverished state they hold in society.

What should we do as a society?

From a psychological perspective, stop telling the girl that her life is over, that her victimhood is her shame. Yes, rape is horrible, but it is simply not the end of his or her life. An attitude of shame only instills guilt and responsibility further into the already struggling victim. The shame and the dishonor, properly, belongs to the rapist—the man who deigned to become animal.

As a nation we really need to improve our understanding of sex. Our relationship with sexuality is very immature and unhealthy. A healthy and safe society cannot be created without having an open and frank conversation and understanding about human sexuality. Given the fact that there is no innate knowledge about the facts of the universe: even though we feel the effects of gravity throughout our lives, but for gravity to be understood and used for our benefit needs to be studied extensively.

The basic goals that sex education in India need to fulfill, is not just to be a class on anatomy of humans reproductive system; while the information is important it doesn’t solve even the most basic of our questions about our sex lives leave alone addressing the issue of rape and other forms of violence against women and sexual minorities. What sex education needs to achieve, as larger umbrella goal is to ensure that our youth understands the importance of their own bodies and establish a healthy and respectful relationship with it, the present religio-cultural understanding of body and mind dualism has done much harm to us for too long. Our understanding of body being somewhat squalid and not to be understood and our mind always being in an adversarial relationship with it, as opposed to, the more rational and scientific one of body and mind working in tandem with each other. Understanding and respecting our body is the pre-requisite of doing the same with other people.

One also recognizes that parenting has the major role to play in any young and adolescent. Parenting has to undergo a sea change. Modeling is the best way forward. Children learn from the way the mothers and sisters are treated in the house, more than most things. Honest and frank conversations about sex and sexuality without guilt and shame attached to the matter, is another unavoidable change we have to bring in to bring about desired change. Sex might be very dangerous in bedroom when its not discussed in the living room.

All in all, the responsibility of a society that is safe for women and other sexual minorities, the responsibility lies with each one of us, to model the change we wish to see in others around us. As parents, teachers, media and politicians will have to recognize the urgency and importance of the change. Laws don’t change the cultures, but change in culture can definitely pave the way for reformed laws. It is important to know that social struggles like these are not won one half as much in the court rooms, but in the hearts and minds of the people we live with.

Deepak Kashyap is Counselling Psychologist with a private practice in Mumbai, who deals with the issues of trauma, gender sensitivity and sexuality and relationships. He can be reached at Deepak.j.kashyap@gamil.com