P.J.
0
She was attacked at a rural police station, and her landmark case awakened India decades ago. But did she manage to love, have children, find happiness? New headlines about rape in my homeland set me on a journey to find her.
By Moni Basu
She was 14, maybe 16, when they raped her. It was 1972, and I was 9. The India of her youth was the India of mine -- except she lived in utter poverty.
She was an orphaned adivasi, a tribal girl, and she performed the most menial of jobs to put bread in her belly. She collected cow dung with her bare hands, shaped it into patties, slapped them on walls to dry and then sold them as fuel. It's a sight and smell familiar to me. I used to watch women in my Kolkata neighborhood do the same thing, using the back wall of my grandfather's house. I couldn't imagine plunging my hand into piles of animal waste.
But rape knows no boundaries of class or culture.
After it happened, she might as well have worn a scarlet letter on her chest. Such was the stigma of rape in India then. She was brave to speak out and did what few women back then did. She took her case to court.
But the highest court of the land did not believe she was telling the truth. The justices overturned the convictions of her attackers, two police constables who maintained their innocence, and set them free.
Her case was monumental, both from a social and legal perspective. It sparked public protest for the first time about rape in India and led to the reform of sexual assault laws. It gave rise to a women's movement in India, sprouting a host of groups dedicated to empowering women. At last, people here began to see gender-based violence for what it really is: a brutal act of power.
I first read about the case after I began working as a journalist in the United States and developed a curiosity about women's rights around the world. Though the courts ultimately refused to believe Mathura was raped, history has come down on her side. She is uniformly depicted as a rape victim -- not a woman who cried rape.
For me, her case became a prism through which I could see my homeland and measure its progress over the past four decades. Then, in December, another rape galvanized India. Thousands marched on the streets after a young New Delhi woman was viciously gang-raped on a bus, an act so horrific that she later died.
A headline in The Hindustan Times newspaper caught my eye. The accompanying column lamented that the attitudes of men had changed little since the landmark 1972 case. Some said the outcry in Delhi could be traced to the rape 41 years ago. Numerous other stories, opinion pieces and timelines on rape legislation mentioned the case.
But no one seemed to know what had happened to the victim, the teenage girl whose court-given name now popped up everywhere: Mathura.
Was she still alive?
So began my quest to find the woman who had innocently walked to a village police station to settle a domestic dispute and returned home a rape victim.
I wanted to find her for many reasons. In profound ways, I related to her.
Sweeping generalizations about my country in news coverage on sexual assault both embarrassed and angered me. I wanted to learn for myself how India, as a society, dealt with rape. And how Mathura had fared.
Please read the full story here:The girl whose rape changed a country - CNN.com
Please also see the Video
The girl whose rape changed a country - YouTube
By Moni Basu
She was 14, maybe 16, when they raped her. It was 1972, and I was 9. The India of her youth was the India of mine -- except she lived in utter poverty.
She was an orphaned adivasi, a tribal girl, and she performed the most menial of jobs to put bread in her belly. She collected cow dung with her bare hands, shaped it into patties, slapped them on walls to dry and then sold them as fuel. It's a sight and smell familiar to me. I used to watch women in my Kolkata neighborhood do the same thing, using the back wall of my grandfather's house. I couldn't imagine plunging my hand into piles of animal waste.
But rape knows no boundaries of class or culture.
After it happened, she might as well have worn a scarlet letter on her chest. Such was the stigma of rape in India then. She was brave to speak out and did what few women back then did. She took her case to court.
But the highest court of the land did not believe she was telling the truth. The justices overturned the convictions of her attackers, two police constables who maintained their innocence, and set them free.
Her case was monumental, both from a social and legal perspective. It sparked public protest for the first time about rape in India and led to the reform of sexual assault laws. It gave rise to a women's movement in India, sprouting a host of groups dedicated to empowering women. At last, people here began to see gender-based violence for what it really is: a brutal act of power.
I first read about the case after I began working as a journalist in the United States and developed a curiosity about women's rights around the world. Though the courts ultimately refused to believe Mathura was raped, history has come down on her side. She is uniformly depicted as a rape victim -- not a woman who cried rape.
For me, her case became a prism through which I could see my homeland and measure its progress over the past four decades. Then, in December, another rape galvanized India. Thousands marched on the streets after a young New Delhi woman was viciously gang-raped on a bus, an act so horrific that she later died.
A headline in The Hindustan Times newspaper caught my eye. The accompanying column lamented that the attitudes of men had changed little since the landmark 1972 case. Some said the outcry in Delhi could be traced to the rape 41 years ago. Numerous other stories, opinion pieces and timelines on rape legislation mentioned the case.
But no one seemed to know what had happened to the victim, the teenage girl whose court-given name now popped up everywhere: Mathura.
Was she still alive?
So began my quest to find the woman who had innocently walked to a village police station to settle a domestic dispute and returned home a rape victim.
I wanted to find her for many reasons. In profound ways, I related to her.
Sweeping generalizations about my country in news coverage on sexual assault both embarrassed and angered me. I wanted to learn for myself how India, as a society, dealt with rape. And how Mathura had fared.
Please read the full story here:The girl whose rape changed a country - CNN.com
Please also see the Video
The girl whose rape changed a country - YouTube
