News From The Sub-Continent

[FredPuli43]

Police have arrested 13 people after a young woman was gang-raped in a brutal punishment allegedly handed down by tribal elders after she was found to have an intimate relationship with a man from a different community.
The 20-year-old unmarried victim admitted being involved with a man outside her insular community in West Bengal. Her punishment was decided by the salishi sabha, the eastern state’s caste-based village court system, which is known for issuing stern punishments for moral offences. The local judiciaries exert great influence throughout much of rural India, particularly in the north, despite attempts by the Indian Supreme Court to limit their authority.
Police said the punishment was levelled after the woman’s parents said she was too poor to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees (£243). She was held captive for more than 12 hours and then tied to a tree, with her male companion, before the brutal assault began in the village of Subalpur, 149 miles west of Calcutta. She was later admitted to hospital, where her condition was said to be critical but stable. [The Times, extract].

Any comment?

[douglas9401]

Armed with the wisdom of ages, handed down from father to son over tens of thousands of years, the village elders demonstrate a lust for blood and violence that marks them out as violent sexual perverts.
Still, it's their way and who are we to condemn them? That would be racist.

[naomi24]

Douglas has nailed it.

[youngmafbog]

Always difficult this sort of thing. To us, here in the West, this seems totally unacceptable and barbaric but in certain areas of the world it would be considered just.

It is there way, we should not try to impose our way on them, we have done that far to much in the past and it has come back to haunt us. Encourage the Indian Government perhaps (and it looks like they would like to address it) and above all stamp it out if immigrants try to bring it to our shores, otherwise leave it alone to evolve.

[jake-the-peg]

It's not considered 'just' in India either!!!


Look at the coverage by the Times of India on the uproar this has caused

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/Uproar-over-girls-gang-rape-by-kangaroo-court-members/videoshow/29259301.cms

Sexual Violence is a *big* issue in India at the moment and this has all the elements to put a match to a tinderbox !

[ludwig]

Indian society needs to sort out it's barbaric and primitive elements. Judging by recent news stories that process is starting to happen, but it will be a slow and painful process.

[emmie]

i read this story the other day, and i wonder at this world and its doings, i really do.

[dunnitall]

Me too emmie, I just despair for humans whoever they are and their "beliefs" but the I have always considered we live in hell with all the atrocities that go on so really shouldn't come as a surprise to me.

[anotheoldgit]

/// Her punishment was decided by the salishi sabha, the eastern state’s caste-based village court system, which is known for issuing stern punishments for moral offences. ///

In view of the punishment this village meted out, i would say this is the most ironic statement I have read.

[emmie]

for what it's worth i would consign them to a dark place, but as they say it's not my call.

[anotheoldgit]

And some class it as racist to state that we are superior to them.

Well compared to people such as this, and call me racist if you must, but I certainly compare myself superior in this case.

[boxtops]

This is a dreadful story. Nothing we ourselves can do about it, though.

I heard the other day tha a girl was raped, and that the punishment meted out to the rapist was that he had to marry the girl, to "legitimatise" the sexual attack. How ghastly for the girl - what a dreadful situation, to be tied for life to your rapist.

[boxtops]

Presumably though, as an afterthought, the girl in the OP would surely have known that this relationship was against the local rules - but I can't imagine that she could have foreseen this ghastly "punishment". I can't understand the logic in the elders' minds in this decision.

[emmie]

boxy, one of those stories was featured in a documentary some months ago, the man raped her, then because of the shame of it, her family decided she must marry the man, even though i believe he already had a wife. she bore a child, which the man has turned against the woman, by belittling her and her looks and so on, her life as one would expect is hell. I could forgive no one in this, except the poor lone woman who has done nothing wrong, i would cut off his gonads and serve them to a goat.

[BlueToffee]

This is barbaric, as indeed are the death sentances carried out in the USA, but it is their culture and we need to help them change to a less barbaric way.

This type of behaviour doesn't make us superior to them, just more civilised.

[naomi24]

AOG has spotted the irony here. The ‘criminal’ is subjected to multiple rape as punishment for what the council deem a ‘moral offence’ - and that's moral? What an appallingly backward mind-set these controlling, misogynistic men have.

[emmie]

BT, they don't want our help. have you not been watching the news, we are imperialist bastards, who want to impose our morality, democracy on the world, i only ever feel sorry for the women, who are the ones who come off the worse in these backwards countries.

[jim360]

It would only be racist if you went on to claim that we are superior to all Indians based on the actions of the few. To claim moral superiority over the people who deem gang-rape a just punishment is almost certainly just a statement of fact.

[sandyRoe]

It wasn't that long ago in India that even the most virtuous of widows were consigned to the funeral pyre along with the remains of their husbands. They still have a long way to go.

[emmie]

one of the things that has come out of these documentaries, and indeed reports is how rife it is, rape and subjugation of women, in India, where it is still very much a patriarchal society, we may not be superior i grant you, but at least we have ditched much of the vile behaviour that was supposedly acceptable a few years ago. Now we have laws to back it up, change takes time, and some places don't look like they will any day soon.
Afghanistan is going backwards if anything, and once the soldiers all leave the Taliban will take up residence once more, even the ordinary Afghani fear this happening.

[boxtops]

I'm not surprised they view us in that way, emmie, considering the way we just railroaded into their country in the days of Empire. However - that doesn't make it remotely right, by our standards - but clearly it does by theirs. Women are chattels in their minds.