In India, One Woman's Stand Says 'Enough'
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The central moral challenge we will face in this century will be to address gender inequality in the developing world. Here in India, for example, among children ages 1 to 5, girls are 50 percent more likely to die than boys. That means that every four minutes, a little girl here is discriminated against to death.
One reason for such injustice is that many women docilely accept it - even enforce it. But that may be changing, as I found in a slum here in the central Indian city of Nagpur.
For more than 15 years, the mud alleys of the slum were ruled by a local thug named Akku Yadav. A higher-caste man, he killed, raped and robbed in this community of Dalits - those at the bottom of the caste ladder - and the police paid no attention. One woman, according to people here, went to the police station to report that she had been gang-raped by Akku Yadav and his goons, and the police raped her.
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Other women pulled out chili powder from their clothes and threw it in the faces of Akku Yadav and the police. As the police fled, scores of women pulled out knives and apparently took turns stabbing Akku Yadav and cutting off his penis. He ended up as mincemeat, and the courtroom walls are still spattered with blood.
The police arrested a handful of women, including Usha, for the murder, but she conveniently could prove that she was not at the courtroom that day. And then the hundreds of women in the slum jointly declared that they had all joined in the killing, on the theory that if they all claimed responsibility, no single person could be punished.
"We all did it," affirms Rajashri Rangdale, a young mother. "We all take responsibility for what happened."
"I'm proud of what we did," agrees Jija More, a housewife. "We were all involved."
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Kristof Rape Patriarchy Gender Terrorism Feminism India Violence Against Women Nicholas Kristof
