India is steeped in appalling violence, especially against women— particularly Muslim and oppressed-caste women.
In Unnao, in 2017, a privileged-caste member of the ruling party BJP raped a 17-year-old girl. Her father died in prison after he was arrested in 2018 on some pretext. In July 2019, the young woman herself was injured, and three relatives killed, when a truck rammed their car. The rapists set her on fire, killing her as she was on her way to testify against them later that year.
In Indian Occupied Kashmir, in 2018, upper-caste Hindu men kidnapped an 8-year-old Muslim girl who was grazing the family cattle. They held her in a temple and raped her for weeks. Many protested the rapists but Hindu political parties protested the rapists’ imprisonment!
Dalits are India’s lowest-status group. In July 2019 a Dalit woman declared that her brother-in-law had been killed in police custody. In revenge, police arrested and gang-raped her.
In November 2019, four men (three Hindus and a Muslim) gang-raped a 26-year-old veterinarian in Hyderabad. Right-wing Hindu parties circulated fake Muslim names for all the accused. Parliamentarians called for their lynching.
Police took the accused to the scene of the crime. They killed them there, claiming that they tried to seize police weapons and escape. The investigator in charge had arranged such extra-judicial killings before.
Swami Nithyananda is one of India’s many capitalist multimillionaire “godmen.” He fled India recently amidst charges of rape and child abuse and purchased an island off Ecuador. Indian officials claimed that he left without a passport although one cannot enter an airport in India without one.
Why is a simple word like “No” so confounding in a technologically advanced society? The prominent Indian actor Mahmood Farooqi was convicted in 2016 of raping a student at Delhi University. A high-court judge set aside his conviction, saying that a “feeble no” may mean “yes” to sex!
Rape has long been a weapon in wartime. Today it is also an instrument of power in times of alleged “peace.”
Like other forms of oppression, rape culture creates widespread fear. This helps capitalists steal surplus value, through low-cost or unpaid labor, from workers afraid of challenging class and caste hierarchies. It leads, also, to rape, domestic abuse and sexual assault of privileged-class women that perpetuate their second-class status.
The women leading the struggle against fascism and Islamophobia in India today are smashing the chains of fear. They are linking their own liberation to that of the working class and all oppressed masses.
These women and the men who fight alongside them must recognize that we can only end anti-woman and anti-worker and anti-Muslim violence by destroying the capitalist system that perpetuates them. That means mobilizing masses for a communist society.
Capitalism thrives on division. In contrast, communism requires unity. Communists don’t tolerate sexist violence. We educate ourselves and others to relate to workers and the broader masses as comrades.
With the victory of communist revolution, the masses will build a world that finally ends oppression.
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