Considering half a billion women live in India, when it comes to big international stories about any of them, they’re sadly usually about one thing. Rape is a big problem in the country, with several gruesome cases hitting the headlines since the Delhi bus attack. The 23-year-old student - who cannot be named under Indian law - was gang-raped and injured so badly by her attackers (they used a metal pole, too) that she died days later. All because she had dared to be on a bus after dark.
However, good news comes in the form that the new Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has taken notice of this issue. It’s hard not to, as more people feel mobilised to protest against rape and the treatment of its victims by the police, and the PM has directly addressed it in his Independence Day speech.
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‘Our heads hang in shame when we hear news about rape,’ the BBC reports him as saying as he addressed the nation from Delhi’s 17th-century Red Fort. ‘Young girls are always asked so many questions by their parents like,“Where are you going?”. But do parents dare to ask their sons where they are going? Those who commit rape are also someone’s sons. It’s the responsibility of the parents to stop them before they take the wrong path.’
READ MORE: Watch The Moment This Indian Woman Hits Back Against Her Attacker
Excuse us while we give a little applause. As well as suggesting plans to combat severe poverty in the country, he also called for the simplest of improvements to be made to schools to allow for girls to continue their studies after they become whatever age men think it’s OK to prey on them: ‘Every school should build separate toilets for girls in a year, so that our girl children do not leave schools. It is a shame that our women have to wait for darkness to go out in the open to defecate.’
Addressing the bias of rape culture – which pervades so many societies and sees so many victims blamed or told to change their behaviour way much more than attackers – and providing practical solutions to stop this sort of fucked up stuff happening again? It’s really progressive and great.
It’s not only some Indian citizens who can learn a lot from Modi (we’re guessing those progressive enough to have voted in someone like him), but basically every other prime minister and president in the world.
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.