Many – mostly women – noted that they were appalled at Rekha Sharma’s words, recounting the horrors of their travels in India.
New Delhi: The National Commission for Women chairwoman’s response to an online commenter reacting to the alleged gang-rape and assault on Spanish tourists in Jharkhand has drawn outrage from across the internet.
A popular travel vlogger couple had been travelling through the forests in Jharkhand’s Dumka when, they said in an Instagram post, they were attacked by a group of men, seven of whom gang-raped the woman. The man was beaten up.
“We were attacked in the tent, they beat us, put a knife to my throat, saying they were going to kill us, and she was raped by seven men,” a Spanish news outlet quoted the man as having stated in the video which he recorded from the hospital where they are undergoing treatment.
The incident and their announcement of it led many to observe on social media that in various ways, parts of India were unsafe to travel through for women.
One of them, writer David Josef Volodzko (@davidvolodzko), noted that the “level of sexual aggression” that he witnessed while living in India for several years was unlike anywhere else he had ever been. He wrote on X:
“Once a total stranger, a British woman, asked to sleep in my bed and pretend to be my girlfriend on a train ride because a man walking by in the hall had licked her foot and she felt unsafe. I introduced a female friend to a young Indian man and instead of shaking her hand, he groped her breast, and when she became angry he became extremely hostile and I thought I was going to have to fight the guy. I never met a female traveler who had not been groped or assaulted or worse, even if they had only been in country for mere days. I love India. It is and always will be one of my favorite places in the world. But I have advised female friends who asked me not to travel there alone. This is a real problem in Indian society that warrants more attention and that I hope will improve in time.”
The post sparked various reactions with some agreeing and many launching attacks on Volodzko. Among the latter was the NCW chairwoman Rekha Sharma, who equated the issue of the safety of women with defamation of the country. Sharma wrote:
“Did you ever report the incident to Police? If not than you are totally an irresponsible person. Writing only on social media and defaming whole country is not good choice.”
The commission Sharma heads, the NCW, is a statutory body under the Union government and is considered one of the topmost groups which can uphold concerns relevant to women.
However, the body has made news for the wrong reasons of late. In 2023, Newslaundry had learnt that the NCW had been sent on June 12 a complaint on a harrowing May 4 incident in Manipur, in which two Kuki women were assaulted by a mob during the violence in the state and video recorded. But the NCW did not respond to or acknowledge the complainants, the report found.
In 2020, when her older tweets making fun of women, politicians and women politicians drew ire from the public, Sharma claimed that her Twitter handle had been hacked.
Volodzko, in his long reply to Sharma, wrote that far from defaming India, he was attempting to point out a flaw in a country he otherwise “loved.” He also added criticism of the NCW:
“This is what you get from NCW types. I am not Indian, so take my view for whatever it is worth, but my Indian friends do not seem to have much respect, if any, for NCW and one reason for this is because it has a deplorable habit of blaming women when they are attacked, raped or even murdered. NCW makes India less safe for women when it does these things.
“…And yet here she is with the gall to accuse me of defaming India. Ms. Sharma, it is you who defame India by presiding over a group called the National Commission for Women and doing nothing about the issue noted above, and then criticizing people like me for drawing attention to this important matter.”
Many others – mostly women – also noted that they were appalled at Sharma’s words, recounting the everyday horrors of their lives in India.
The latest National Crime Records Bureau annual report had said the staggering number of cases of violence in India in 2022 was the equivalent of 51 FIRs every hour.
Quite a few commenters noted that reporting incidents of alleged sexual crimes does not necessarily mean that they will be addressed immediately, citing the glaring example of Bharatiya Janata Party MP Brij Bhushan Singh and his chokehold on the Wrestling Federation of India despite months of protests by India’s top wrestlers who alleged sustained sexual harassment by the strongman.
