Stop calling her Nirbhaya!!
I have thought about this name so many times. And today i want to share these recurring thoughts with the rest of the world. Jyoti Singh was brutally raped in 2012 and she succumbed to her injuries a few days later. And then our country called her NIRBHAYA(meaning fearless). I want this to stop because this is such a false narrative. She was not Nirbhaya. As a woman I can bet she was horrified when she was being raped by those animals. She must have been in so much pain and she would have definitely been SCARED. I don’t think she BRAVELY wanted to die. All of this was not something she deserved, earned or was responsible for. I understand that by calling her Nirbhaya we might be trying to celebrate her resilience but this takes away her identity and dilutes her pain to some extent. She was Jyoti Singh. An extraordinary daughter. A smart and educated girl who had dreams and who was working hard for making her dreams come true. There is no Nirbhaya. There was no Nirbhaya. Jyoti Singh was the one who endured so much pain and brutality. She was the one who saw her life getting crushed while she lived her last days in immense pain. She was the one who saw her family living through this horror. She saw her parents’ helplessness to not be able to save their little girl.
Nirbhaya has been celebrated for her bravery all around the country. Such a fancy name for the victim of a brutal crime. She would have never wanted to be called Nirbhaya if the cost to earn this name was the pain she endured. Her rape should have been an awakening for the society. A society this is raising these horrible animals who think that raping and killing someone is okay. Her pain should have been the last of it. Her pain should have been enough for the entire country to realize that this is WRONG. There was so much pain. It should have been enough. But it wasn’t.
Rapes are still prevalent, happening every few minutes in our country. We have accepted that as part and parcel of our lives. And then every few months comes a brutal rape that makes it to the news cycle. Some outrage is followed and then the country moves on business as usual. In the case of Jyoti Singh, most of the rapists were hanged(after 7 long years). I sometimes wonder what changed after that. A mother lost her daughter and would never get her back. I cannot even begin to imagine her pain. There have still been so many other brutal rapes and when they are extremely brutal they are called similar to the “Nirbhaya” case. As a society we should be ashamed to have a benchmark like this.
NIRBHAY(meaning fearless)should be the title for those rapists. Because in true sense they were the ones who were not scared at all. They were not scared of the law, not scared of the society, not scared of their family, not scared of karma, and not scared of the consequences. They raped someone in a moving bus on busy streets. They were definitely not scared of anything. It took 7 years to hang Jyoti Singh’s rapists. And the ones following suit even after the hanging of those rapists are so “Nirbhay” that they have no fear of law and order. Even an animal, if trained well, would not bite humans but these so called humans have failed to learn that its not okay to rape and murder a fellow human being. How difficult can it be to teach and learn something this basic? How may women will need to get their lives destroyed or ended until real change comes about?
I want women in our country to be called “ZIDDI”(meaning adamant). We are adamant that no matter how difficult the circumstances we are still fighting for our rights to education, to work, to step out of the house, to enjoy life, to BREATHE. We are scared of the hostility against women but need to be adamant that the society and the administration provide women a safe and balanced environment. And this cannot happen until men also make sure that the women get their basic right of access to free and unbiased society. Because most of the time men are in the position of power making laws and taking decisions. They will have to play a major role in this paradigm shift. THEY SHOULD. Until then let’s continue to be Ziddi. Let’s continue to be adamant.
