Do We All Participate in Rape Culture?
Acharya Prashant: We don't really look at woman as human being. We look at her as her physical identity. We have lenses of sex and gender. It is the womanness that matters more to us, and matters not in any innocuous sense — matters in a rather disturbing sense.
Even in murder, we fail to see the human being. The sexual lenses are always on, and it is quite pathetic what that tells about the seer, the looker. It is the female body. It is the female body that catches our attention, not the loss of a precious human life.
And because the gaze is so sexual, it no longer remains a surprise. Gruesome acts are so frequent in our country. No crime happens in isolation. The very social gaze is sexual. It's not that one particular wild individual just dropped in from somewhere and committed the crime. No! The general society is the breeding ground.
What you call as the common man, that is the normal social person, provides the ecology, the environment in which wider, deeper, and very violent sexual crimes then manifest. It has to be remembered that the perpetrator of the crime is a part of the larger society. Though when there are protests, we want to believe that the larger society is blameless and all the blame has to fall on one single individual or a few of them.
That's not how things really are. When these violent explosions occur, they point at something much more deeper and much more general and widespread. We want to exonerate ourselves. We want to say we are all good, civilized social people, and we condemn these acts.
I'm afraid that's an alibi that's run out of its defense. How long will we keep saying that we are all decent people? From where is all the indecency coming then? And if you look at the culprits, they come from all strata of the society. It's not always some landless labourer or truck driver. It could be a rich man. It could be a leader. It could be a government employee. It could be a businessman. It could be a teenager.
Remember the Nirbhaya case. Or it could be a really old godman, they come from all places and in all kinds of clothing. It's a wider social phenomenon which we are not ready to acknowledge, because if we acknowledge, that would be tantamount to accepting our own culpability.
I'll come to who we are and how we are, and from that, it should be possible to see why culprits spring up from the social soil, the social springboard — every now and then. You see, who are we? You are a teenager. You said you are a political science student, right?
Questioner: Yes, sir.
Acharya Prashant: Right. What does your batch in general want? Don't give me specifics. What do people want from their future?
Questioner: Sir, they want a UPSC job and then a big villa, and then want to get married.
Acharya Prashant: You see, that's the social philosophy. I want a life in which I'll be able to enjoy all the goodies, and given the way we have evolved the human body, both the sexes — principally the male counts the female body amongst the foremost goodies of life.
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: From a very young age, you are indoctrinated into believing that life exists so that it can be relished. What is the purpose of life? Have as many opportunities of pleasure as possible.
And to a young man, when I say young, I don't mean 15 only. Even 45 is young. As long as you have sufficient testosterone, in some way you are young. To a young man, it's about having pleasure and the female body, by the dent of evolution, is a very important source of pleasure. Very important.
Now, if you can have that pleasure in a legal way, in a safe and clean way — wonderful. That safe and clean way is by way of marriage. But if you cannot have it that way, then there will always be a lot of people who will be prepared to act the victim in their own eyes and attack women.
They say, “Having pleasure is my birthright, and I'm not able to get a sufficient quantity of pleasure. Everybody's having fun. Why should I be deprived? Look at that one. Look at that one. All are making merry. Why should I be a loser?" And if he stays with this thought for long, it will most probably turn into some kind of criminal aggression.
Have you heard of the term incel?
Questioner: No Sir.
Acharya Prashant: It's an involuntary celibate. So the man says, "I'm a victim. I'm an involuntary celibate. I want to have sex, but women are not giving me enough opportunities. So, without my willingness, I have been turned into a celibate." So it's called incel — involuntary celibate.
And women are blamed. You see, the whole world owes me pleasure. And when it comes to sexual pleasure, it's the women who owe me a lot. And if the women won't offer me pleasure, I'll grab it, snatch it, loot it, plunder it, kill it. Because we all exist just to have pleasure. That's what we have been indoctrinated in. No?
Now, study so that you can get some kind of a plum job. And if you have a plum job, you'll probably get a plum girl as well. Loads of money and sex coming your way. Right? What else is there?
Ramkrishna Paramhansa, that great saint, used to say that for the common man there are only two objectives — kanchan and kamini. And even these two are intertwined — money and sex, kanchan is gold, kamini is a lucrative girl. Are you getting it?
So when the entire philosophy, the entire social philosophy, is that life exists for the sake of pleasure, then those who find themselves deprived of pleasure will go to any extent, based on the same philosophy. Right? If you can buy great food, buy it. But if you're unable to buy great food, snatch it. And that's the reason why you require a powerful law and order system and enforcement machinery, because the very philosophy necessitates it.
Philosophy says, you must have pleasure. But not everybody will get equal chances of pleasure. So what will the deprived ones do? They'll try to…
Questioner: Grab it.
Acharya Prashant: They'll try to break the law. They'll say, "You know, we too must have it. But we are not getting a fair chance. We are victims. We are incels. So we'll do something extraordinary." The underlying philosophy is the same. The honest man, the so-called honest man earns honestly so that he can consume. The robber, the thief, plunders so that he can consume.
Questioner: Consume.
Acharya Prashant: The center of the so-called honest man and the plunderer, I want to leave you with this question — is it any different? We are supposed to believe that the honest man and the dishonest man are poles apart. I'm asking, are they?
Because in the Gita, Shri Krishna avers that if you want to know the center of a person, just try to see what all his actions are for. If you want to see the center a person is operating from, see the desire that his actions are supposed to fulfill.
So I'm an honest man. I'm supposedly an honest man. And I'm working so that I'll get a fat salary, and then I'll consume. So what is the end of my honesty? Consumption. And I am a thief, a robber. And I commit robbery so that I can....? What is the end of all my lawlessness?Consumption.
Now, according to Shri Krishna, if both of them are working towards the end of consumption, they both are much the same at their center. Everybody is the same.
I'm not going to the absurd extent of saying that everybody's a rapist or a murderer, but please try to understand what I am trying to say. Most people, if they are not lawbreakers, it is only because of fear. Otherwise, our general life philosophy is such that each one of us is being compelled to consume at whatever cost possible. Just that when you are threatened with punishment, then you try to desist somehow or find your way around the law.
Right now there are no laws on raping the Earth. Right now there is no severe punishment being meted out, if you rape the Earth. See, everybody's raping the Earth. The most respectable people are at the vanguard of the rape of Earth. The day there is some law that starts punishing such rape, a lot of honorable people would withdraw, but they are withdrawing only because of fear of punishment. If there is no fear, they will rape the Earth.
You know of the whole climate change phenomena. You know it comes from the rape of the planet.
You know how all the species are getting extinct. You know of biodiversity loss. You know of the various ecological disasters. You know how they can be very literally called as the rape of the planet. And the most respectable people are at the forefront committing such rape, are they not?
Because this rape is enmeshed in our general philosophy, in our general thought. Remove all fear of punishment and then look at the lawlessness that will rage on the streets. There are those who are so afraid that they won't take the law into their hands. And there are those who are so smart that they break the law and yet don't get caught. And then there is the third category that commits a crime and also gets caught. These are the ones we denounce as rapists.
Some estimates say that the number of unreported cases in India is probably up to 40 times more than what is reported. And probably a majority of the unreported cases are taking place within the household.
Questioner: Some 89%.
Acharya Prashant: The majority of the cases taking place within the household are taking place on the conjugal bed. It is married — the husband raping the wife, and the husband is a very respectable fellow, I tell you, is he not? He could be a college professor. He could be a white-collared worker. He could be a member of the parliament. He could be a police officer. He might be the recipient of some national award. Even rape is all-prevalent.
Obviously, those who inflict that kind of suffering on a human being, on a fellow human being must be caught and punished as harshly as possible. But let that not comfort us into believing that rapes are isolated incidences.
As long as there is the philosophy of pleasure at whatever cost, rape in all its forms will keep happening.
And if you do not find rapes happening somewhere, chances are either the law is very strict or the chaps are too smart. Law does not need to be just the social law. It could even be the religious law. "If you do all those bad things, then you will rot in hell." And that makes the man so terrified, he starts calling all the women as his sisters and starts relying on porn either. "All women are my sisters except the pornstars."
We know of the extent of internet data that is just porn. What does that tell you of? The need to consume the female body. To some extent, that need is biological. But to a much greater extent, that need is artificially bloated by the general philosophy of the day. You exist to consume.
There is a beautiful couplet by Saint Kabir that comes to my mind. He says, it's a comparison between the biological urge to have sex versus the social thought, the social construct of sex. He says,
Kaamee kutta tees din, antar hoye udaas. Kaamee nar kutta sadaa, chhah ritu baarah maas.
And “kutta” here stands for the biological kingdom, the animal kingdom — all the living beings except man. He says the dog becomes sexually active only in its period of heat, and that period does not last long. Apart from that period, the dog remains indifferent to the matter of sex.
Kaamee kutta tees din, antar hoye udaas. Kaamee nar kutta sadaa, chhah ritu baarah maas.
Man is a dog throughout the year, wagging his tongue, sniffing the rear sides of possible victims. It's not biological. Biological is 3 days, euphemistically — 3 days. The remaining 362 days are social. It's about what you are being taught. It's not really your bodily urge. It's a mental thing.
This sex, that we want so much in abundance, is not so much a need of the body. It's a need of the mind, because we are being constantly told sex is important. You must have pleasure. And the female body is a great source of pleasure.
Look at how we are centralizing the female body constantly. Go to media, social media, especially social media. Even if you go in a normal way, in an asexual way, spend 10 minutes on instagram and your thoughts would turn in a sexual direction. You are being forcibly sexually energized, activated, triggered.
It's a thought. Unless we change that thought, I'm afraid we'll have to live through the pain of seeing more such incidents.
