the question of rape

some time back, when the media was full of reports about the gruesome rape in new delhi and the nationwide outrage it created, a friend asked me what did i think of the issue. he was of the view rapists should be given capital punishment.

i was confused what to say. but the question reminded me of the only time my father beat me, which was a long time back when i was six or seven years old. i have recorded it elsewhere in my blog: (http://venusnotebook.blogspot.in/2011/08/only-time-my-father-beat-me.html )
he did not tell me why he beat me; but there was an unsaid message in the incident from a father to his son, at a very tender age...

then my wife was telling me the other day about a seminar on the subject in her college and how there were reputed speakers at the programme, who all disappointed her with shallow speeches.

she says no one speaks about the core thing. no mother who had brought up her son with love will want to continue her life after hearing her son has committed rape. he is raping her first when he is raping a woman.

and just now, while reading Adhyatma Ramayana, i come to the place where Sumithra gives her son Lakshmana a few words of advice as he prepares to leave Ayodhya with Rama and Sita for 14 years' banishment in the forests. I shall roughly translate the lines as folows:

always be with your elder brother serving him, never separating from him. hold him in your heart as you do with love your father Dasharadhan. take Sita for your loving mother, and always see the forests where you go as Ayodhya itself.

this, i think, is the key. for our sons not to become rapists, blinded by ignorance and lust, they should come to understand what true love is, who a woman is, what the relationship between man and woman is. this understanding can come only when they experience true love at home and receive good eduction, which is not in the degrees they win in the universities.

*****