...Union Board, arrived Howrah Station in Calcutta, India, on the afternoon of February 26, 1998, planning to catch the Jodhpur Express that night. Because her sleeping-car reservation had not yet been confirmed, she contacted the train ticket examiner, who asked her to wait in the ladies' waiting room. At around 5 P.M., two railway officials came to confirm her sleeping berth; they also offered to show her to the station's restaurant, where she could get dinner before the departure. Ms. Khatoon followed a station-boy to the restaurant and ordered some food, but immediately began to vomit. She returned to the ladies' waiting room, quite ill. The railway officials then offered to take her to the official station hotel managed by the Railways Board. She insisted on checking their credentials first, but when the official on duty at the ladies' waiting room told her that their credentials were in order, she agreed to go. In the hotel room she was brutally gang raped for several hours by a group of four station employees. Finally she escaped and returned to the platform, bleeding and in a state of shock. There she found another railway official who pretended to assist her. He said he would take her to his wife, who would take care of her until she could get another train in the morning. At the wife's alleged residence she was brutally gang raped again, and two of the employees tried to suffocate her. Hearing her cries, the landlord called the police, who finally rescued her. (1)

What is significant - and specifically Indian - about this story, however, is not the sad fact of gang rape, familiar throughout recorded history in all nations. What is significant is its denouement.

Two years later, in an unprecedented judgment, Ms. Khatoon won a large damage award from the Railways Board. It was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of India declared rape to be a violation of the fundamental right to live with human dignity, under both the Indian Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Rape," wrote the Court, "is a crime not only against the person of a woman, it is a crime against the entire society. It destroys the entire psychology of a woman and pushes her into deep emotional crisis. Rape is therefore the most hated crime. It is a crime against basic human rights and is violative of the victim's most cherished right, namely, right to life which includes right to live with human dignity...."

It is a mid-April evening in Bihar, in northeastern India. A woman is sitting with her brother in the backyard of her mud hut in a poor area of this state, one of the most corrupt and anarchic in the nation. Women have traditionally had little political power in Bihar, where, in some regions, the sex ratio is as low as 75 women to 100 men - a figure indicative of the differential nutrition and health care of girls, sex-selective abortion, and, probably, outright infanticide. But Poonam Devi, mother of two girls, is a candidate for election to her panchayat, or local council, and she is arranging the voting slips, with her number on them, to be given to voters on election day. (2) A gentle, soft-spoken woman, Poonam Devi has for two years been president of a woman's collective, where she has helped to arrange loans for all fifteen members of her group.

What is most astonishing about Poonam Devi's campaign, however, is not the fact of her candidacy - but the fact that she is running against her husband, who is affiliated with the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, the currently dominant party nationwide, with a Hindu fundamentalist program). Originally it was thought that this constituency would be among those reserved for women in the current election, so Poonam Devi's husband groomed her for candidacy, assuming that he would be unable to run. But when the electoral plan was announced, the constituency was not reserved for women, and the husband could run. But Poonam Devi decided to run anyway, with support from her parents and brothers. Her husband asked her to withdraw, but she refused. He is angry. After all, he says, she is a weak and insignificant candidate next to him. He is educated, he owns some land, he has been a teacher - and, he points out, he is even unemployed, so he has lots of time for the council. A reporter from the national news media asks Poo nam Devi, "Why are you fighting against your husband?" She questions right back: "Why can't I fight the elections, husband or no husband? Why can't a woman and a man be candidates from the same family?" Her platform focuses on unemployment, the old-age pension, and the insecure economic position of single women and widows. (3)

The outcome of Poonam Devi's candidacy remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Seventy-Second and Seventy-Third Amendments to India's constitution, which establish a bold program of affirmative action for women in the local panchayats, are bringing large numbers of women into politics all over India, with clear results for the salience of issues pertaining to the welfare of women and children.

Inequality on the basis of sex is a staggering problem worldwide. India is hardly unique in this regard. Women in all nations - including the United States - still suffer serious inequalities in at least some central areas of human life.

Gang rape is hardly a problem indigenous to Calcutta: it is the regular fare of U.S. courts. (A recent showing of Law...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Daedalus
Who gets health care?(Column), January 01, 2002
Why the poor don't soak the rich.(Column), January 01, 2002
Young Marx.(Poem), January 01, 2002
A wedding. (Fiction).(Short Story), January 01, 2002
On the three faces of intelligence., January 01, 2002

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