We live in a caste driven society that worships the “Goddess” in the temple but ravages the woman standing in the street. In this landscape, a white veil isn’t a symbol of innocence; it is a shroud of silence ; a mark of the stifling of her consent done by the heinous mentality of our society. When sexual violence occurs at the intersection of caste and ‘hollow masculinity,’ it simply fails to be just a crime—it becomes a performance of power, staged by a society that prefers to nitpick the law rather than protect the victim.
The irony of our society reveals itself not in silence, but in its response: instead of seeking justice for the victim, we scramble to reinterpret the crime—to justify it, dilute it, explain it away.
The questions remain painfully predictable:
“What was she wearing?”
“Why was she out so late?”.
“The Victim Knows More About The Crime Than Does The Perpetrator”
The sick mentality of men reeks of a severe lack of respect and admiration towards the feminine pillar of society. Rape is no longer a crime ; it has become a sick & twisted way to wield power upon women.
Saying that , we look upon the lack of education across the branches of our nation ;
Casteism rules over the moral compass of the uneducated scum of society that have nothing to hold pride in so they turn towards their “caste” & a wrongful precedence that was given to the subsects of their communities. The orthodox hand that rips at a woman’s Dupatta , at her Hijab , at her Kurti should suffer a similar fate that they put the victim through. We have built rituals to celebrate purity, but none to protect it. We draft laws that read like safeguards, yet leave gaps wide enough for violence to pass through unnoticed. Behind closed doors, within marriages, across caste lines, and under the gaze of indifferent authority, women are taught that what happens to them is either invisible, inevitable, or somehow their fault.
The Facade Of Promises from a Hollow Partner.
Marriage, often glorified as a sanctuary, becomes for many women a site of silent violence. Consent is assumed rather than sought, and coercion is reframed as duty.
India remains among the countries that have yet to fully criminalize marital rape. This legal silence exposes a deeper rot—a societal belief that marriage is permanent consent, a rite of passage that strips a woman of autonomy over her own body. It is a grim reality that a large part of society continues to treat marriage as unrestricted access to a woman’s body, where she is expected to “change” and “compromise,” and any resistance is met with questions forced upon her like did her husband.
Her Home ; a sanctuary for her physical & mental sanctity turns into an inward prison that blames her for speaking up against the abuse forced upon her ; By refusing to criminalize marital rape, the state effectively signs a ‘contract of ownership’ rather than a ‘contract of partnership.
A married woman is told that ‘Ghar ki baat ghar mein rehni chahiye’ ;
A phrase that has buried more screams than any graveyard.
Its a cold blooded murder of a person’s will to decide for themselves ; slaves to their masters that hold NO care for her consent.
“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from enemies, it comes from those you trust the most“
Saying this , we can never overlook the fact that the sexual oppression faced by women that are raped after marriage also majorly comes from other women in her household or her surroundings who pretend that this should be normalized.
Its a deliberate silencing of the victim which leaves not a person but a hollow shell who has nothing left but to be constantly abused against her will & consent.
What remains is a ‘hollow shell’—a person who has been taught that her only value lies in her endurance. We are a nation of 1.4 billion people, yet we allow millions of these ‘graveyards of screams’ to exist behind closed doors. To worship a Goddess in the morning and demand a slave in the evening is the ultimate proof of a society that has lost its moral center. Until the ‘contract of ownership’ is burned and replaced by a ‘contract of humanity,’ our progress is nothing but a facade.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org.