The scandal has become an international embarrassment as more and more court documents related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein surface, exposing how quickly powerful people can tarnish their reputations. The displeasure was felt in New Delhi, where Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was scheduled to give a keynote speech at the AI Impact Summit, but ended up not attending amid criticism and apparent misgivings within the Modi government over past meetings with Epstein. The sight was clear. When scandals threaten reputations and diplomatic posture, public moral outrage spreads quickly. But sensitivity to such associations sits uneasily alongside the domestic reality, where sexual violence against women unfolds with brutal regularity and provokes no comparable embarrassment or consequences. The contrast is grotesque. A political culture that can show its displeasure over global scandals is surprisingly untroubled by the everyday atrocities faced by women at home.
Under the Modi government, reports of gang rapes circulate in the news cycle like factory products. It’s steady, relentless, and repetitive, making you feel numb. Rape is so common that it is reported like the weather. Death toll due to heat wave. Flash flood. A 5-year-old child was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. And just like the weather, only God is responsible. Not a rapist. It’s not a court. Not the police. Definitely not the prime minister.
Between the time this work was commissioned and published, a 5-year-old was gang-raped in Meerut, a 26-year-old was gang-raped in Faridabad, and a 17-year-old was gang-raped in Orissa. A 42-year-old man was gang-raped on the outskirts of Delhi. A 12-year-old girl was kidnapped and gang-raped in Bikaner. Additional gang rapes occurred in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Kanpur. I can give you statistics, but numbers cannot convey the larger, all-encompassing fear of living with a predator. The threat of sexual violence is as constant as gravity. The cases are gruesome, with their intestines pulled out, sticks inserted, their tongues cut out, acid thrown at them, their heads cut off, strangled and burned. Looking at government data on rape (an average of 86 women are raped every day) is as horrifying as coming across a mass grave in an Excel sheet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, ostensibly obsessed with restoring law and order at all costs, seem completely unconcerned that India is the world’s gang-rape capital under their watch.
The most worrying example of this was in 2017, when Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a convicted rapist and Bharatiya Janata Party politician, was granted bail by the High Court for raping a minor, increasing his chances of returning to the very social and political environment that had previously enabled impunity. The High Court granted him bail in December. Thankfully, this judgment was stayed by the Supreme Court, but only after outraged women gathered in Delhi to protest. Sengar raped a teenage boy, who was also gang-raped by his friends. Her father was killed while in police custody. A case was registered only after she threatened to burn herself in front of the Prime Minister’s residence. Her tragic story shows that Indian men, like the Modi government, are surprisingly comfortable with the status quo.
Unfortunately, this is not unusual. It is a system that speaks in your native language.
National memory is important because each new incident unfolds against the remains of an incident that was said to change everything. In 2012, I read about the ‘Nirbhaya’ gang rape case on my way from the airport, three days after the incident. I had deliberately avoided the news until she was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital, but my editor needed an update on her health from me. After learning all the details of what the men had done to this young woman, I thought the world would stand still. The threshold was exceeded. Something told me the world was starting anew. There were protests, people all over the world learned her name, and nothing like this would ever happen again.
All my naivety was drowned out by the chorus of “Not All Men” as gang rape became something viral to hashtag. This refrain did not defend innocence, but rather diverted attention from responsibility and towards the comfort of the men.
It’s impossible to hear about such cases and not think, “What would I have done if it were me?” my body. That rod. Those guys. The suffering and mutilation of women’s bodies is so certain that a market now exists to help allay our fears. Security app. Pepper spray and wearable panic alarms. Every time I write about this topic, I am struck by the woeful inadequacy of the written word in the face of men who film rape, brag about it, and still rehabilitate it.
You could call this moment an unprecedented one, but it’s beyond that. It’s existential. As powerful men, whether in the United States or India, step down and wait out the storm, women watch the same power choreography protect them. The similarities lie not in scale or situation, but in the repeated scenes of survivors fighting alone while institutions cushion those in power. For some time now, both countries, said to be the largest and oldest democracies, have been on a path to self-destruction, with men at the forefront. Under both the Modi and Trump administrations, rape has become an extension of politics. Women are no longer subjected to violence only by men, but also by courts, hospitals, and the press. It’s the age of monsters. Of course, it didn’t start with Epstein, Gates, and Saenger, but they are the symbols of it.
While the middle class was busy buying dreams of upward mobility, careerism, and two-bedroom gated suburbs, we allowed thugs to build massive misogynistic empires that fed on hatred of women. I don’t know what to do with the anger I feel. What would you do if you were constantly told that your body, people, and gender are disposable? I don’t know.
What I do know is that the teenager who survived Saenger is still fighting for justice. I know that survivors of Epstein’s sex trafficking network are also fighting for justice. They fight with their hearts and souls, sweat and muscles. I know I have no right to be discouraged while they stand tall and look like every inch a hero. I also know that no one would have a fight like that unless you love your sisters.
In these dark times, as the Modi government theatrically steps back from the shadow of the Epstein scandal on the summit stage, we feel it is important to put on record that the satire itself has become a story. Governments that cannot or will not protect women should be far more ashamed of the ordinary than the scandalous.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
