Madhumita Pandey was only 22 when she first went to Tihar

Jail in New Delhi to meet and interview convicted rapists in

India. Over the past three years, she has interviewed 100 of
them for her doctoral thesis at the criminology department of
Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom.

It all started in 2013, first as a pilot project, months after the

highly publicized gang rape and murder of a woman now
known as “Nirbhaya” meaning “Fearless One.” The details of
the case — a young, aspirational medical student who was
attacked on the way home with a friend after watching the
movie “Life of Pi” — struck a chord in India, where according
to the National Crime Records Bureau, 34,651 women reported
being raped in 2015, the most recent year on record.

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Nirbhaya brought thousands of Indians to the streets to protest

the widespread culture of rape and violence against women in
2012. That year, gender specialists ranked India the worst
place among G-20 countries to be a woman, worse even than
Saudi Arabia where women have to live under the supervision
of a male guardian.

An Indian teen was raped by her father. Village elders had her
whipped.

“Everyone was thinking the same thing,” said Pandey, who at

the time was on the other side of the world, in England,
finishing off her master’s. “Why do these men do what they
do? We think of them as monsters, we think no human being
could do something like that.”
The protests forced a national conversation about rape, a topic
which still carries huge stigma in India. Pandey, who grew up
in New Delhi, and saw her city in a new light after the
Nirbhaya case, said: “I thought, what prompts these men?
What are the circumstances which produce men like this? I
thought, ask the source.”

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Since then, she has spent weeks talking to rapists in Delhi’s

Tihar Jail. Most of the men she met there were uneducated,
only a handful had graduated high school. Many were third- or
fourth-grade dropouts. “When I went to research, I was
convinced these men are monsters. But when you talk to them,
you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really
ordinary. What they’ve done is because of upbringing and
thought process.”

Why an Indian judge thinks rapists should marry their victims

In Indian households, even in more educated families, women

are often bound to traditional roles, Pandey said. Many women
won’t even use their husbands’ first names, she pointed out.
“As an experiment, I phoned a few friends and asked: what
does your mom call your dad? The answers I got were things
like ‘are you listening,’ ‘listen,’ or ‘father of Ronak’ (the child’s
name).’”

India village council punishes 13-year-old rape victim with

whipping

The male-dominated councils that govern villages in India are

hundreds of years old and have been known for their harsh
punishments. In March 2016, a 13-year-old girl was whipped
by a village council for not saying she was raped. (Annie
Gowen, Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

“Men are learning to have false ideas about masculinity, and

women are also learning to be submissive. It is happening in
the same household, Pandey said. “Everyone’s out to make it
look like there’s something inherently wrong with [rapists]. But
they are a part of our own society. They are not aliens who’ve
been brought in from another world.”

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Pandey said that hearing some of the rapists talk reminded her
of commonly held beliefs that were often parroted even in her
own household. “After you speak to [the rapists], it shocks you
— these men have the power to make you feel sorry for them.
As a woman that’s not how you expect to feel. I would almost
forget that these men have been convicted of raping a woman.
In my experience a lot of these men don’t realize that what
they've done is rape. They don't understand what consent is.”

She was raped at 13. Her case has been in India’s courts for 11 years
— and counting

“Then you ask yourself, is it just these men? Or is the vast

majority of men?” she said.

In India, social attitudes are highly conservative. Sex education

is left out of most school curriculums; legislators feel such
topics could “corrupt” youth and offend traditional values.
“Parents won't even say the words like penis, vagina, rape or
sex. If they can't get over that, how can they educate young
boys?” Pandey asked.
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In the interviews, many men made excuses or gave

justifications for their actions. Many denied rape happened at
all. “There were only three or four who said we are repenting.
Others had found a way to put their actions into some
justification, neutralize, or blame action onto the victim.”

One case in particular, participant 49, sent Pandey on an

unexpected journey. He expressed remorse for raping a 5-year-
old girl. “He said ‘yes I feel bad, I ruined her life.’ Now she is
no longer a virgin, no one would marry her. Then he said, ‘I
would accept her, I will marry her when I come out of jail.’”

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Here's what you need to know about the religious leader who
was the focus on protests in India that left at least 36 people
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The response shocked Pandey so much that she felt compelled

to find out about the victim. The man had revealed details of
the girl’s whereabouts in the interview. When she found the
girl's mother, she learned that the family had not even been
told that their daughter’s rapist was in jail.

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Pandey hopes to publish her research in the coming months

but said she faces hostility for her work. “They think, here
comes another feminist. They assume a woman doing research
like this will misrepresent men’s ideas. Where do you begin
with someone like that?” she said
In India and in the West, there is a tendency to see gender
violence and misogyny in India as an expression of “culture”
and “tradition”. This is an inaccurate and distorting lens
through which to look at gender violence and misogyny.

What we need to ask is, not “Why is Indian culture so brutal to

women and why does India defend rape and honour killings”
but instead “in whose interests, and through what processes, is
an “Indian culture” being produced, that simultaneously
blames women for rape, and justifies surveillance Why, in
India (and elsewhere in the world too), are we seeing loud
pronouncements of victim-blaming and rape culture from
influential politicians?

Capitalism needs to draw women into the labour force as

cheap, under-paid labour, and it also needs women’s unpaid
work in the home to bear the bulk of the burden of social
reproduction (bearing children, replenishing labour power
daily by providing food, care and psychological comfort for the
exhausted worker, and caring for the past and future labour-
force – children and the aged).

In India therefore, the current spate of sexism and culture of

justifying rape and surveillance on women, is best explained as
a means of disciplining women’s labour in a neoliberal
capitalist economy, rather than as a mere vestige of a backward
culture. Responding to the outrage, India's Cabinet has passed
an executive order introducing the death penalty for rapists of
children under the age of 12. The change in law is awaiting
approval from parliament.
But in a country of more than 1.3 billion people, where women
make up about 48% of the population, what do Indian women
want?

As a woman, do you feel safe in India?

Honestly, I am slightly skeptical and I don't want to generalize

it, but no, I don't feel safe in India, considering that every
moment there is something happening. Not exactly rape, but
there are so many cases of molestation and sexual harassment.
It's basically the male gaze. It's sort of brutal. You are going out,
you are wearing short clothes, people are going to check you
out from head to toe. I think that's the basic thing that makes
you feel unsafe.

What is a woman's place in India compared to a man's?

I think they are subordinated in a lot of ways, not just in the

workplace or at home. There is some sort of subordination
happening at every moment. You wake up, you go out, you are
subjected to those rules and regulations, and I don't think they
are equal in any sense.

There is about 5% of the population that has surpassed or

transcended those regulations, but there is still a large
population that needs to break from that shell.

We are struggling with it much more, especially with men who

can't deal with women in public spaces. Men don't know how
to deal with their masculinity.