A baby-faced rapist, a survivor’s truth, and a silence that must end

I’m obsessed with the pompous, self-righteous, son-of-a-priest, baby-faced visage of Monojit Mishra, the 31-year-old history-sheeter who allegedly raped a 24-year-old law student in Kolkata, supported by two younger men (co-accused Pramit Mukherjee, 20, and Zaib Ahmed, 19) who filmed the crime. The easiest way to distract Indian men from identity politics and unite them is to pit them against women.

Every time you hear of a rape, imagine Monojit Mishra and not the outfit of a rape survivor. Don’t waste your time analysing how she may have “brought the attack upon herself”. Just think of this man’s supercilious, boy-next-door face. Then stamp it with shame. We live in a country where a rape is reported every 15-16 minutes, and these figures will only grow in the coming years as more women draw inspiration from a lesson the French mass sexual assault survivor, Gisele Pelicot, reminded the world of last year: ‘It’s not for us to have shame — it’s for them.’
Mishra is the type of man who would be at the forefront of protests demanding that rapists be hanged, a self-styled torchbearer for the beti bachao crowd. He has political influence, that much is clear from his long record of violence —11 FIRs filed against him since 2013 — and how he has gotten away with it every time. He reportedly raped the survivor, beat her with a hockey stick, shot videos of her naked—and then threatened to shame her by releasing the footage. He tried, like many rapists before him, to use the video as a deterrent to report the crime. Using shame against the survivor of a crime is a tried and tested strategy of Indian rapists. He also threatened to harm her family and the man she is dating.

There are so many things that stand out about this story but let’s just list a few.

Why Indian men cannot handle rejection:  The whole heinous genre of acid crimes is perpetuated by South Asian men (mostly Indian) who feel ‘slighted’ by the ‘rejection’ of women. So, what if the women they claim to be in ‘love’ with don’t even know of their existence. It’s almost like if a woman says no in our society, it absolves a man from what he does next. According to what the co-accused told police, the girl had rejected Monojit’s advances, and he wanted to “teach her a lesson”. Nor was she the first girl he had targeted. “I don’t think there is any girl in college who wasn’t harassed by him,” a former law student told NDTV. Yet men like this get away every day. And this impunity boosts their sense of power.

Marriage becomes an alibi: Even disgusting rapists feel the need to propose marriage to the women they plan to attack. Mishra enjoyed asking women if they would marry him. It’s quite fitting really. Marriage for so many men means institutional sanction to rape a woman without having to worry about minor details like accountability or consequences. Marital rape is not criminalised in India, and marriage is a free pass to rape.

Indian women are done with being shamed for rape: Despite all the threats, the survivor went home, told her parents and they filed an FIR that night. Mishra probably calculated that the woman wouldn’t dare to speak up because of the guilt, shame and blame our society pins on survivors (some politicians have already started doing this). But survivors are done with being silent and you should expect this trend to grow.

Now we are waiting for all the strong women in the Trinamool Congress, a party with which Mishra certainly had links at one time though it has now distanced itself from him, to speak up loudly. A party that has been cheered for its robust representation of women in Parliament (at 38%, TMC has the highest proportion of women politicians in the Lok Sabha) needs to show us how women in power can change the way society functions. Already, a dog fight has broken out in the party after MP Mahua Moitra called out the misogynistic remarks of two male colleagues. Apart from the usual tedious victim blaming, one of them asked how the govt could prevent incidents if a “friend rapes a friend”.

How many times do we need to repeat this National Crime Records Bureau statistic before all Indians know it? Most rapes are committed by people known to victims, whether these victims are women or children. Fathers, neighbours, uncles and other assorted family friends are top of the rapist charts. The home is the single most unsafe place in India.

Many of Mishra’s previous cases of assault and violence have been quietly settled. If this case goes the same way despite the courage displayed by the survivor and her parents, we will know who to blame.

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