On the eve of 78th Independence Day, the women of free India flooded the streets. They weren’t celebrating. They were mourning. Rightly called ‘Reclaim the Night’, the protests saw girls as young as 12 years old out to claim their freedom, freedom from monsters. Monsters like the rapists who gangraped, maimed and killed a 31-year-old post-graduate trainee doctor who was found raped and murdered in the seminar hall of Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital.

She had gone to the room to rest after a 36-hour shift, just as all resident doctors do throughout the country amid gruelling long hours. When she was alone, resting in the hall, the rapists sexually assaulted her and left her to die. Autopsy report revealed horrific details – injuries all over her body, a broken neck and collar bone, bleeding eyes due to glass shards from her broken spectacles. One of her relatives told India Today that her legs were found 90 degrees apart, which is only possible if her pelvic girdle was broken. She was ripped apart by the rapists.

After her death, her family too was ripped apart, emotionally. The hospital authorities allegedly told her parents that their daughter had died by suicide. They made the parents wait in agony for three hours before they could see their child’s body. Her inconsolable mother told reporters, “They killed my daughter, my only child. We worked hard so that she could become a doctor.”

As it always happens in our country, the hospital director shamed and blamed her. He wondered what she was doing so late in the seminar hall alone. He was immediately sent on leave, only to be posted to another college. The seminar hall had no CCTV cameras. The crime scene underwent “renovation” immediately after the rape and murder. Of course, the authorities denied tampering with evidence. One suspect has been arrested, but will justice be served as the case slowly takes a political turn with a TMP-BJP-Congress face-off?

It’s been almost 12 years since the Nirbhaya gangrape case in Delhi. The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was gangraped by six men in a moving bus for over an hour. One of the rapists, a minor then, inserted a rod in her private part, ripping apart her intestine. There was national outrage then too, but has anything changed? This time, it was a medico, gangraped in the land that worships Goddess Durga.

India sees at least one rape every 16 minutes, so how can this monstrosity be curbed? And what is it that makes men rapists?

Is rape the result of a systemic patriarchal mindset or is it a diabolical power trip? Many studies suggest that it is a mix of both, with patriarchy being the foundation. It is the desire to make women feel small and powerless. For centuries, rape has been a weapon of war and oppression. The tragedy is that nothing has changed even in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

Pune-based Equal Community Foundation, which works with teenage boys from low-income households, says many boys believe that women who dress in Western wear are morally corrupt, and this mindset carries on into their adulthood. It also claims that 25 per cent of all men are likely to rape and an alarming 57 per cent are likely to justify violence against women.

Dr Neil Malamuth, psychology professor at University of California who surveyed 2,652 rapists, says they raped because they believed women are meant to be subjugated.

Rape culture deprives women of autonomy. Hell, even our streets belong to men after dark. Women are “advised” not to step out late at night, especially alone. If a woman gets raped when drunk, she is definitely at fault. If she’s wearing a revealing dress, she is asking for it. Our society is in constant denial that if women want to “ask for it”, they can and they will.

The great Indian tragedy is how boys are brought up. Sex education is a joke in our schools and as a result there is little knowledge of sexual consent. “Men will be men” is a common phrase at home and even in schools, as if justifying violence and dominance as characteristics of being masculine. Our largely patriarchal society teaches girls to be docile and to avoid “tantalising” men, but it normalises the male gaze. Little girls become aware of the male gaze even before hitting puberty. According to the United Nations, gender stereotypes are imprinted in a child’s mind, where little girls are encouraged to play at home, but little boys are encouraged to play outside. While girls play with dolls, they are taught to be caregivers. But when boys play with toy guns, they learn aggression.

Of course, half of us would say, “not all men are rapists”. Thing is, nobody in their right mind would call all men rapists, but how do we identify rapists? One of the men who raped the medico worked at the hospital and could have been known to her. What happened to her could happen to any of us. She was one of us. She worked hard to realise her dream of being a doctor. Her parents, like most middle-class families, gave it their all for their only daughter. She wanted to serve the society, but that very society’s son snuffed out her life.

There is no certain way to know what makes men rape, but as a society we can curb sexual assaults by bringing up kind boys, who then grow up to be gentlemen who treat women with respect. Our public spaces, workplaces and even homes can only be safe for women when we as a society do better. If our country can get together to fight for its Independence, we can do the same to protect its women.

The writer is Managing Editor of Salar Digital English Daily