Dismantling the System

The Need for Structural Reform to Annihilate Rape Culture

By Triyasha Lahiri

In the 2021 State Assembly elections in West Bengal, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) won a massive mandate, securing 215 out of 290 seats and assuming power in West Bengal for the third consecutive term. Out of the 51% of the party’s secured votes, 47% were cast by women. The ratio indicates a sweeping approval from women between 2016 and 2021. However, as the 2026 elections approach, it is evident that longstanding figureheads of the party—from the grassroots level to the top—have become inebriated by power alike.  

One of TMC’s most vociferous slogans of the pre-election campaign was “Bangla Nijer Meyekei Chaye” (“Bengal wants no one but her own daughter”). Mamata Banerjee, the face of the erstwhile oppositional movement, successfully ended the 34-year Left Front rule.  However, at present, the people of Bengal have begun to see through the political tokenism behind endorsing the image of a female Chief Minister to garner women’s votes while failing to address systemic gender violence.

On 8th August of the previous year, the rape of an on-duty medical student (referred hereafter as Tilottama/Abhaya) at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital had wreaked havoc in West Bengal and across the country. While the streets were flooded with protesting citizens, women reclaimed the streets throughout the day, demanding “Justice for Tilottama”. Civic volunteer Sanjay Ray was convicted and sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. However, no punishment was meted out to members of the administration who were accused of corruption or obliteration of evidence.

Less than a year from this incident, on June 25, a female student of South Calcutta Law College was raped by Manojit Mishra, a former unit President of the same institution. Despite holding a temporary staff position, he had a frequent presence within the college campus. He was abetted in the act by two other students of the same college, Zaib Ahmed and Promit Mukhopadhyay. The security personnel of the college have also been convicted. 

This is not the first complaint of sexual harassment against Manojit Mishra. From 2014 to 2024, there have been six legal cases filed against his name, including offenses like assault, molestation, and weapon-aided intimidation. How was it that such an ‘influential’ student leader was still allowed entry into the campus, under different pretexts? Many women are now writing about their appalling experiences with Manojit. Disturbingly, the victim was an active TMC student wing member, forcing the party’s women to question their own organization’s safety.

Rape culture thrives on victim-blaming, trivialising assault, scrutinising victims’ attire or past, and glorifying toxic masculinity in the media. Patriarchal narratives falsely equate “liberal” lifestyles with rape, while police and administrations dismiss complaints. Girls are taught to avoid rape; boys are rarely taught not to rape. Films like Animal and Kabir Singh glorify patriarchal violence and yet rake in crores, exposing society’s deep-seated misogyny.

The perpetuation of rape culture has now come to a head; alongside, campus democracy has been systematically throttled through and through. Student union elections remain suspended in West Bengal’s higher educational institutions despite persistent demands raised by the general students, allowing TMC-affiliated student leaders to enforce unchecked tyranny.  Academic institutions have become the dens of such sycophants and extortionists.  Nayana Chattopadhyay, South Calcutta Law College’s Vice Principal, echoed R.G. Kar’s Principal Sandip Ghosh by questioning why the victim was on campus late. TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee absurdly asked how the administration could intervene if a woman was raped by a “friend.” Kamarhati MLA Madan Mitra insinuated the victim invited the assault by being present—a refrain repeated by institutional and political figures alike.

Thus, it is evident that institutional authorities and government partisans sing the same tune about sexual assault victims. Mamata Banerjee had once called the Park Street case a minor incident. Irrigation Minister Manas Bhunia has also called the Kasba episode a trivial one. The moral bankruptcy of TMC leads it to incriminate complainants and trivialize sexual violence to obscure the party’s own abuse of power. Not only do all levels of administration show an acute reluctance in the process of serving justice to victims, but also they fail to carry out a fair legal investigation. 

The TMC government has been advocating for the passage of the ‘Aparajita Bill’, which proposes execution by hanging as the punishment for rape. In one of his earlier social media posts, Manojit also expressed his support for the bill. Thus, even the likes of him believe that hanging is the most justified punishment for rapists. However, organising proactive resistance is more crucial than tightening sexual violence laws. Had stringent punitive laws offered immediate ‘closure’ to the act, the gravity of the crime would have been reduced. Staggering cases like the Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi would not have triggered the reportage of many, many other rape and sexual assaults; people would have turned a blind eye. Activists of feminist movements believe that the death sentence for rapists is an obstacle to the journey of championing women’s rights. Death penalties often keep the patriarchal society and the State from coming face to face with the systematic nature of rape culture and its surrounding questions. It protects the society and the State from the need to self-reflect. Unless a government actively takes steps towards challenging rape culture, gender-based discrimination, and sexual abuses in society, and police administration stops shielding rapists, no legislation will be able to alleviate crimes like domestic violence and sexual violence against women. Sexual assaults and rape culture are cushioned in the codes of power that shape our everyday life. Most sexual assault perpetrators are no strangers to us; women are often victims of sexual harassment by their close relatives even as their parents fail to overcome social taboos to stand up to the abusers. From her dress to her character or intentions, everything about a rape victim is subjected to public scrutiny. This is what rape culture entails—a culture that no legal system but only a constructive social structural change can eradicate. 

The primary opposition force in West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has yet again capitalized on the issue by bitterly condemning the ruling party for the atrocity.  It is not unknown to us how their lumpen attacked protesters of the ‘Reclaim the Night’ movement, in front of Kasba Police Station, on 30th June last year. A recent complaint of sexual assault has surfaced through media sources alleging that Kartik Maharaj, a close associate of the BJP, engaged in coitus with a woman, on the prospect of providing employment and later coerced her into abortion. We are well aware that the BJP is an out and out misogynistic organisation with an inglorious history of supporting rapists. However, as soon as these questions are raised, the BJP goons fly into a rage and launch violent attacks upon women. 

The icon of Sangh Brigade, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, tried to rationalize the rape of Muslim women in his book Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History and called rape a ‘political weapon’. Thus, today his successors continue to partake in the rape and exploitation of women in order to prove their heroic masculinity. In fact, even in the 21st century, on an average a woman is raped every fifteen minutes in India, while almost 86 complaints of rape are registered on a daily basis. In Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, a 17-year-old minor girl was raped by then BJP MLA Kuldeep Sengar in 2017. His crimes did not stop here—with the help of his accomplices, he conspired to murder the victim’s father. In 2018, in Kashmir’s Kathua, after the rape of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, the BJP took out a rally in favour of the rapist, bearing the national flag and chanting slogans like “Jai Shree Ram”. Similarly, in 2020, in Hathras of Uttar Pradesh, four upper caste men gang raped a 19-year-old Dalit girl and cut out her tongue. In a bid to destroy evidence overnight, the UP police incinerated the victim’s dead body with petrol, in front of her parents. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, the pregnant Bilkis Bano had been gang raped by eleven Hindutva extremists, who then murdered her family and killed her 3-year-old daughter by dashing her to the ground. 

As Narendra Modi was preaching women’s safety and empowerment at ‘Azadi’s Amrit Mahotsav’ that celebrated 75 years of India’s Independence, the rapists of Bilkis Bano were all set free by the government of Gujarat and felicitated with flower garlands and sweets. Perhaps all proud Indians would have missed such a rare sight, if BJP had not been ruling from the center. Needless to say, another feather was added to the crowns of the successors of Savarkar that day. Last year, Indian women wrestlers pressed charges of sexual harassment against Wrestling Federation Chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. While gold-winning wrestlers mobilized a movement that lasted for days, Brij Bhushan was roaming scot-free. Furthermore, he openly made vulgar remarks on the victims’ characters and personal lives in the media. It should be remembered that Brij Bhushan was one of the leaders under whose command the demolition of the Babri Masjid was carried out. Elsewhere in Manipur, Manipuri women have fallen prey to the rapidly escalating communal riots and violence in the state since May 2023. A video that went viral on social media, of two naked women being paraded in public, has stirred protests across the country. Yet, the Prime Minister made no visits to the state, nor was there any effort to rein in the violent situation on his part.

An awareness of the activities of the BJP among the women of West Bengal is sharply reflected in their votes. It shows why the BJP has found a negligible number of seats in Bengal and will continue to fail in this regard, even in the coming elections. That the BJP lacks the operative and moral right to speak out against rape will always be reiterated loud and clear by dissenting citizens. 

The student community of Bengal must continue its campaign for the resumption of the student union election and the establishment of the Gender Sensitization Cell Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH). The State Government and the college authorities have to answer why union rooms are kept open, despite the termination of union elections. According to the statements of the governing body members of the Law College, TMC goons have created an atmosphere of fear on campus for quite a long period. Female students of the college reported that when any complaints were made against Manojit, they would always come to his knowledge, and threats to the complainants would be issued in short order to force them back into silence. Was the college authority really unaware of these complaints? If not, then why were only the security guards arrested? Why are the institution heads not being put on trial? In fact, recently, a TMC leader and Counsellor has condemned the rampant ‘dada culture’ in her own party. Who then is accountable for the constant fear consuming women, in our academic and public spaces? The women of Bengal are seeking answers to these questions from the State Government. Why is the administration unable to accede to the demands for social structural change that were raised in favour of women and marginal sexual communities from the R G Kar Movement last year? These questions must echo from the capital, Kolkata, to the most remote corners of Bengal, as we persevere in organized resistance against the rapist state apparatus, the plague of threat culture and the crime syndicates operating across college campuses. 

May the movement continue for the thorough investigation into the South Calcutta Law College case and immediate justice be served to the victim. May our days of living in terror come to an end. May those left with a spine join the movement. May we never lose the audacity to strike back in defiance. In the face of systemic crime and injustice, organized resistance is our only means of survival.

(Translation by Kankana Joarder)