AS rapes and molestations take place in the country, we find that instead of making the streets safer, we insist that women should remain at home, dress in a particular way, and keep themselves out of sight. The girls are most often blamed for a crime either for their dressing sense or asked why they were staying out so late, or why they needed to go partying. In other words we are saying the victims were actually the cause of the crime. I am reminded of a story by Kalil Gibran:
One nightfall a man travelling on horseback towards the sea reached an inn by the roadside. He dismounted and confident in man and night, like all riders to the sea, he tied his horse to a tree beside the door and entered the inn. At midnight, when all were asleep, a thief came and stole the traveller’s horse.
In the morning the man awoke and discovered his horse was stolen. He grieved for his horse and that a man had found it in his heart to steal. Then his fellow lodgers came and stood around him and began to talk. The first man said, “How foolish of you to tie your horse outside the stable!”
And the second said, “Still more foolish without even hobbling the horse!” And the third man said, “It is stupid at best to travel to the sea on horseback!” The fourth man said, “Only the indolent and the slow of foot own horses!” Then the traveller was much astonished. He cried out: “My friends, because my horse is stolen you have hastened one and all to tell me my faults and shortcomings. But strange, not one word of reproach have you uttered about the man who stole my horse..!”
And that my dear friends is how we look at each issue in this country. Whether it is rape or murder or riots, we criticize the victim. How convenient. Instead of being castigated by the people for not maintaining law and order, we are quietly made to focus on side issues. Focus on the horse thief.
While we like fools blame the victim, the horse thief escapes. Isn’t it enough that the whole world is yelling at us to catch the horse thief, or are we as stupid as those silly men in Kalil Gibran’s tale? Catch those thieves before they do the same again and again and again..!
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