Dave Stockton
When Moumita Debnath, a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, was found raped and murdered on 9 August, huge numbers of women took to the streets right across India in ‘Reclaim the Night’ protests. She had just come off a 36-hour shift and was sleeping in a seminar room when she was viciously attacked.
Female protesters were rapidly joined by large numbers of male students and doctors, with medical staff in West Bengal hospitals and other states across India taking strike action. Police tear-gassed and beat the protesters, before turning water cannons on them. The police force and others have been accused of attempting to cover up the incident, initially reporting it as suicide.
The BJP government of Narendra Modi strongly condemned the outrage but is cynically weaponising the incident to demand the resignation of West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the only female head of an Indian federal state. Meanwhile, BJP party thugs have attacked protesters at the hospital.
The Kolkata incident naturally recalls the one in 2012, when 22 year-old physiotherapy intern Jyoti Singh, travelling with a male friend on a bus in Delhi, was raped by the driver and six passengers. Jyoti later died in hospital. The incident was widely condemned, both in India and abroad.
Epidemic of violence
Yet 12 years later Indian women still face horrific rates of sexual violence on the streets, in workplaces and in the home. The National Crime Records Bureau recorded an average of 86 rape cases a day in 2022. The real number could be much higher, with many attacks going unreported. Women fear retaliation, the stigma surrounding those brave enough to speak out, and ineffectual and often corrupt investigations by the police. Rapes of Dalit, Adivasi (indigenous) and lower class women attract little notice and no justice.
The criminals responsible for such vile attacks need to be found and punished. There should be security for women working in hospitals, schools, factories and offices, and in the fields. Domestic violence and rape, too, need to be uncovered and punished.
Working class women’s movement
But the war against femicide and rape will not be won—and not even waged—by the forces of the capitalist state. Especially since class society rests on a misogynistic culture that gives rise to this and is fostered by reactionary clergy and cynical politicians who make use of the patriarchal values in all religions for their gain.
Women themselves must organise; the urban and rural workers’ movement must help them build self-defence organisations by all those vulnerable to such attacks, including LGBTQ people. This means organising in the workplaces, on the streets, in the cities and villages. A mass women’s movement of the working classes, with the aid of progressive men, can be built, starting at times of mass protests like the present. If not, there will be no lasting result from all the justified anger caused by such horrific events.