No, I am afraid, it is not a time to talk of 'azaadi' and freedom. We do not deserve that. Instead, it is an apt time to be reminded of our responsibilities. Two persons lying naked in pool of blood crying for help but left unattended for hours together should only ignite a sense of responsibility among us who chose only to be passers-by and were not human enough to offer a helping hand to them. Undoubtedly we must put the non-performing police to task for being engaged in unnecessary issues when they required an immediate medical help, didn’t we also tried to compete with them and also deserve to share the blame for behaving as spectators in many such cases of atrocities against women. Isn’t it high time to thrash up our conscience if we still think that even a prostitute does not have a right to decline our advances? Isn’t it time to kill our instinct that makes us enjoy our act of disrespecting others’ sensibilities, be it of women in general or a community in specific if we ourselves would not be ready to take the same? Isn’t it time to crush this attitude of ourselves that makes us feel victorious when we rape a woman or violate others’ notions of dignity and faith? Are we responsible enough to remain alive if we think that we can establish our superiority using either our sex or exposure as our tool to achieve that? Aren’t we making a case of prescribing terminal treatment for us if we are hell bent on proving that drunkards (males/females) have a right to enjoy at any cost? Are humans mature enough to gracefully enjoy a self-restrained regime of ‘pub-culture’? Isn’t it time to accept finally that while sexually females are only humane but men are just beasts. And moreover, isn’t it time to ask somebody to kick our butt as we are not shy of using these incidents to instigate females to organize slut-walks just for our visual satisfaction? Isn’t it criminal to use these barbaric incidents to justify our meaningless anti-patriarchal agenda in order to make these unaware females expose to provide us an optical treat?

Let us not fall into the trap of these expose-centric, overtly-sexual and irresponsible comments of some intellectual rapists who have actually made us fall prey to their clandestine visual desires of enjoying exposure-exhibitions of rare and unaware females who honestly believe in their ill-twisted arguments. These hypocrites make these females willingly expose themselves believing that their liberty and freedom can only be measured only by their skin how. In fact treating sex as our weapon is actually falling into rapists’ mentality as this is the method that even rapists adopt. Let us be equal but not by following these sexist-rapists who want us to expose in a slut-walk to please them as men never go naked just to prove their superiority. We must urge these unaware females to stop relating female-empowerment with their dare to expose themselves. It is time to fix responsibility on all senseless males and force them to behave sensibly but not by engaging ourselves in any irresponsible act in reaction.

We all are aware that in no society patriarchal or matriarchal, rape is an acceptable act. In fact some of the severest punishments, now in great demand, exist only in an overtly-patriarchal society. However, what goes against this structure is that it is understood to be easier to get away with this crime in a patriarchal society. But instead of rejecting a system as a whole, can’t we correct the system by treating the society disease by disease and symptom by symptom. We must prefer this since no society-structure has till date been unanimously established as a model structure and an overwhelming majority in India still think that our family-based society structure has many a features that are preserve-able and a subject of envy for other societies where unwanted kids and olds are huge problem to tackle.

The entire issue asks us to behave and think responsibly. It is clear that we are still not mature enough to draw our own Laxman-rekhas. We need to be punished for crossing our Laxman-rekha just as a Kingdom was destroyed and it’s King, a Brahmin 'Ravana', was killed just because he dared to cross the Laxman-rekha that was drawn for him.  And Sita who can never be blamed for serving food to a hungry must also observe a greater precaution since a law, howsoever severe it may be, cannot force a drunk and mentally-imbalanced male not in his senses, to weigh the consequences of his barbaric act just as no amount of punishment has ever successfully prevented any crime completely in any part of this world. As we must realize that law and order is meant to act efficiently after a crime that can at best serve as a deterrent but a crime can be prevented completely only by creating the 'correct' mental awareness in a society.
 
Dr. Pandey is an associate professor in physics department, Kirori Mal College, Delhi.