Girls, the word of caution is to carry rakhis in your bag throughout the year, you never know when you may be in need of them. And if a man tries to molest you, hurt you, do not fight. Remember you are a girl – you can and should always only beg. So if the Delhi gagrape victim would have begged on the night of December 16 when she was being assaulted by six men, she would have been saved.

This is the latest, by self-proclaimed godman Asaram Bapu, in the ridiculous statements coming of late in the Delhi gangrape incident.

A girl is gangraped in a moving bus in the national capital, she is thrown off the bus and later she dies. This is the reality and it has not happened for the first time. Every year hundreds of girls are raped and assaulted in our society. And whenever a case is highlighted – the victim is questioned on her character because she was out late at night, she is questioned for the kind of clothes she was wearing etc. This case is little different because of the attention it got after the public outrage. However, the various statements pouring in on what the girl should or should not have done on that night make it the same old story.

Few days back a women agricultural scientist in Madhya Pradesh said that “had the girl simply surrendered she would not have lost her intestine.” So basically the message was when you are in a situation like this remember that you are a weaker sex. Let the man do whatever he wants to and do not resist so that your life is at least saved.

Asaram Bapu has provided a simpler solution for our safety — address every man as your brother and there would be no rape. He says the victim is as guilty as her rapist. “Only 5-6 people are not the culprits. The victim is as guilty as her rapists... She should have called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop,” adding, “the girl should have prayed to god and recited the saraswati mantra.”

It’s really shameful to see that in our democratic country, where a woman is claimed to be equal to men, she not only faces all kind of assault but is even called guilty of her own rape, just because she boarded the bus late in the evening.

I am so tired of listening to this nonsense. First you listen about crimes as cruel as the one happened on December 16. Then you listen from our parents, who are always scared and worried when we step out from our homes. And at last you listen how always the girl is to be blamed if at all anything “wrong” happens with her.

Please understand. Rape is a rape, a crime that has nothing to do with the morality and there can be no justification for it.

“Stop boarding the bus at night” is not the lesson to be taken from the incident, the lesson is change the way we perceive this crime, and fight against it.