LETTERS TO THE EDITOR She’s NOT India’s effing daughter

Heinous. Grievous. Horrific. I sit here, blankly looking up dictionary.com trying to find words to describe the horror that was the ‘gang rape’ that occurred on December 16. I find nothing suitable. They are all woefully inadequate, all pathetic substitutes that we use because none of the language we know can capture the mind numbing, excruciating brutality inflicted upon ‘India’s Daughter’.

My blood runs cold, my insides turn to water and the hair on my body stands up as I read page after page of coverage of this horrifying assault. She was alone in her fight. She fought 6 fully grown men who raped her and brutally mutilated and assaulted her. She died of horrific injuries. India was never there for her, or for the thousands like her. So don’t call her India’s effing ‘daughter’. She never was!

I waver between despair, horror, rage and sobering grief. I’m not asking why. I’m not asking how. I’m asking, WHAT NOW? Thousands of years of oppression, prejudice and injustice have fuelled this monster which freely roams our streets and now stands at our doorsteps, promising to brutalise us into oblivion. And it IS a promise. And it is being fulfilled on a chilling scale: a rape is reported every 20 minutes in India, and many more go unreported. But the veil has been lifted. This event has branded the nation’s consciousness, shoved our faces into the toxic venom that courses through our country’s veins everyday – silently mutilating, maiming, torturing. She wasn’t the first, and she won’t be the last. India, we failed her. So what now? contact info@hinduradio.com. au. The Hindu Radio Website will have a program schedule and guide, a portal for all Hindu organisations/groups; will publish articles on Hindu religion and culture; provide a forum for discussion and have chat rooms; carry announcements and information and will make available Moodle software (online education program) for Hindu organisations or groups to use.

The silence must go. Rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment must no longer be invisible. Talk about it at home, at work, with your friends, parents, relatives and children. Don’t tolerate sexual harassment. If you see it on the street, say something. I was 15 when someone brazenly yanked on my dupatta (scarf) as I walked down a bustling Hyderabad street at 3pm. I stopped and stared at the perpetrator, engaging in a battle of wits as his hand provocatively held tight onto one end of my dupatta, and my hand held onto it on my shoulder, protecting myself from the ‘uncovering’ he was threatening. Not one person stopped.

In the not-too-distant future, Hindu Broadcast hopes to help provide website design, registration and support, free of cost, to all Hindu organisations in Australia.

There are plans in the anvil to launch a Free-to-air Hindu TV by 14 January 2014 that will telecast video materials that promote and deliver Hindu religious and cultural programmes.

VCHC website launch

A new website www.hsvchc. org.au has just been launched for the first Hindu Society of Victoria’s Cultural & Heritage Centre (HSV CHC), that was built to serve the cultural, social and educational needs of the

Victorian Hindu community and the wider Australian community. The Centre is located at 52 Boundary Rd, Carrum Downs, next to the iconic Siva Vishnu Temple, 12km from Dandenong in the heart of the South Eastern suburb in Victoria.

The Cultural Centre is supported by The Victorian Commonwealth, state and local governments, and has a range of facilities such as a wedding and function hall which seats up to 1000 people; Hindu Library and Museum India; classrooms for teaching, meeting rooms, a yoga centre, the smaller function room accommodating up to 150 guests, a full vegetarian canteen and a commercial kitchen are an extension to the CHC. There is strictly no alcohol, meat or smoking permitted on the grounds of the Centre. More details are available on the newly launched website.

The CHC is run by a Board of Trustees adjacent to that of the HSV committee management team. For enquiries, visit the website or call 1800 478 242 (1800 HSV CHC).

Not one person stepped up to help me in my fight with this unabashed offender. Never, bar once, in the many cities in India that I have lived in –Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad – has anyone EVER stood up for me. This needs to change. This is our duty, our responsibility.

Stop blaming the victim. If you do, you’re part of the problem. Get an education. Google rape, rape myths, sexual harassment, women’s oppression, sex selective abortion, acid attacks. The current environment blames the victim, and look where that’s got us. We need to change.

Don’t wait for others to do something. Be the change. Our leadership is primitive and outrageously patriarchal at best, callous and apathetic at worst. They’re not going to make this happen. In fact, they’ve LET this happen. You need to change it. WE need to change it. Blog, write, read, rally, protest, educate, lobby. NOW! And don’t stop till Indian women have freedom, dignity and opportunity. Then we would have earned the right to call her ‘India’s daughter’.

Dipanjali Rao Melbourne