Indeed we need women’s lib.  And Juan Cole makes good points.

But what are we to do?  With regard to violence against women, our society is in the state that American black slave women or white European working class women were in the 19th century.  You will recall it took a Civil War and 2 World Wars for women to overturn the prevalent conservative patriarchy, get legal and civil rights, a chance for employment and economic independence.

OTOH we are at the beginning of our journey into modernity.  And the death penalty for rapists is no solution.  The vast majority of our rapists are relatives.  Our police, paramilitaries and the Army itself are often the worst offenders.  In fact, the current favourite for the next Prime Minister oversaw a pogrom in his own State in 2002, where rape was used as a political weapon – he went on to win 3 elections after that.

Out of the 17, four were men, eight were women, and the rest were children. After two days the tribals escorted us to Chaparwad village. From here we thought of meeting Manabhai, an old acquaintance. He lives in Panivela. While going there we rested for a few minutes at a tribal hamlet. The place was between two hillocks and a narrow road passed by it.
When we were passing by that road a man came and hit one of my uncles. He fell down and regained consciousness only an hour later. Soon more people came along. All of them were from Randhikpur, my own village. People from Chaparwad gave them our whereabouts.

'Mussalmans are here, kill them, kill them,' they were shouting.
They were able to collect more people from Panivela and Chaparwad. We were too tired and helpless. We didn't have the strength to fight back. Since we were running for cover, we never thought of picking up even a stick. We started running in all directions, but we could not escape. We were 17 and they were more than 25. They had come in a Tata Sumo.

They started molesting the girls and tore off their clothes. Our naked girls were raped in front of the crowd. They killed Shamim's baby who was two days old. They killed my maternal uncle and my father's sister and her husband too. After raping the women they killed all of them.
They killed my baby too. They threw her in the air and she hit a rock. After raping me, one of the men kept a foot on my neck and hit me. They hit me with sticks and stones, then picked me up and threw me into the bushes. I was unconscious. They thought I was dead. But after a few hours I recovered my senses.

Those men were using such foul language, I can't repeat it ever. They were saying, 'Since you have killed our people (in Godhra) we will kill you too. We will not leave any Muslims alive."
In front of me they killed my mother, sister and 12 other relatives. The way we kill animals, they slaughtered us. On the 28th morning my husband and other family members had gone to a village meeting held at the home of a BJP worker. There they had pleaded for protection. All those who raped me and my sisters and murdered them were present there.

Out of 17 only three of us survived -- two small children and me. I have no idea how they managed to survive. There were no Hindu women in the crowd. All of them were young or middle-aged men. While raping and killing us, they were shouting the choicest sexual abuses. When they were raping me I could not even tell them that I was five months pregnant because all the time their feet were on my mouth and neck.
Hindus of all castes were involved. My fellow villagers were part of the crowd that killed my relatives. How can I not identify them? They were all my gaonwale [fellow villagers].

Even after this horrendous event, instead of encouraging women's lib as one should do, our conservatives continue their old tricks - to blame the victim, the wearing of suggestive clothes etc etc.

“Seventeen senior cops of over a dozen police stations across Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad were caught on spy camera blaming everything from fashionable or revealing clothes to having boyfriends to visiting pubs to consuming alcohol to working alongside men as the main reasons for instances of rape. ‘It’s always the woman who is at fault’ was in essence the argument offered by the majority of cops.

 

Many of them believe that genuine rape victims never approach the police and those who do are basically extortionists or have loose moral values. Others believe that the women from Northeast could never be victims of forced sex as they are invariably involved in the flesh trade. Even more shockingly, some of them are of the view that if a woman has consensual sex with one man, then she shouldn’t complain if his friends also join in. If a woman is doing late hours at the office then she had it coming… and the arguments keep coming.”

Having said this, and not to blame the West, I wonder if what MA suggested about FPS and spree killing in the USA might have a similar relationship between our youth who watch violent Western pornography.  Just as FPS games do not seem to trigger spree killings in mature societies, your more advanced societies seem to be able to absorb the extremely violent pornography inflicted on your women without major repercussions, which our more immature societies may not be able to cope with.  I do not suggest censorship (which would be impossible to enforce anyway), but perhaps your filmmakers could be made more aware of the far-distant effects of their graphically violent imagery towards women?

[NY Times] ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- They are dead men talking, and they know it. Gulping nervously, the prisoners stare into the video camera, spilling tales of intrigue, betrayal and paid espionage on behalf of the United States.

"I am a spy and I took part in four attacks," said Sidinkay, a young tribesman who said he was paid $350 to help direct C.I.A. drones to their targets in Pakistan's tribal belt.

"Stay away from the Americans," he said in an imploring voice. "Stay away from their dollars."

Al Qaeda and the Taliban have few defenses against the American drones that endlessly prowl the skies over the bustling militant hubs of North and South Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, along the Afghan border. C.I.A. missiles killed at least 246 people in 2012, most of them Islamist militants.

The militants' technique -- often more witch hunt than investigation -- follows a well-established pattern. Accused tribesmen are abducted from homes and workplaces at gunpoint and tortured. A sham religious court hears their case, usually declaring them guilty. Then they are forced to speak into a video camera.

The taped confessions, which are later distributed on CD, vary in style and content. But their endings are the same: execution by hanging, beheading or firing squad.

In Sidinkay's last moments, the camera shows him standing in a dusty field with three other prisoners, all blindfolded, illuminated by car headlights. A volley of shots rings out, and the three others are mowed down. But Sidinkay, apparently untouched, is left standing. For a tragic instant, the accused spy shuffles about, confused. Then fresh shots ring out and he, too, crumples to the ground. 

*

Traveller

Edit: Sorry, I forgot the link to the full and very interesting article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/drone-war-in-pakistan-spurs-militants-to-deadly-reprisals.html?ref=world&_r=1&