Deadly gang rape leads to massive protests in India

India’s erupted into protests over the past week after the death of a 23-year-old female student who was brutally gang raped in public after leaving a movie theater in the early evening.

The woman, whose identity hasn’t been publicly revealed, later died from the wounds suffered in the brutal attack at a hospital in Singapore 

Veena Venugopal, a contributing writer to Quartz based in New Delhi and author of “Would You Like Some Bread With the Book,” says when crimes like this happen in rural areas in India, the middle class is apathetic. But this event affects the middle class because of where and to whom it happened. 

“This is really the reason that this one rape, amongst the thousands of rapes that happen in India every year, led to such a large mobilization of passion and anger,” she said.

Though demonstrators are passionate about protesting, Venugopal says, they don’t know what they want to come from it. But they do know something needs to change.

Part of the change they’re looking for is changes to the basic behavior of Indian society, Venugopal says. This issue isn’t just about men — it’s also the mothers who raised them and the question of how to raise them to be empathic and think of women as equals, she said. The alternative is to continue to preserve a cultural attitude that treats women as the weaker sex.

“It’s not just reduced to one case, or one girl being raped. There are questions now being raised about Bollywood films and what kind of messages they send,” she said. 

Right now, Venugopal says, the reactions to the events are shrouded in anger. Just last week, a rape victim in another part of India killed herself after police refused to take her complaint and then asked her insensitive questions about what happened. 

The girl was put in an uncomfortable position, Venugopal said, and saw no way out.

As for the changes people want to see, Venugopal says, they include better security, a more sensitive police force and speedier justice. And if implemented soon there will be a sense of victory for the protestors.