How common is rape in India?
I have recently been in e-mail correspondence with an Indian woman currently living in Canada.
She felt that my “Short Guide To The Indian Political System” contains “some negative information”, but I explained to her that “My readers expect a critical evaluation in my guides to political systems since constitutional details alone do not explain what is really going on.”
My Indian correspondent went on to suggest that the Western media is overly critical of current affairs in India and she instanced particularly BBC coverage of rape in India.
She drew my attention to the Wikipedia page on international rape statistics which includes this statement:
“India has been characterised as one of the “countries with the lowest per capita rates of rape”. The National Crime Records Bureau of India suggests a reported rape rate of 2 per 100,000 people, much lower than reported rape incidence rate statistics for many nations tracked by the United Nations.”
I think my Indian correspondent has a point, but comparison of incidences of rape between nations is an immensely difficult area. We know that that in all countries rape is massively under-reported. We cannot know whether under-reporting in India is greater or less than in countries like the UK or the USA.
Furthermore definitions of rape vary between nations. For instance, marital rape is not illegal in India (and in 48 other countries) and it is reported that the relevant Government Minister in India (a woman) has just insisted that the concept of marital rape “cannot be applied in the Indian context”, despite the Government laying out plans to introduce legislation to criminalise it last year.
So, while we cannot be sure of the exact incidence of rape in India, it is probably the case that rape outside marriage is much less than is commonly supposed around the world and that world media should be careful how they report on rape cases.