Rameshwar Singh Jamwal
The unfortunate rape and killing of an innocent eight year old girl child, in a village in Kathua District of J&K has found reverberations from Kathua to New Delhi to Mumbai and even the UN and has shaken the government of the state with political, social and other ramifications, which would be felt in the weeks, months and may be years to come. From the Chief Minister to the Ex Chief Ministers, all vying for a political goal scoring or mileage out of this gruesome incident, the real issue is getting diluted. A Union Minister and the Chief Minister of J&K have vowed to bring legislation to introduce death penalty for preventing such incidents in future and with the resignation of two cabinet ministers and more heads likely to roll down in the near future, even the future of the coalition government seems to be shaky. In the high decibel hulla bulla of drama where everybody seems to be interested in scoring some brownie points by pointing fingers at others, some of the most crucial questions will go to the back burner, and which we had raised at the recently held criminology conference in Jammu, which I would like to highlight again, the need to reform the criminal justice system of this country from a different angle so that the tendency to commit such incidents is curbed to some extent. Understanding, predicting and then modifying the criminal behavior especially the sexual behavior, is not an easy thing. The Determinism debate still goes on. We are hard determinists, we are soft, we are dispositionists, we are interactionists, we are Darwinians, we are Freudians, but we need results, not mere debates.
First of all let us see that as per NCRB data, every year more than thirty six thousand rapes are committed in India alone and as per an American study, the dark figures are about ten times more than the figures reported. That means more than three to four lacs rapes are committed in India every year and a fair number of them are that of minors. The same political leaders, who are now vouching and crying for the poor girl child were legislators at the time of Nirbhaya also, why no such legislation was brought in J&K, and why despite our repeated calls to reform the criminal justice system have fallen on deaf ears for the last several years, it's for them to introspect and answer. With passage of time, the issue would get relegated to the background unless some similar incident shakes the so called conscience of this political class again but we the citizens have to try to find some solution for it so that no other Asifa is raped in this country again.
Rape is always demeaning, brutal, and cruel and in majority of cases, perpetrated without any empathy for the victim. In some cases, it's purely motivated with sexual desires but in some cases, there are other factors as well,(lust combined with greed)as may have happened in Kathua case, but requires to be understood from scientific angles. We need to create a society in India, which is able to understand and regulate sexual behavior in a better way, mere passing of more stricter laws with more harsh punishments is not going to work that much effectively. We need to understand the personality traits of the offenders or would be offenders, and then create conditions by virtue of which, such uncontrollable urges could be controlled. There are no scientific means to exactly put forth a Rapist personality, which could be easily identified but the most consistent demographic finding is that in majority of cases, they are young, almost eighty percent have been found to be below the age of thirty. But why in majority of cases, such crimes are committed at young age only. If they are mentally disordered, such tendencies should continue in later stages of life as well. It's not that the limbic system (Part of brain mostly believed to be related with sexual desires) is malfunctioning in young age only. Science of criminology has primarily identified four types of Rapists, Impulsive rapists, or those who are sexually aggressive, or who show compensatory or displaced aggression. The long definitions of such personality disorders may not be required in the present write up, what we need to take note of at present is as to how to control their such behavior, why they do whatever they have done and how to prevent their acquisition or subsequent display of such sexual prowess and adequacy, of such sexual behavior, the classical conditioning mode as suggested by H.J.Eyesenck, or that suggested in Indian philosophy of Sankhya by Sage Kapila. But both the definitions require a reorientation of our value system, both at home and in school curriculum, which we have been agitating since long, with no result of course, considering the mental level of our rulers. We need to change the internal construct systems of our young generation, take their moral levels a few notches higher, reorient their mental reconstruct systems by changing their response repertoires by introducing new concepts like a Culture of Lawfulness, which is different from the Rule of Law, by both overt and covert conditioning processes for increasing behavior deficits and decreasing behavior excesses to check their maladaptive behaviors (Especially for youngsters, as already started under Project SAFE J&K,SAFE INDIA )and try to refocus on our understanding of the origins of criminal behaviors from both biological ,Psychological ,social and even religious angles. This will require the integration of science and different other subjects like, criminology, Behaviorism, psychology, neuro biology, and even Yoga and Sankhya and the role of Religious, Civic, Educational, Labour, Cultural and Social organizations becomes all the more important in putting more pressure on governments and making society better and this can be done by involving them in playing an important role in creating such Lawful atmosphere where they feel it as their duty to sustain such atmosphere for growth of society and its components. We will have to devise new Policing programmes, Justice programmes (Reforming criminal justice system, better use of IT, etc.),Education Programmes (Imparting basic legal education in schools etc),Support Programmes (Counseling, Advocacy etc.) and Strategic programmes (Which will be devised as per local conditions for each area and can't be disclosed here).
Some of these programmes require to be Early Proactive and Early Reactive programmes, designed for preventing crime or implemented immediately after commission of crime , some need to be Late Reactive programmes, to be implemented after commission of crime, trying to resolve the negative outcome of that behavior and lastly have to be late Proactive programmes . In short we will have to devise strategies to Reduce the opportunity for people to commit crime and then Modifying the behavior of people likely to commit crime or at risk of crime and the process needs to be institutionalized and this has to be a continuous process, only then we can expect better society, otherwise the Rapes will continue and protests and dharnas will have no effect.
The author is the President of Criminologists Society and a practicing Advocate of J&K High Court.
