In an exclusive signed article for PTI, President of India, Droupadi Murmu, directly expressed her thoughts regarding the August 9 incident at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata where a postgraduate trainee (PGT) doctor was raped and murdered.
So, what are the highlights from the letter, titled Women's Safety: Enough is Enough, issued today, August 28? Let's take a look:
- It is time for India to wake up to the "perversion" of crimes against women and counter the mindset that sees women as "less powerful, less capable, less intelligent"
- "Those who share such views then go further and see the female as an object...We owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning the freedom from fear"
- "Even as students, doctors and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, criminals remained on the prowl elsewhere. The victims include even kindergarten girls"
- "Did we learn our lessons? As social protests petered out, these incidents got buried into a deep and inaccessible recess of social memory, to be recalled only when another heinous crime takes place"
- History, the president said, "often hurts" and societies scared to face history resort to "collective amnesia" to bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich
- "Now the time has come not only to face history squarely but also to search within our souls and probe the pathology of crimes against women"
- "Where have we erred? And what can we do to remove the errors? Without finding out the answer to that question, the half of our population cannot live as freely as the other half"
