The Two Faces of Injustice

The rape atrocities against women in general and women from the most oppressed castes in particular continue to bear two faces of injustice: active and passive. The rape atrocity to which a teenager from the most oppressed caste in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, was subjected once again reveals the malignant face of injustice. Active injustice occurs in a conundrum where the tormentor is accused of being directly responsible in forcibly trapping the victim in the heinous act of rape but receives support from various sources. A society that refuses to express its allegiance to the value of justice does not find the efforts that some of its members make to defend the accused morally objectionable. Injustice gets intensified when the accused of rape atrocities continue to get either direct or indirect support from the social groups to which they belong. Injustice begins to acquire an intensified mode when investigating agencies of the state are accused of not taking their public responsibility seriously. The responsibility to stand with the victim can be seen as standing with justice.

As reported in the media, a section of Savarna castes were seen univocally defending the accused on the grounds that the latter were innocent. While others chose social media to defend the accused rather equivocally by deliberately injecting into the violent act of rape an element of ambiguity so as to make the truth of rape atrocity annoyingly opaque. Thus, the efforts to draw fallacious inferences, such as blaming the victim and her parents for the rape atrocity or implicating the relatives in the very act of rape, by intention, are aimed at lending support to the accused. Such inferences, however, are aimed at barraging active injustice at the victim. The alleged delay in filing the first information report (FIR) and submitting samples to the concerned agencies for forensic and medical examination does contribute to active injustice. Finally, active injustice results from the public expression of vicarious pleasure that some members derive from the tragic act of rape. Such self-indulgence in such morally offensive imagination ultimately ends up supporting the accused.