Do We All Participate in Rape Culture? || Acharya Prashant (2024)

Acharya Prashant

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00:00We don't really look at the woman as a human being, we look at her as her physical identity,

00:25we have lenses of sex and gender.

00:36It is the woman-ness that matters more to us and matters not in any innocuous sense, matters

00:52in a rather disturbing sense, it is even in a victim, we fail to see the human being.

01:21The sexual lenses are always on.

01:28And it is quite pathetic what that tells about the seer, the looker.

01:40It is the female body, it is the female body that catches our attention, not the loss of

01:47a precious human life.

01:53Because the gaze is so sexual, it no more remains a surprise, gruesome acts of are so frequent

02:07in our country.

02:10No crime happens in isolation.

02:14The very social gaze is sexual.

02:20It is not that one particular wild individual just dropped in from somewhere and committed

02:36the crime.

02:37No.

02:40The general society is the breeding ground.

02:46what you call as the common man, the normal social person provides the ecology, the environment

03:03in which wider, deeper and very violent sexual crimes then manifest.

03:16It has to be remembered that the perpetrator of the crime is a part of the larger society.

03:24Though when there are protests, we want to believe that the larger society is blameless and all

03:41the blame has to fall on one single individual or a few of them.

03:47That is not how the thing really is.

04:00When these violent explosions occur, they point at something much more deeper and much more

04:13general and widespread.

04:17So, we want to exonerate ourselves, we want to say we are all good civilized social people

04:30and we condemn these acts.

04:36I am afraid that is an alibi that is run out of its defense.

04:48How long will we keep saying that we are all decent people?

04:58From where is all the indecency coming then?

05:06And if you look at the culprits, they come from all state of the society.

05:14It is not always some landless laborer or truck driver.

05:22It could be a rich man, it could be a leader, it could be a government employee, it could

05:29be a businessman, it could be a teenager, remember the Nirbhaya case, or it could be a really

05:42old god man.

05:44Yes.

05:45They come from all places and in all kinds of clothing.

05:54It is a wider social phenomena which we are not ready to acknowledge.

06:05Because if we acknowledge that would be tantamount to accepting our own culpability.

06:16I will come to who we are and how we are.

06:20And from that, it should be possible to see why culprits spring up from the social soil,

06:35the social springboard every now and then.

06:40You see who are we?

06:44You are a teenager, you said you are a political science student, right?

06:48Yes sir.

06:50Right.

06:51What does your batch in general want?

06:53Don't give me specifics.

06:55What do people want from their future?

06:58Sir, they want a UPSC job and then a big villa and then want to get married.

07:11You see that's the social philosophy.

07:17I want a life in which I will be able to enjoy all the goodies.

07:26And given the way we have evolved the human body, both the sexes principally the male counts

07:40the female body amongst the foremost goodies of life.

07:48Yes.

07:50From a very young age, you are indoctrinated into believing that life exists so that it

07:55can be relished.

07:59What is the purpose of life?

08:02Have as many opportunities of pleasure as possible.

08:10And to a young man, when I say young I don't mean 15 only, even 45 is young.

08:22As long as you have sufficient testosterone, in some way you are young.

08:31To a young man, it's about having pleasure and the female body by dint of evolution is a

08:44very important source of pleasure.

08:47Very important.

08:49Now if you can have that pleasure in a legal way, in a safe and clean way, wonderful.

08:54That safe and clean way is by way of marriage, by way of marriage.

09:01But if you cannot have it that way, then there would always be, a lot of people will be prepared

09:11to act the victim in their own eyes and attack women.

09:19They say, you see, having pleasure is my birthright.

09:23And I am not able to get a sufficient quantity of pleasure.

09:31Everybody is having fun.

09:33Why should I be deprived?

09:37Look at that one.

09:38Look at that one.

09:40If you all are making merry, why should I be a loser?

09:45And if he stays with this thought for long, it will most probably turn into some kind of

09:52criminal aggression.

09:57Have you heard of the term incel?

10:00No, it's an involuntary celibate.

10:10So the man says, I am a victim, I am an involuntary celibate, I want to have sex.

10:15But women are not giving me enough opportunities.

10:19So without my willingness, I have been turned into a celibate.

10:26I am a involuntary celibate.

10:27And women are blamed.

10:28You see, the whole world owes me pleasure.

10:32And when it comes to sexual pleasure, it's the women who owe me a lot.

10:44And if the women won't offer me pleasure, I'll grab it, snatch it, loot it, plunder it,

10:50kill for it.

10:54Because we all exist just to have pleasure, that's what we have been indoctrinated in, no?

11:00Study so that you can get some kind of a plum job.

11:05And if you have a plum job, you'll probably get a plum girl as well.

11:14Loads of money and sex coming your way.

11:20Right?

11:21What else is there?

11:23What else is there?

11:25Ram Krishna Paramhans, that great saint, used to say, that for the common man there are only

11:32two objectives, Kanchan and Kamini.

11:37And even these two are intertwined.

11:43Money and sex, Kanchan is gold, Kamini is a lucrative girl, you get it?

11:56When the entire philosophy, the entire social philosophy is that life exists for the sake

12:04of pleasure, then those who find themselves deprived of pleasure will go to any extent based

12:13on the same philosophy.

12:15Right?

12:16If you can buy great food, buy it.

12:20But if you are unable to buy great food, snatch it.

12:28And that's the reason why you require a powerful law and order system and enforcement machinery.

12:39Because the very philosophy necessitates it.

12:44Philosophy says you must have pleasure.

12:47But not everybody will get equal chances at pleasure.

12:53So what will the deprived ones do?

12:55They will try to break the law.

13:00They will say you know, we too must have it, but we are not getting a fair chance.

13:07We are victims, we are incels.

13:09So we will do something extraordinary.

13:15The underlying philosophy is the same.

13:19The honest man, the so-called honest man earns honestly so that he can consume.

13:31The center of the so-called honest man and the plunderer.

13:43I want to leave you with this question.

13:45Is it any different?

13:48We are supposed to believe that the honest man and the dishonest man are poles apart.

13:56I am asking are they?

13:59Because in the Gita or Sri Krishna verse that we want to know the center of a person.

14:15So let us try to see what all his actions are for.

14:21If you want to see the center a person is operating from, see the desire that his actions are supposed

14:34to fulfill.

14:35So I am an honest man, I am supposedly an honest man and I am working so that I will

14:42get a fat salary and then I will consume.

14:45So what is the end of my honesty?

14:48Consumption.

14:49And I am a thief, a robber, I am a thief, I am a robber.

14:56And I commit robbery so that I can, what is the end of all my lawlessness, consumption.

15:05Now according to Krishna, if both of them are working towards the end of consumption,

15:11they both are much the same at their center.

15:16Everybody is the same.

15:17I am not going to the absurd extent of saying that everybody is a rapist or a murderer.

15:26But please try to understand what I am trying to say.

15:38Such people, if they are not lawbreakers, it is only because of fear.

15:45Otherwise our general life philosophy is such that each one of us is being compelled to consume

15:54at whatever cost possible.

16:00Just that when you are threatened with punishment, then you try to desist somehow or find your way

16:06around the law.

16:09Right now there are no laws on raping the earth.

16:14Right now there is no severe punishment being mitted out.

16:19If you rape the earth, see everybody is raping the earth.

16:23The most respectable people are at the vanguard of the rape of earth.

16:31The day there is some law that starts punishing such rape, a lot of honorable people would withdraw.

16:41But they are withdrawing only because of fear of punishment.

16:45If there is no fear, they will rape the earth.

16:47You know of the whole climate change phenomena.

16:49You know it comes from the rape of the planet.

16:53You know how all the species are getting extinct.

16:56You know of biodiversity loss.

16:58You know of the various ecological disasters.

17:00You know how they can be very literally called as the rape of the planet.

17:09And the most respectable people are at the forefront committing such rape, are they not?

17:17Because this rape is enmeshed in our general philosophy, in our general thought.

17:31Remove all fear of punishment and then look at the lawlessness that will rage on the streets.

17:40There are those who are so afraid that they won't take the law in their hands.

17:45And there are those who are so smart that they break the law and yet don't get caught.

17:53And then there is the third category that commits a crime and also gets caught.

18:02These are the ones we denounce as rape.

18:12Some estimates say that the number of unreported cases in India is probably up to 40 times more

18:19than what is reported.

18:25And probably a majority of the unreported cases are taking place within the household.

18:35Some 89%.

18:36And majority of the cases taking place within the household are taking place on the conjugal

18:41bed.

18:43It is married to the husband, the wife.

18:51And the husband is a very respectable fellow I tell you, is he not?

18:56He could be a college professor.

19:00He could be a white collared worker.

19:03He could be a member of the parliament.

19:09He could be a police officer.

19:14He might be the recipient of some national award even.

19:21So, rape is all prevalent, obviously those who inflict that kind of suffering on a human

19:34being on a fellow human being must be caught and punished as harshly as possible.

19:43But let that not comfort us into believing that are isolated incidences.

20:02As long as there is the philosophy of pleasure at whatever cost, rape in all its forms will

20:11keep happening.

20:16And if you do not find happening somewhere, chances are either the law is very strict or

20:26the chaps are too smart.

20:35Law does not need to be just the social law.

20:40It could even be the religious law.

20:43If you do all those bad things, then you will rot in hell.

20:49And that makes the man so terrified, he starts calling all the women as his sisters.

21:03It starts relying on , rather.

21:09All women are my sisters except the , we know of the extent of internet data that

21:23is just , what does that tell you of that the need to consume the female body.

21:39To some extent that need is biological, but to a much greater extent that need is artificially

21:48bloated by the general philosophy of the day.

21:54You exist to consume, there is a beautiful couplet by Saint Kabir comes to my mind.

22:10He says, you know, it is a comparison between the biological urge to have sex versus the social

22:20thought, the social construct of sex.

22:26He says, Kami Kutta Teen Din Anatar Rahe Udaas, he says and Kutta here stands for the biological

22:39kingdom, the animal kingdom, the animal kingdom, all the living beings except man.

22:46He says, the dog becomes sexually active only in its period of heat.

22:53And that period does not last long, apart from that period the dog remains indifferent to

23:01the matter of sex.

23:03A Kami Nar Kutta Sada Chaitu Bara Maas, Kami Kutta Teen Din Anatar Rahe Udaas, Kami Nar Kutta

23:14Sada Chaitu Bara Maas, man is a dog throughout the year, wagging his tongue, sniffing.

23:31The rear sides of possible victims, it is not biological, it is not biological, biological

23:45is three days, euphemistically three days, remaining 362 days is social, it is about what

23:54you are being taught, it is not really your bodily urge, it is a mental thing.

24:03This sex that we want so much in abundance is not so much a need of the body, it is a need

24:08of the mind.

24:10Because we are being constantly told, this sex is important, you must have pleasure and the

24:19female body is a great source of pleasure.

24:23Look at how we are sexualizing the female body constantly.

24:28Go to media, social media, especially social media, even if you go in a normal way, in an

24:34asexual way, spend 10 minutes on Instagram and your thoughts would turn in a sexual direction.

24:45You are being forcibly sexually energized, activated, triggered, it is a thought.

25:03Unless we change that thought, I am afraid we will have to live through the pain of seeing

25:09more such incidents, anything more on that?

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