India enjoys an unprecedented demographic dividend not only by housing the World’s largest population by surpassing that of China, the youngest section of people outnumbers other categories of people. Considering the decaying and ageing population in the West and among other developed countries, India promises robust contribution of human capital to the global economy in the long-term. It is projected that the economic outputs of the country can in this way surpass other economies in the foreseeable future. It is now the fifth largest economy in the world and is projected to surpass Germany in next few years. However, the strength of the country depends on the quality of people it houses. Gender violence specifically does not get sufficient attention and it gets obscured within the larger umbrella of human rights violations and communal violence. However, India is grappling with issues pertaining to unequal sex-ratio, foeticide, girl infanticide and cases of gender violence in family and public sphere more frequently than any other forms of violence which if overlooked it would undercut the quality and strength of a society and dissipate its soft power resources in the long-run.
A propensity to involve in gender violence is increasing among people in different aspects of life ranging from cruelty by husbands and relatives to illegal determination of sex onto sexual harassment at work place, abductions, assaults, and rapes. While the sordid statistics put out by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2022 raised deep concerns indicating a rising patriarchal structure in the Indian society with 4 percent surge in crimes against women compared to 2021, more serious concerns emanated from the data projected by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) report according to which 151 sitting MPs and MLAs have cases related to crime against women. It is worthwhile to mention that India has incorporated Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence in its foreign policy. Gandhi’s non-violent struggle against Britain’s colonial dominance had a decisive impact on the Nehruvian idea of Non-Alignment. While Gandhian satyagraha could challenge the stereotypes such as “weak,” “feminine” and “savage” that the British colonial power used to define India in order to sustain its rule, the persistence and success of the Non-Aligned Movement in providing an alternative to power politics of the Cold War era challenged the standard expectations of the British colonial power and led many Westerners to rethink the pejorative cultural categories they used to define India. The Movement had been a significant source of India’s soft power granting the country with global recognition and influence without support of any substantial hard power resources. The non-alignment foreign policy of India was constantly evaluated by global actors in response to certain domestic variables and parameters such as democracy, secularism and gender equality within the country.
Similarly, current efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s to project India as a peace-loving country by invoking India’s historical and spiritual resources and championing the idea of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and practices of Yoga would not have larger audience if cases of gender violence go unchecked and principles underlying the country’s democracy, secularism and gender equality are flouted.
The brutal, insane and macabre acts of raping and murdering the female doctor at RG Kar Medical College by some perpetrators in Kolkata on August 9 and subsequent politicisation of the issue raising speculations as regards a nexus between political establishment and criminals following global publicity cast the human and political capital of India in a negative light whereas in the post-independence India, the ideas of secularism, gender equality and non-alignment with the unflinching support of peace-loving people had contributed enough to the soft power resources of the country. Increasing cases of gender violence including this insane and inhuman case and changing profile of politicians, however, would send a distorted image of India undercutting its soft power bases.
Any society to grow and develop in the long-term must incorporate the values of gender equality. Cases of gender disparity and violence which get quick global publicity with the availability of innumerable electronic and print media houses functioning globally, global social media and the concerns are deeper as possibilities of such news getting further distorted are high in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
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