To the images of the charred remains of a young woman, raped and murdered, countless Indians woke up this morning with a sense of having failed their nation.
Dr Priyanka Reddy was out and about her work as a vet in the outskirts of Hyderabad when her motorbike broke down and she fell prey to the evil eyes of men around her, with no route of escape left for her modesty or her life.
All of India’s gains on women’s issues in recent years, personally for me, had been put to flames.
Four years ago, India’s premier Narendra Modi launched a scheme for girls, appropriately in the northern state of Haryana, which suffers from a skewed gender ratio and where women must largely look after home and hearth, and little else.
“The prime minister of this country has come to you like a beggar, begging for the lives of our daughters,” Modi had implored.
Flip through the news pages of the last six years and you would see countless tales of Indian women who are world champions, two of them –Saina Nehwal and Sania Mirza– from the very city of Hyderabad which today hangs its head in shame.
You would find women who scaled Mount Everest on one leg; the youngest ever to swim her way to a record in icy Antarctic waters; grandmasters in chess; unbeatables in squash; an amateur world boxing champion’s reign of six years; authors who are internationally acclaimed; women scientists who are today the backbone of India’s space research programme, the envy of the world.
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