Lack of Civilisation

It seems I must apologise so apologies proffered and, hopefully, accepted.

Someone took exception to the idea of “Dogsh** Aftershave”. I wasn’t quite clear on whether the problem was with the terminology or if it was just the imagery conjured up in the mind by the juxtaposition of the two words.

Having used the phrase again in the apology I suppose I shall be taken to task once more; I am looking askance at the person objecting, textually and not literally of course, to see if there is an alternative form of apology that might exclude the re-use of the offending phrase.

My friend Jim will know. He is good at receiving apologies; people do tend to beg his forgiveness when they are, clearly, in the wrong. Jim has a very convincing way of explaining to people that they should, if not actually grovel, then at least kneel...

We often think as one, he and I.

Not that I should advocate violence. Not in public, anyway.

However...

I have just read yet another horrifying story that, to me, screams out for the deployment of some radical thinking in terms of criminal punishment.

A four-year-old girl has just died as a result of being raped.

Unpleasant thought, isn’t it? Not the sort of thing one wants to read about on a sunny afternoon when cruising down a shiny river with a flask of iced lemonade and a hamper of cucumber sandwiches and cold roast chicken drumsticks.

I suspect it was even more unpleasant for her.

Yes, yes, we have covered this subject before—at length, indeed.

But it continues. It is utterly reprehensible and yet it goes on.

Why?

Because the political will to do something is not there.

Let’s think about India, for example.

Many of my friends are Indian or their ancestors came from India at some point. They are nice people, good people, intelligent people. They are the sort of people that seem to make great doctors and computer scientists. These are people who care, deeply, for others.

And yet...

When India is described as the oldest civilisation in the World I have to take a pace back and squint a little bit at the words used.

‘Civilised’? Is it?

The British, hated though they were, kept ‘Widow Burning’ down to near zero (as far as we could tell). The Great Raj was an oppression of the Indians; they were happy to release the yoke of British domination.

The moment that the British left India ‘Widow Burning’ started up again. The very moment.

Honour killing is rife as is judicial rape—and this occurs across a wide swathe of Indian society. Nobody can raise their hands and say that it is only the lower castes or it is that religion or this area’s tradition/custom/culture.

As is foeticide. The killing of unborn children. Female children, of course.

Modern technology has brought about modern solutions to the problem of having daughters.

Now Doctors can see the sex of a child before it is born the parents (father?) can determine if it should be born at all.

Female babies are dumped or killed—something that amounts to the same thing, of course.

The result of this is that there are more men than women in India.

It is entirely possible that this is also the case in China where female babies are buried (often alive!) because they are not wanted.

The rest of the World has more women than men in their populations. Good for the fellows but not so good for the women who will have to make do with whatever they can get in the husband stakes if they want to get married at all.

Not India. India has more men than women. Is it for this reason that rape appears to be tolerated there more than anywhere else? Note: ‘appears’. Of course it is not tolerated by the women-folk.

It should never be tolerated by the men, either. But the will to do something is lacking.

Punishment, generally, for most crimes is lacking; prison is often seen now as a soft option. There is no deterrent in it. Prison, of any sort, would be a deterrent for me because I should dislike to be separated from my loved ones for any length of time; I should dislike not being able to pop out to my favourite restaurant or cinema.

There are those amongst us who see prison as something glorious—something to boast about. Such people are called ‘rappers’.

Because prison is not, for them, a deterrent. They seem happy to spend an indeterminate percentage of their life locked up as if the crime is considered ‘worth it’!

Am I picking on India for some reason? It is true that the worst rape statistics seem to emerge from South Africa where they, possibly, have different reasons. One of them is surely the tribal mentality and another is the practice of witch doctors who have proclaimed that AIDs can be cured by having sex with a virgin!

The four-year-old was from India. Yet another 'death-by-rape' from the sub-continent

For this reason there must be special punishments for special crimes.

Rob an old lady at gunpoint and you should get life. That means life—not some sort of long holiday from which you can retire on full benefits and National subsidies.

Inflicting AIDs on an innocent young girl should require death at the very least.

Rape should also be life. Rape someone under a certain age and cause physical damage or, even, death, and the punishment should match that.

Rape is not an ‘assault with a friendly weapon’ it is an acute invasion of a person’s privacy, it is a chronic battery on a person’s life to the point where they will never be the same, mentally, again.

It is a physical violence that cannot be tolerated.

I don’t care if you have some sort of movement or petition against someone else’s belief system or you think certain countries should stop eating dogs.

I do care if you are ignoring torture.

Get your priorities in order.

Using the phrase ‘Dogsh** Aftershave’ is not going to tip the World over on its backside but letting people get away with cruelty to other people is indicting those victims to a life of suffering.

That is intolerable.