The Anatomy of Victim-Blaming, How Leadership Failures Perpetuate Rape Culture in India

In the wake of a brutal crime, a society looks to its leaders for justice, reassurance, and a clear moral compass. In India, when the crime is rape, the response from those in power has too often been a devastating betrayal. The recent comments by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee regarding the rape of a medical student in Durgapur—”girls should not leave campus at night”—are not a solitary misstep. They are part of a pervasive and toxic national pattern where the powerful, from politicians to judges, engage in a sophisticated form of victim-blaming that shifts the onus of safety onto women and absolves a patriarchal system of its fundamental duties. This rhetoric is not merely insensitive; it is a corrosive force that reinforces rape culture, impedes justice, and exposes a profound failure of governance and moral leadership.

A Litany of Blame: The Political Playbook of Victim-Blaming

The Durgapur case is a tragic but familiar story. A young woman steps out for dinner at 8 p.m. with a friend, a mundane act of daily life. She is accosted, her friend flees, and she is subjected to a horrific sexual assault. The criminal justice response should be clear: pursue the perpetrators relentlessly. Instead, one of India’s only two women Chief Ministers offered a lesson in risk management for women, effectively suggesting that the victim’s movement was the variable that needed controlling.

This incident is a chapter in Mamata Banerjee’s long history of problematic pronouncements on rape. In 2012, she infamously dismissed the brutal Park Street rape as “fabricated,” a political conspiracy designed to malign her government. The victim, Suzette Jordan, courageously waived her anonymity and fought until the court vindicated her, but the Chief Minister’s initial labeling had already inflicted a secondary trauma. Since then, Banerjee has repeatedly acted as a “super-sleuth,” attributing rapes in Nadia (2022) and Kaligunj (2023) to “failed love affairs” before investigations could even run their course. This pattern reveals a desperate need to politicize or personalize sexual violence, to frame it as an isolated, personal failure rather than a systemic social ill.

Tragically, this playbook is bipartisan and nationwide. The article catalogs a grim roster of similar statements:

Sheila Dikshit (Former Delhi CM): Advised women not to be “so adventurous” after the murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan, who was simply driving home from work.
Pramod Sawant (Goa CM): Blamed the parents for the rape of two minor girls, arguing they should not have been allowed out at night.
Mohan Bhagwat (RSS Chief): Implied that “Western lifestyles” were to blame for rape, creating a false dichotomy between “India” and “Bharat.”
Mulayam Singh Yadav (Former UP CM): Notoriously trivialized rape as a “mistake” made by “boys,” suggesting a terrifying leniency towards perpetrators.
Gopichand Padalkar (BJP MLA, Maharashtra): Recently advised women to do yoga at home instead of going to gyms with unknown trainers, a prescription rendered absurd by the constant news of women being assaulted in their own homes and colleges.

This collective rhetoric constructs a prison of “should nots” for women. Don’t go out at night. Don’t be adventurous. Don’t go to the gym. Don’t have a social life. Yet, as the author pointedly asks, what is the solution when a student is raped in her college restroom? Should she not go to college? And when data from the National Family Health Survey reveals that one in three women faces violence from a family member, the ultimate absurdity and cruelty of this advice is laid bare. There is no safe space because the problem is not women’s presence in certain spaces; the problem is the presence of perpetrators in all spaces.

The Patriarchal Logic: Shifting the Burden of Safety

At its core, victim-blaming is the operational mechanism of patriarchy. It functions by placing the entire burden of preventing rape on women themselves. This serves two key purposes:

It Exonerates the Perpetrator and the System: By focusing relentlessly on the victim’s behavior—”What was she wearing?” “Why was she out?” “Was she drinking?”—the conversation is diverted from the only person responsible for the crime: the man who chose to rape. It also absolves the state of its primary responsibility: to create a safe environment for all its citizens. The failure of policing, slow judicial processes, and inadequate public infrastructure (like lighting and transport) are conveniently swept aside.
It Reinforces Gender Norms: This rhetoric reinforces the archaic notion that a woman’s rightful place is within the private, domestic sphere. Her movement in public is conditional and fraught with perceived peril for which she is held accountable. It is a tool of social control, limiting women’s autonomy, their right to work, education, and leisure under the guise of “concern.”

As the author astutely notes, “In no other crime is this much scrutiny placed on the victim.” No one asks what a robbery victim was wearing or why they were carrying a wallet. This unique, hyper-scrutinizing gaze applied to rape victims reveals the deep-seated misogyny that underpins societal attitudes towards sexual violence. It sends a clear message: a woman’s body and her choices are always subject to public audit, and any deviation from an unwritten, impossible code of conduct can be used to justify violence against her.

The Courtroom Echo Chamber: Judicial Prejudice and the “Ideal Victim”

The poison of victim-blaming does not stop at the political podium; it seeps into the hallowed halls of justice. Indian courtrooms are “littered with instances” where judges’ judgments are influenced by their preconceived notions of how a “genuine” rape victim “ought to behave.”

This creates the myth of the “ideal victim”—a concept in criminology referring to a person who, when victimized, is readily granted the status of a victim. In the context of rape, the ideal victim is often a chaste, modestly dressed virgin who is attacked by a stranger in a blitz-style assault, puts up a heroic physical fight, and immediately reports the crime to the police while being emotionally devastated. Any deviation from this script—a woman with a sexual history, who did not physically resist out of fear for her life, who was drinking, who knew her attacker, or who took time to process her trauma before reporting—risks having her credibility dismantled in court.

Judges have, in the past, made appalling comments about the victim’s moral character, her clothing, and her behavior, effectively putting her on trial. This judicial moral policing is a catastrophic failure of the justice system. It deters survivors from reporting crimes, retraumatizes those who do, and creates a legal environment where convictions are harder to secure. When the guardians of the law are influenced by the same patriarchal biases as society at large, the promise of justice becomes a hollow mockery.

The Path Forward: From Moral Policing to Systemic Reform

The solution to India’s epidemic of sexual violence does not lie in curtailing the freedom of half its population. The solution, as the author states with powerful simplicity, is to recognize that “Rape happens because men rape.” This reframing is crucial. It moves the problem from being a “women’s issue” to being a issue of male violence and societal accountability.

Leaders like Mamata Banerjee must abandon their role as moral police and focus on their actual job description. Instead of “looking for failed love affairs and political conspiracies,” they could:

Revolutionize Education: Mandate comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education in schools that explicitly teaches the meaning of consent, bodily autonomy, and gender equality from a young age.
Strengthen Support Systems: Robustly fund and support non-profit organizations that work with men and boys to dismantle toxic masculinity and promote healthy, respectful relationships.
Reform the Justice System: Ensure swift trials for sexual assault cases through fast-track courts, provide survivors with legal aid and psychological support, and sensitize the entire chain of justice—from the police officer filing the FIR to the judge delivering the verdict.
Improve Public Infrastructure: Invest in tangible safety measures like better street lighting, reliable and safe public transportation, and more women in police forces.

The minimum expectation, as the author concludes, is for leaders to “keep [their] opinions to themselves.” In a climate where survivors are already battling shame, stigma, and a broken system, the irresponsible words of a chief minister can silence countless others. True leadership in the face of sexual violence requires not the policing of women’s choices, but the unwavering pursuit of a society where their choices are respected and their safety is guaranteed. It requires moving the conversation from “what she should have done” to “what we must do” to end the culture that allows rape to persist.

Q&A Section

Q1: What is victim-blaming, and how was it exemplified in the Durgapur rape case?
A1: Victim-blaming is the practice of holding the victim of a crime partially or entirely responsible for the harm they suffered. In the Durgapur case, it was exemplified when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stated, “girls should not leave campus at night,” in response to the rape of a medical student. Instead of focusing solely on the perpetrators’ actions, this comment implicitly suggested that the victim’s decision to be outside the campus at 8 p.m. was a contributing factor to the crime, thereby shifting the burden of responsibility away from the rapists and onto the victim.

Q2: The article states that this rhetoric is a “national sport.” Who are some other leaders cited, and what did they say?
A2: The article provides a list of leaders from across the political spectrum:

Sheila Dikshit (Congress): Advised women not to be “adventurous” after a journalist’s murder.
Pramod Sawant (BJP): Blamed parents for the rape of minors, saying they shouldn’t have been out at night.
Mohan Bhagwat (RSS): Implied rape is a problem in “India” (influenced by the West) but not in “Bharat.”
Mulayam Singh Yadav (SP): Dismissed rape as a “mistake” made by “boys.”
Gopichand Padalkar (BJP): Advised women to avoid gyms and do yoga at home.

Q3: How does victim-blaming reinforce patriarchal control and what is its ultimate consequence?
A3: Victim-blaming reinforces patriarchal control by asserting that a woman’s safety is her own responsibility, contingent on her adhering to a strict set of rules about where she can go, what she can wear, and how she can behave. Its ultimate consequence is the social and physical confinement of women. It limits their autonomy and freedom to participate fully in public life—education, work, and leisure—under the constant threat of violence and the certainty of being blamed if violence occurs. It upholds the patriarchal notion that the public sphere is a male domain which women enter at their own risk.

Q4: How does the concept of the “ideal victim” affect the pursuit of justice in rape cases?
A4: The “ideal victim” is a stereotypical image of a blameless, chaste, and modest woman who is violently attacked by a stranger. When real-life survivors do not fit this mold—for instance, if they have a prior relationship with the perpetrator, have a sexual history, or did not physically resist—judges and society often view them with suspicion. This bias can dismantle their credibility in court, lead to acquittals of guilty perpetrators, and deter other survivors from reporting their assaults for fear of not being believed. It perverts the course of justice by judging the victim’s character instead of the perpetrator’s crime.

Q5: What are the concrete, systemic solutions proposed to combat sexual violence, as opposed to blaming victims?
A5: The article proposes shifting the focus from policing women to systemic reform:

Educational Reform: Implementing school curricula that teach consent, bodily autonomy, and gender equality.
Addressing Masculinity: Funding programs that work with men and boys to challenge and change toxic ideas of masculinity.
Judicial Reform: Ensuring swift trials through fast-track courts and sensitizing police and judges to handle cases without prejudice.
Infrastructure Investment: Creating safer public spaces through better lighting, reliable transport, and more women in policing.
These solutions target the root causes of sexual violence—perpetrator behavior and a complicit system—rather than its symptoms.

The Anatomy of Victim-Blaming, How Leadership Failures Perpetuate Rape Culture in India