Who was Bhanwari Devi? Did she, like Atlas, carry the burden of manhood and its seemingly irrepressible beastly comeuppance? Or was it too overbearing for her, the thought and its weight? Crime is identifiable by the possession of loot. But in rape, what is it that the perpetrator possesses after it is over? What is it that he can take home, keep in his wallet? Nothing but his guilt. And that is why rapists think of the vagina in a different way. It is important for them to think so, to see vagina as inert, flaccid, dry of feelings, devoid of emotion. The act of rape at once dissociates man from the society he lives in. He becomes a beast, chooses to forget that he has assaulted much more than a woman’s vagina. He forgets that he has assaulted, laid claim to, the intangible – human emotion.



How does one deal with a crime without accounting for the emotional trauma? “Who is Bhanwari Devi?” is a question that cannot be answered by reading law reports or judgements. In there, in those dusty crumpled pages left to rot in the corridors of court houses, she has been reduced to a litigant, someone who tried to bring those who gang-raped her to justice. The long and arduous process of law has reduced her to a case number, nothing more.