The unspeakably egregious and appalling incident in which a minor girl was raped on the orders of a panchayat (council of village elders) in Bahawalpur on Thursday speaks volumes of the moral decay in Pakistan. When more energies are spent on controlling women rather than eliminating the toxic brand of patriarchy prevalent in Pakistan, then the responsibility of that terrifying abuse meted out to the ten year-old girl falls on the entire society. Reportedly, the order of the Panchayat was to avenge the alleged abuse of an 11 year-old girl by the brother of the 10 year-old girl, Amjad. How and what is fuelling this utter breakdown of humanity in which minors are being raped is inexplicable. And while Amjad’s alleged heinous crime can be characterised as the work of a disturbed mind, a community sanctioned rape of an innocent girl in response to it is pure barbarism. This incident requires a full and proper investigation, and all those who had a part to play in this crime must be punished to the full severity of the law. The first point of reflection in all of this is why parallel modes of authority continue to persist in Pakistan.
This shows the failing of the state on a very important and crucial aspect. It must only be the state that can sanction any form of punishment to the individual through due process of the law. No other body must have any kind of legal or social standing to dispense this role in place of the government. Unfortunately, due to preferring expediency over the hard work required to makes its full presence known everywhere, the state has for the most part turned a blind eye to these panchayats to function with impunity. In Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the state even gave legal sanction to the traditional system of the jirgas (council of tribal leaders)—leaving people there at the mercy of the local bosses. Needless to say, this state of affairs has to change. Reclaiming the state’s monopoly on violence would be far from simple, but work on it must be started immediately.
Second, the social aspect of this heinous crime must be kept in mind in order to come up with an effective remedial strategy. It is the conflation of honour with the body of women that is used as justification to reclaim honour by dishonouring the other; rape as the only revenge for rape. Until and unless this mind set is corrected, people will continue to treat the women of their families as property in which lies the entire honour of their families — a property that can be even used as a grotesque form of punishment for the male members of that family. Had the panchayat in Bahawalpur even the slightest sense of realisation that the minor girl who they were sentencing for rape was an individual, a person who had nothing to do with the alleged crimes of her brother, then at least some sense would have prevailed. And if the women of that family were empowered enough to save the 10 year-old girl from the wrath of the panchayat, then they would not have let that inhumane crime to take place. Control of women in Pakistan has both robbed them of their individuality and left them totally at the mercy of their male relatives. Are these the supposed cherished values of Pakistani society that are under threat from the supposed ungodly western forces of women empowerment? Women must be empowered, and their individuality must be given back to them. There is no tenable justification of not doing so.
