'History Hurts But Honour Memory Of Victims': President Droupadi Murmu Writes On Kolkata Rape Case, Crimes Against Women

Taking note of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, President Droupadi Murmu expressed that she felt 'dismayed and horrified.'

Acknowledging that it was not the only incident of its kind and is part of a series of crimes against women which even includes kindergarten girls as victims, she said, "The nation is bound to be outraged, and so am I."

Murmu urged for an honest and unbiased self-introspection and said, "Social prejudices as well as some customs and practices have always opposed the expansion of women’s rights."

Calling the mindset of seeing the female as a lesser human being, less powerful, less capable and less intelligent "deplorable," Murmu blamed the objectification of women by a few for the crimes against women.

She recalled the Nirbhaya case of December 2012 and said, "In the 12 years since that tragedy in the national capital, there have been countless tragedies of similar nature, though only a few drew nationwide attention."

Murmu said that the burying of these incidents into a deep and inaccessible recess of social memory is a collective amnesia, which is as obnoxious as that mindset that sees women as lesser beings.

"History often hurts. Societies scared to face history resort to collective amnesia to bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich," she said.

"Now the time has come not only to face history squarely but also to search within our souls and probe the pathology of crime against women," she continued.

Urging to not let amnesia prevail over the memory of such criminality, the President appealed to deal with perversion in a comprehensive manner so as to curb it right at the beginning.

"We can do this only if we honour the memory of the victims by cultivating a social culture of remembering them to remind us of our failures in the past and prepare us to be more vigilant in the future," she said.

"Let us collectively say enough is enough," Murmu concluded by saying that we owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning freedom from fear.