Even though a huge number of women in India are raped every year, our society has still not gotten over their victim-shaming attitude and is anything but accepting towards victims. It’s difficult for rape victims to ever earn back the respect they enjoyed before the incident thanks to some very skewed logic we as a society follow. In the midst of all this, a Haryana farmer has gotten married to a gang-rape victim and made us believe that our hope for a better society still has some ground to keep its feet on.
Haryana is infamous for its deplorably low sex-ratio and that’s what makes this story even more heartwarming. What this 30-year old farmer from Jind has done is something most men would never dare to. He has not only married the victim but also enrolled her into law school so that she can fight for justice and help other victims like her.
The victim’s parents approached Jitender’s family with a marriage proposal and it was after the proposal that the victim revealed her truth to the farmer. She gave him the chance to back out of this marriage which is something Jitender refused to do. It’s not surprising that the victim thought she should ask him to change his mind since as a society we believe those who are raped should be cut-off rather than those who rape.
Jitender has now approached the Chief Minister to provide whatever help he can in assuring the victim gets justice. While we all have heard how in a marriage it becomes the duty of both spouses to support each other no matter what, it’s this 30-year old farmer who has shown us how that promise is actually kept to.
We come across stories of how women who are raped are later killed by their family or ostracized by society at best. Jitender Chhatar’s is the example that if followed can change the situation of rape victims in our society. Not that marrying them is always the solution, but not marrying them simply because they were the victim of a heinous crime is the backdated mentality we must lose.
