PoliticsIndia: Rape epidemic: New resistance to rapists emereges spearheaded by women with many men joining the cause

This blog doesn't like to enourage Christians to join causes without identifying as Christians.  Nor do we like becoming co-belligerents with causes thru neutralist or secularist organizations, except when a self-identified and thawtful Christian organization joins an umbrella group and has some say in the kind of policies and disciplines the umbrella group sets for its members.  We don't have any input from any such organization in India.  But, nevertheless, given the difficulties of international connection and communications, our journaletics activity suggests very strongly that what Rita Bannerji describes below as "historic in Indian democracy" over the last 10 or so days is quite true.  And we are also quite impressed by the breadth of support for the movement against rape and against the Indian genocide of women, sometimes called "India's gendercide."  We trust that Christian groups in India will commit themselves to this struggle, and monitor tendencies by aggressive movements to take over the cause and steer it into activities which Christians do not identify with.  That happens everywhere in mass movements and has nothing to do with anything peculiarly Indian in this regard.  Nevertheless, in the last two hundred years all around the world, cobelligerence with especially some tendencies of nonChristian activists have herded insufficiently aware Christians into mass forces in regrettable ways.

That all aside, refWrite urges readers of all faiths to sign Rita Bannerji's petition.  For a fulsome documentation of the rape epidemic from its ground zero and outward, see our earlier blog-entry "PoliticsIndia: Rape Epidemic: Harayana state "rape capital of India" (Dec12,2k12).

— Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage politics newspotter, analyst, columnist

Campaign against India's Female Genocide (Dec26,2k12)
http://links.causes.com/s/clHIwj?r=fWpe

The last 10 days have been historic in Indian democracy. A brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman set a revolution off in motion, like never seen before in independent India. Women and men in the thousands, mostly young college students occupied the center of the capital city, Delhi, protesting not just this rape, but the large scale rape and violence on women that has become systemic in India! It is the 4th most dangerous country for women in the world today, after the Congo, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a 2012 global survey.

The government initially remained silent, and then sent out hundreds of policemen in battle gear who attacked the unarmed students with water cannons, batons and tear gas. Then the government shut down metros and blocked roads and essentially implemented martial rule in parts of the city to force the protests to die down when they saw that even police brutality would not stop it!

The western media has been extremely silent about these protests, and it is up to the pubic both in India and the rest of the world to not let the spirit and momentum of this revolution die down. We must force it to move forward by public will and power. So please empower this revolution by lending your voice to it.

We want to start by presenting the Prime Minister with 3 specific demands that can be met very rapidly, instead of broader demands which will be forgotten over time.

So please sign the petition here. http://links.causes.com/s/clHIwi?r=fWpe (Click on the links embedded in the petition for more information.) And circulate this petition to make sure this revolution meets its goal: the goal of zero tolerance for violence against girls and women in India!

— Rita Banerji