India continues to endure the plague of horrifying rapes and sexual assaults. The names change, the locations shift, but the brutality remains the same. In April 2025 itself, we have already been jolted by the gangrape of a young woman in Varanasi. The RG Kar hospital horror, the gangrape of Indian and Israeli women in Karnataka, the Kerala gangrape case—the list goes on and on. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a deeper, untreated sickness, a festering wound on our society.
We must ask: Why, despite all our laws and campaigns, do these crimes persist?
Because we have been treating neither the symptoms nor the disease. We are just doing quackery.
When a dangerous disease spreads, society typically takes one of two approaches. The first is to avoid the source—people isolate themselves, wear protective gear, live in fear. But, if the origin of the disease is not addressed, the threat lingers. The second, more effective approach is to identify and eliminate the source of the disease itself. Once the root is neutralized, there is no need for fear-based isolation. People can live freely, safely.
Similarly, when it comes to rape and sexual violence, we have obsessed over “keeping women safe.” Don't go out late. Don't wear this. Don't talk like that. Don't befriend boys. Don’t live.
But this has never stopped rape.
Because women are not the problem. They are not the source of this disease.
The real source is men, patriarchy, and a society that breeds entitlement, suppresses empathy, and glorifies aggression. It is a culture that teaches boys from a young age that they have ownership over women’s bodies, that their anger is power, and that their dominance is natural. It is a culture that silences survivors and laughs off abuse as "locker room talk." It is also a culture that blames the victim. A quick scroll through the comment sections of social media posts on the Varanasi horror is enough to see how misogyny flourishes in the open. Misogynist loser men, emboldened by anonymity or even real names, shamelessly slut-shame the victim, treating her trauma as a punchline or justification. These are not harmless trolls—they are all potential rapists. And the more such rhetoric is tolerated, the more it emboldens future violence.
Remember the Nirbhaya case? Even then, the lawyer defending the rapists infamously blamed the victim, saying, "a decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night." These vile words were aired on national television. 13 years since then, how many young men have heard them and felt justified in their own misogyny? How many have drawn confidence from such statements to dehumanize, dominate, or violate? Nowadays, even judges in lower courts & high courts are openly slut-shaming in their comments & putting the blame on the victim herself.
This is how misogyny spreads. This is how rapists are bred—not in shadows, but in plain sight, through normalized slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and patriarchal propaganda.
Patriarchy is so deeply rooted that it doesn’t just shape how men behave. It manipulates women too, encouraging them to internalize misogyny, blame other women, and uphold the same toxic values that oppress them, thus becoming agents of patriarchy. Mothers teach daughters to stay silent rather than seek justice. Sisters shame victims to protect family "honour." Aunts defend the rapist in the name of tradition. In this systemic rot, even the oppressed become custodians of their own oppression.
And where are our leaders? Silent. Or worse, complicit.
Politicians have long benefited from the patriarchal order. It keeps women from questioning, keeps communities divided, and ensures loyalty based on fear. Rarely do we see genuine efforts to reform gender education, hold police accountable, or challenge cultural misogyny. Misogynistic statements by lawmakers go unchecked. Survivors are labelled liars. Justice is mocked.
The time for small reforms is over.
What India needs now is not just another wave of piecemeal changes or superficial measures. We need to declare war on patriarchy. We must wage a relentless, uncompromising battle to uproot patriarchal mental decay from the very fabric of our society. Unless this deep-seated illness is eradicated, no law, no campaign, no movement will ever bring about real change. The battle against rape culture is the battle against patriarchy itself, and until we strike at its very foundation, the violence, the hatred, and the oppression will only continue to fester.
No longer should our goal be limited to fighting a few misogynistic statements, locker room talk, or instances of victim-blaming. The mission must be the total dismantling of the patriarchal order that permeates every corner of our lives. Patriarchy is not merely a collection of individual behaviours but a systemic, structural force that places men at the top and subjugates women to a lower, often subhuman status—while ultimately destroying both in the process. We must eradicate this power structure from its roots.
We must wage war on the institutions that uphold it: the family structures that enforce toxic gender roles, the political systems that benefit from the subjugation of women, the religious ideologies that perpetuate women’s inferiority, the educational systems that teach girls to be silent and boys to be aggressive. Every single institution that reinforces patriarchal norms must be dismantled and reformed. We need to reshape the very way we think, the very way we live, the very way we interact with each other. This needs a total cultural revolution. This revolution must be one that shakes the foundations of society, where every law, every institution, and every individual’s mindset is restructured to uphold true equality, not the false equality patriarchal systems allow for.
It means taking down the societal norms that hold women’s bodies as property, that teach men & boys to be dominant and aggressive, that create an environment where misogyny is excused and violence is normalized. It means forcing the closure of all spaces that enable the propagation of patriarchal thought, whether they are in homes, workplaces, schools, or places of worship, whether they are physical or digital. It means completely re-imagining what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman—not as opposites but as equals, as humans deserving of respect, dignity, and justice.
This war on patriarchy cannot and will not stop at individual actions. It must extend to the very core of our social, political, and cultural systems. If we are serious about ending rape culture, we must be willing to dismantle the patriarchal systems that create it. And this war must be total, uncompromising, and fierce.
This isn’t about men versus women. It’s about humanity versus inhumanity. About confronting the real enemy: a violent culture masquerading as tradition.
Rape is not just a women’s issue. It was never just a women's issue. It was always a human issue.
It is a national emergency. A moral collapse. A mental pandemic. A human catastrophe.
Unless we strike at its source, the rotting heart of patriarchy, the screams will echo through yet another city, yet another home.
Unless we rise. Now.