From the Europe and America the news has come that Christian priests have raped young boys inside Catholic churches. I haven’t investigated how prevalent it is in other Muslim countries, but I have often read in the newspapers of Bangladesh about Imams raping children in mosques, of a teacher at a Madrasa raping a four-, five- or six-year-old girl student inside the Madrasa. Now I’ve been told that some people brought an eight-year-old girl into a temple in Jammu and Kashmir and gangraped her. One of the rapists is Sanji Ram, who had the responsibility for looking after the temple. Sanji Ram’s relatives as well as two police officers, their friends, kept the eight-year-old girl imprisoned inside the temple and raped her. The girl used to take horses out to graze in Jammu. When one of her horses was lost, she went looking for it in the jungle, which is when the gang of rapists captured her and imprisoned her in the temple. After raping her for several days in succession, the valiant heroes smashed the girl’s head in with a rock and murdered her.

Had the girl been a Hindu and not a Muslim, perhaps those men would have captured, imprisoned, raped, and finally killed her in exactly the same way. Both the poor and the rich know that killing the poor usually reduces the chances of trouble. I don’t believe that those men would have allowed the girl to walk on unscathed in the jungle had she been a Hindu. A rape takes place in India every 14 minutes. Hindu men rape Hindu women every day. They don’t spare anyone, from old women to one-year-old children. Muslim men rape in the same way. They don’t spare any women of any age. Rapes are continuing. Murders, too. Those who rape are usually not interested in the name, address and religion of those they are raping. They’re only concerned with the body. The more tender it is, the more delicious. Or they only consider the ‘valiance’. There is no lack of people in the world who think barbarity is bravery.

Raping the women of the enemy is nothing new. Since, like the elephants and horses and land and houses of the enemy, their women too are considered property, the visors take away the elephants and horses, occupy the land and houses, burning and pillaging them, and rape the women. This is how it was been since ancient times. Subjugating the adversary by raping his mother, his sister, his wife, his daughter, is an age-old practice. After killing jews in Arab lands, the prophet Mohammad had distributed the Jewish women amongst his militant companions for their pleasure. Pakistani soldiers raped two hundred thousand women in the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Although the troops were Muslims, and so were the majority of the women they raped, resistance had been a bigger factor than religion. The Pakistanis looted and pillaged the homes of Bengalis and set them on fire, and raped Bengali women. They raped the women because the war provided an opportunity. Whenever there’s an opportunity men rape women all the time, irrespective of caste and creed, it doesn’t even need a war.

To tell the truth, there is no ongoing war between Hindus and Muslims in India. It is true that some people are trying to provoke a conflict, but the conflict has not reached the proportion where Hindus will rape Muslim women in droves, or vice versa. Hindu men have raped a hundred times more Hindu women than they have raped Muslim women. It’s the same story with Muslim men. It is not as though either of them has vowed to rape women of the other religion alone. They do it when they get the opportunity. Muslim men rape more of Muslim women because they’re the ones who are near at hand. It’s the same with Hindu men.

Was it merely the attraction of raping a Muslim that made seven people rape an eight-year-old girl for seven days, that even made a man travel all the way from Meerut to Jammu? Or was it the opportunity to rape a female child? The rapist from Meerut would have travelled to Jammu even if the eight-year-old had been a Hindu. Child rape is on the rise today. Whether they’re Hindus or Muslims, Buddhists or Christians, no one gives up the chance to rape a child these days. Perhaps rape of children has always existed, and it is just the increase in the number of news reports about it that makes it seem it is on the rise.

Had Hindu men never raped Hindu women, I would have assumed the Hindu males of Kathua raped the eight-year-old girl because she was a Muslim. Had Muslim men not raped anyone other than Hindu women, maybe it would have become clear that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims is increasing or that the war between them is becoming more intense. But society still has Muslims like Imdadul Rashidi, who do not want to start a riot by attacking his son’s Hindu murderers as an act of revenge. There are still Hindus like Yashpal Saxena who prefer to forgive the Muslim murderers of his son rather than avenge his death. The Indian subcontinent needs Hindus like Yashpal Saxena and Muslims like Imdadul Rashidi.

Over in Uttar Pradesh, an 18-year-old woman has accused an MLA named Kuldip Singh Singer and his brother of raping her. The alleged rapists are Rajputs, and the young woman, a Dalit. Some people are saying that upper-caste men have a tendency to rape lower-caste women. Because hatred is one of the factors causing rape, it is entirely possible that the upper caste rapes the lower caste out of hatred. But it isn’t as though upper caste men are not raping upper caste women. And lower caste men are raping lower caste women. So it is not caste but hatred for women, the notion that women are of a lower class, that they are maids and slaves, that they are brainless creatures, that is responsible. As many of us know, rape is not sexual intercourse, whatever else it might be. Rape is muscle power, male power, penis power. The bottomline: the act of putting a crown on, or flying the flag of victory from, the bald head of the male organ is also known as rape.

It has not yet been proven whether MLA Kuldip Sengar has raped the women from Unnao. But there will be nothing to be surprised at if it is proven. He did not rape the woman because he is a BJP MLA. A male MLA of the Congress or the SP or the CPM or Trinamool or any other political party could have raped her too. Because he is a man. It is the powerful who commit the most rapes. Because the powerful have arrangements to cover their tracks. And it is not a custom to punish the powerful. They are the ones who can commit crimes and get away untouched far more often than others.

The Kathua rape is being called communal, and it is being said that the rape in Unnao took place only because it was a BJP MLA. I believe that the rapists in both cases did what they did because they are men. They raped the women because they had the opportunity to do it. A patriarchal society has taught men that women are nothing but sex objects. Therefore there is no crime in gratifying themselves with women’s bodies in any way they please. A patriarchal society has taught men that women are helpless and powerless – no matter what their religion or age, what their caste or their lineage, whether they’re rich of poor, they belong to the lower classes. And men have the right to humiliate them, to torture them, to crush them. Which is why men rape them. One rape every 14 minutes.

Until this patriarchy is not abolished, until men do not dismiss equal rights for women, until men stop thinking of themselves as lords and of women as sex-slaves, all men – Hindu or Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or Jew, poor or rich, upper caste or lower caste, legislator or minister, Imam or priest – will keep raping women.

Rapes will continue unhindered in temples, mosques, churches and pagodas because the custodians of these ‘holy’ places are all God-fearing men. God-fearing men do not consider rape a sin as they are well-aware that everything – notwithstanding Ishwar or Allah or Bhagaban or their respective religions – is undeniably misogynous.