1. Boys will be boys, they commit mistakes
In April 2014, while opposing death penalty to three men convicted in a gangrape case, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav had said, "boys will be boys, they commit mistakes."
He had even blamed the girls for rape saying that girls get friendly with boys and when they fight and have differences, they term it as rape.
And if you thought the horror was over, later next year in 2015, Yadav made yet another shocking and insensitive statement, stating that the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh is better than all other states.
He said that one person commits rape and four are named in the complaint. To corroborate his claim, he added that "it is impossible for 4 men to rape a woman." "I know of many such cases, where 1 person commits the rape and 4 people are named in the report. There are cases where one person commits crime, 4 brothers in the same family get arrested," he said.
2. Tunch Maal
In 2013, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh unwittingly made a crass remark by describing Rahul Gandhi's aide Meenakshi Natrajan, party MP from Mandsaur, as "sau tunch maal" -- which loosely translates to a " desirable object".
3. Rape by 2 men, not gang rape
In 2015, Karnataka's then Home Minister K J George stoked a controversy with remarks suggesting that two men raping a woman cannot be termed as gang rape, drawing severe flak from parties and activists.
He made the insensitive and controversial statement when the media asked him about the rape of a BPO employee. The 22-year-old girl was gang raped by the driver & helper of the tempo traveller. The incident took place in South East Bengaluru when the girl was returning from work around 10 pm.
4. Rapes linked to rising population
In 2013, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in Kolkata that the rising number of rape cases was connected to increasing population.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
"You say rape incidents are on the rise. But the population is also swelling. Is the population in the state the same as it was during the tenure of (the state's second chief minister) BC Roy?" she said.
"There are more cars now. Shopping malls are increasing. Young boys and girls are becoming more modern," Banerjee told opposition members while closing the debate on the governor's address in the assembly.
In October 2012, while speaking at a programme in the city, Banerjee had accused the media of glorifying rape and pointed to the more permissive society.
"Earlier, if men and women held hands, parents would reprimand them. Now everything is done openly. It's like an open market with open options," Banerjee had said.
5. Wife becomes old and loses her charm
While speaking at a poetry meet, former Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal had said that the women lose their charm after a few years of marriage.
"Nai nai jeet aur nai shadi ka apna alag mahatva hota hai. Jaise jaise samay bitega jeet ki yaden purani hoti jaengi. Jaise jaise samay bitata hai patni purani hoti jati hai, wah maja nahi reh jata hai," said Jaiswal at a women's college after India won their match against Pakistan in T20 championship.
"A fresh win and a new marriage are important in their own way. As time passes, the joy of the victory fades, just like a wife becomes old and loses her charm."
6. Punish women too in rape cases
In 2014, SP's state president Abu Azmi attracted criticism for his statements about rape survivors. He said, "If a woman is caught (in a rape case), then both she and the boy should be punished. In India, there is death penalty for rape, but when there's consensual sex outside marriage, there's no death penalty against women."
7. Electricity in villages will curb population
In 2009, Former Health and Family Welfare minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the best way to curb India’s population growth is to provide electricity to Indian villages so that couples spend their time watching TV instead procreating and increasing the population.
“In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they produced so many children. Today, TV is the biggest source of entertainment. Hence, it is important that there is electricity in every village so that people watch TV till late in the night.”
He further added, “By the time the serials are over, they’ll be too tired to have sex and will fall asleep. Then they won’t get a chance to reproduce. When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do but produce babies.”
8. Stay indoors to prevent rape: Botsa Satyanarayana, Congress
In the aftermath of the Delhi 2012 gang-rape, the solution to sexual assault proposed by the Andhra Pradesh Congress chief, Botsa Satyanarayana, was simple: keep women indoors.
Here’s his full statement:
"Just because India achieved freedom at midnight does not mean that women can venture out after dark. They should ensure that they do not board buses with few passengers. The woman should have thought twice before boarding the suspicious private bus that night. Though the incident was condemnable, she should also have behaved keeping in mind the situation. Although it [Delhi gang-rape] was a minor incident, Soniaji made it a point to meet the protesters when they called on her."
9. Marry off girls early to prevent rape: Om Prakash Chautala, Indian National Lok Dal
In 2012, the former chief minister of Haryana proposed that sexual assault would be prevented if women married when they were young. “We should learn from the past, especially in the Mughal era, people used to marry their girls to save them from Mughal atrocities and currently a similar situation is arising in the state,” said Chautala, seemingly unaware of the irony of wanting to turn the clock back to the medieval age as a solution for rape.
10. If you are sexually assaulted, you must die since your honour lies in your vagina.
KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran said, “This woman had cried that the entire state had raped her. We can understand if a woman gets sexually abused once. But if it gets repeated, then any woman with self esteem would either commit suicide or try to prevent such a thing from happening again. But this woman has been saying she was repeatedly abused”.
