‘Enough is enough': Murmu urges citizens to wake up

New Delhi: Declaring that “enough is enough”, President Droupadi Murmu on Wednesday said it is time for India to wake up to the “perversion” of crimes against women and counter the mindset that sees women as “less powerful, less capable, less intelligent”. “Those who share such views then go further and see the female as an object… We owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning the freedom from fear,” Murmu said.

Referring to the August 9 rape and murder of a junior doctor in a Kolkata hospital, a “dismayed and horrified” president said what is even more depressing is that it is part of a series of crimes against women. Murmu said no civilised society can allow daughters and sisters to be subjected to such atrocities.

The hard-hitting and personalised article, titled “Women's Safety: Enough is Enough”, is the first time the president has articulated her views on the August 9 Kolkata incident that has once again shaken the conscience of the nation and led to widespread, continuing protests.

She recalled her recent meeting with a group of schoolchildren on Raksha Bandhan. “They asked me innocently if they could be assured that there would be no recurrence of the Nirbhaya-type incident in future,” the president said, referring to the brutal rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi in December 2012. She noted that an outraged nation then made plans and devised strategies, and the initiatives did make some difference. In the 12 years since, there have been countless tragedies of similar nature though only few drew nationwide attention, Murmu said.

History, the president said, “often hurts” and societies scared to face history resort to “collective amnesia” to bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. “Now the time has come not only to face history squarely but also to search within our souls and probe the pathology of crimes against women,” she said in her impassioned appeal. “Let us deal with this perversion in a comprehensive manner so as to curb it right at the beginning. We can do this only if we honour the memory of the victims by cultivating a social culture of remembering them to remind us of our failures in the past and prepare us to be more vigilant in future,” Murmu said.

The BJP said Murmu's remarks on crimes against women reflect the gravity of the issue and it's time to rise above party politics and ensure that justice is done in such cases.