After the recent horrendous rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi, which had shaken the nation, some famous men in responsible positions made some interesting remarks.

Some of them found fault with the way modern women dressed and some with women going out at night.

One said a woman under such a threat should address the potential attacker as “bhaiyya” or brother, and he would change his mind and treat her like a sister.

Another said such things happened in India but never in Bharat — a very thought-provoking statement indeed, for the general belief is that Bharat and India were one and the same.

Then it occurred to me that once upon a time India was called Bharat.

Maybe this great man meant that such things never happened in ancient India or by Bharat, he meant rural India, where old customs and traditions are still preserved, and that set me thinking and making a mental journey into the hoary past and to rural India.

God had to descend to the earth in so many forms to save the good people and punish the evil ones.

In Satya Yuga, a powerful demon called Hiranyaksha tried to ravish mother earth herself.

Lord Vishnu incarnated himself as a great wild boar and destroyed the evil demon and rescued mother earth.

Later, his brother, Hiranyakasipu and his hordes ravaged the three worlds and committed all kinds of atrocities upon innocent men and women until Lord Vishnu appeared as a lion-man and killed him.

Evil forces known as asuras, daityas, danavas and rakshasas persecuted innocent men and women all over the world and even gods and goddesses in heaven.

Lord Vishnu killed them all and saved the good people.

In Treta Yuga, Ravana conquered the three worlds and lusted after the beautiful heavenly nymph, Rambha.

She begged him to have mercy on her and reminded him that he was her uncle-in-law, as good as her father (she was the girlfriend/consort of Nalakubara, son of Kubera, Ravana’s brother), but her pleas fell on deaf ears and Ravana raped her.

His followers went on a rampage committing all types of atrocities in Bharat as well as in heaven, until Lord Vishnu incarnated himself as Rama and killed him.

In Dwapara Yuga, one of the great heroes of Mahabharata, Bhishma, defeated a king and carried away his three daughters and forcibly married them to his impotent brother, Vichitravirya, while the third one resisted stubbornly and had to be sent back to her father’s house.

Her parents and lover did not accept her because they believed that she was no longer virtuous, having lived away from home for some time, a tradition which had forced Rama to make Sita prove her virtue by an ordeal of fire and later, to abandon her in a forest as rumours persisted (the same tradition is the cause of “honour-killings” in rural India even today). She (Amba) finally committed suicide.

When the impotent king could not consummate his marriage to the two helpless girls, the great Veda Vyasa, his step-brother, was requested to force himself on them and he begot Dhrutarashtra and Pandu.

When the Pandavas lost everything in the game of dice, Draupadi was dragged to the court and an attempt was made to disrobe her in full view of the courtiers.

There are a number of stories in our puranas, in which men have ravished women. Many rulers, big and small, never bothered about the consent of a woman, who aroused their lust.

Today, in Kali Yuga’s rural India, which means Bharat to some great men, there are panchayats of various hues, which have not outgrown the mindset of the Mauryan times of more than 2000 years ago.

The laws of the land and the Indian Penal Code are not in force in those villages.

The mukhia or pradhan delivers judgements in consultation with the rich and powerful elders of the village including the mahajans or usurers, notorious for grabbing poor people’s lands.

Here, harsh and barbarous punishments are meted out for violating caste rules like disrobing and humiliating women and, in some case, even “honour killings”.

The powers that be are afraid of losing vote banks and treat these panchayats as holy cows.

The primary responsibility of a government is to enforce the laws of the land and maintain law and order in every nook and corner of the country without fear or favour or any desire to stay on in power somehow or other.

I wonder if new laws are going to help when the existing ones are not implemented properly.

The process of dilution of laws in their implementation and the price of indecision are already evident.

Meanwhile, the press and TV channels are making money with titillating stories for the public.