Politics

Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on the Gang Rape in New Delhi and India's Selective Outrage

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New Delhi has been at a boiling point ever since the gang rape and death of the 23-year-old woman. The outrage is completely understandable. What's not understandable, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in the Bloomberg View, is why there was not equal outrage 11 years ago when the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, allowed a pogrom and mass rapes of Muslim women. She notes:

 Modi, who has quelled restive minorities by allowing attackers to subject women to unspeakable horrors, has done more than any man to numb his prudish country to sexual violence. Yet he was elected to a third term last month and is the presumptive front-runner of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main Hindu opposition party, for prime minister in next year's national elections.

So long as Indians keep rewarding politicos such as Modi, the country's collective outrage after the New Delhi case won't change the culture that makes such atrocities common in India.

Go here to read the whole thing.