The Hindu Editorial Analysis : 2nd November 2022

02/11/2022

Table of Contents

The Hindu Editorial Analysis:

We all are aware of the importance of reading The Hindu newspaper with the aspect of improving reading ability, easily comprehending paragraphs, getting updated with the current events, improving essay writing and many more. For a banking aspirant it becomes necessary to read editorials for vocabulary. In this article we are going to discuss the points of today’s editorials with practice questions and important vocabs.

Reporting Rapes.

For a rape survivor, trauma comes in repeat doses.
First, there is the gruesome act and then follows the difficult task of reporting the assault.
For years, an impediment to coming forward about sexual offence has been the finger test a survivor is subjected to a gross violation of privacy,a horror upon horrors.
On Monday, the supreme court of India move to make amends, declaring that any person conducting the invasive”two finger” or “three finger” vaginal test on rape or sexual assault survivors will be found guilty of misconduct.
Calling it regressive, the bench led by Justice D.Y Chandrachud said,”this so called test has no scientific basis and neither proves nor disproves allegations of rape.
It instead re-victimises and re-traumatises women who may have been sexually assaulted, and is an affront to their dignity.
The apex court said whether women is “habituated to sexual intercourse” or “habitual to sexual intercourse” is irrelevant for purposes of determining whether there has been a rape under section 375 of Indian penal code.
The test,it said,is based on the incorrect assumption that a sexually active women cannot be raped ;and it is patriarchal and sexist to suggest that a women cannot be believed when she states that she was raped.
The court pointed at a legislative measure of 2013 when section 53A was added to the Indian evidence act when clearly said that the “evidence of a victim’s character or of her previous sexual experience with any person shall not be relevant to the issue of consent or the quality of consent, in prosecutions of sexual offences”.
The Ministry of Health and family welfare had issued guidelines, saying the finger test must not be conducted.
It is now up to governments, health centers and police stations act with sensitivity and without discrimination and ensure women have access to justice and dignity while reporting rape.

Practice Questions:

What the supreme court recently declared about the finger test?
What guidelines have been declared by the ministry of health and family welfare?
What is meant by finger test of a rape case?

Important Vocabs:

Consent- to agree to something
Patriarchal- controlled by men rather than women (used about a society or system)
Apex- the top or highest part of something
Affront- something that you say or do that is insulting to somebody
Impediment- something that makes it difficult for a person
Gruesome- used about something concerned about death.