Women’s safety is an issue that is widely discussed and debated in every corner of the world. However, over the years we’ve seen women’s safety being barged, taking the form of violent crimes. A 

 (NCRB) report in 2023 revealed that the crimes against women in India had surged 4% throughout 2022. 

 (NCW) registered a total of 28,811 complaints of crime against women in 2023 which includes dowry harassment, molestation, police apathy, rape and attempts of rape. 

These numbers are essential to be mentioned because incidents of abuse and harassment towards women continue to occur in our country even after repeatedly being documented and talked about. The recent 

 rape and murder case which has left us all in turmoil, is one of the many cases where the dignity of a human being is stolen and their life ripped away from their bright futures. 

On 9th August, 2024, a 31 year old medical trainee was brutally raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in 

. She was in her 36-hour shift at the hospital and had gone to sleep on a piece of carpet in the seminar hall due to the lack of dormitories or proper resting rooms. Her body was found the next day with extensive injuries and bleeding. An autopsy of the body found that she was sexually assaulted and then was brutally murdered. The number of assaulters is still being investigated, but one has been detained as the prime suspect in the case.

The case has sparked uproar in various parts of India, demanding women’s safety and the safety of doctors. 

 demanding the safety of healthcare professionals. The protests continued with hospitals closing down their OPDs, elective surgeries, and IPD services on 17th August, voicing demands for justice and safety.

In the midst of the rising voices, another case sparked angry protests in 

. Two minor girls, aged three and four, were sexually assaulted in a Badlapur school by a male attendant. They had gone to the toilet where there were no female staff present. The case has made distressed parents enter the school premises and vandalise the property, as well as block railway lines as a protest. It has brought into the picture the question of students’ safety inside the school premises and an urgent need for stringent measures.

On August 12, 2024, another report came from 

 district, where a 22-year-old woman was gang raped by four men and video recorded the assault. One of the four men is a 25-year-old DMK functionary and a member of the 

, and another one is a 17-year-old juvenile. It was revealed that the accused were under the influence of heavy drugs when the crime was committed. The woman reported the case the night it happened and was taken to a hospital, while the four men were arrested.

Another nurse was allegedly raped and murdered on her way home by a daily wage labourer. She was filed missing on July 31st and her body was found on August 8th. A 14 year old Dalit girl was gang raped and murdered in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. She was kidnapped on August 11th and her mutilated body was found in a pond on August 12th. The police have yet to arrest the main perpetrator, who has been accused of kidnapping the girl and pressuring her family for marriage. In Bulandshah, a government official allegedly raped a 10-year-old Dalit girl as well as sexually assaulted a goat, on August 12th.

These are only a few cases of the several reported daily. An NCRB report said that in India an average of 86 rape cases daily were of rape against women, with 49 cases of crime against women being filed in an hour, in 2021. According to the Women, Peace and Security Index 2023, India ranks 128th out of 177 countries. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) says that 30% of women in India between the age of 14 and 19 years have faced some kind of physical, sexual or domestic abuse. Our country ranks 7th in the top 10 worst countries for political violence against women in 2022.

India, a country with the 5th largest GDP and the largest democracy in the world, lacks behind in providing a safer environment to women. Ensuring stricter laws, installing surveillance cameras and safety measures, and a quick justice system, that lags in the country, is the need of the hour. The importance of awareness and education of women has been reiterated over time and should be of utmost priority. It has been 77 years since India’s Independence. But we cannot call a country free where half of the population is restricted from achieving their full potential due to the lack of a safe environment. Thus, it is fundamental that the growth and well being of the women of India be ensured. It is only then that this country can actually march towards progress.

Examining Violations of Women’s Safety in India

For a very long time authors’ names have been used to describe certain situations and times. Orwellian, Byronian, Shakespearean, Dickensian and Kafkaesque are some of the popular ones. This is credited to their unique style of painting reality and their influence in the socio-cultural spheres throughout history. They have left behind footprints that later culturalists and authors follow and look up to.

On 3rd July, 1883 a child was born in a German speaking Jewish family in 

. He was the oldest of six children and son to an authoritarian father. Throughout Kafka’s life, he had a conflicting relationship with his father due to the man’s ill temper and lack of support for Kafka’s writing interests. His father often appeared in his writings as a representation of overwhelming despotic power.

Kafka was working in an insurance company, until he had to leave it due to tuberculosis. He was exhausted and tortured by the routine office life which caused his personal relationships to be neurotically disturbed. Kafka had 

 as his lifelong friend, who we have to thank for editing and publishing some of Kafka’s work and putting it out to the world, despite the author’s instructions to destroy them after his death.

Kafka’s writings have been called Kafkaesque. Merriam-Webster dictionary description of Kafkaesque is 

“of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz

or his writings especially, having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.”

 In each of Kafka’s works, you would find elements of this build up of absurdness and irrationality.

 is one of Kafka’s most well known and widely read books, published during his lifetime. From the very beginning of the book we find a kafkaesque situation as our protagonist, 

 wakes up, one day, from troubled dreams and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. The story is almost an hour long and one could easily finish it in one sitting. It touches upon the feelings of alienation and isolation, which are very quotidian in Kafka’s world. As a human, Samsa was not very happy with the life he was living, constantly exhausted and trapped by the boredom of a routined life and obligations. His life did not change much as he metamorphosed into an insect. He was still trapped within the walls of his room and his family showed very little compassion. They were bureaucratically indifferent and emotionally distanced. His office manager’s visit too was a representation of the authoritarianism and oppression that Samsa felt. Samsa is found to be caged in a mechanical world revolving around him, unable to escape.

, another one of Kafka’s short stories, produces a similar sense of absurdness and confinement. Living in a cage, the protagonist is a man who starves himself for the entertainment of the public. He takes pride in his art of starvation and desires to attract as much audience as possible. Over time however, his fame declines as people start losing interest. When he joins the circus, his life becomes one of isolation and detachment. He watches people ignore his presence and a sense of loneliness sets into the skin of the hunger artist. He dies of his starvation only to be replaced by a zealous panther who felt freedom even within the bars of the cage. The story is Kafkaesque in its portrayal of a passionate artist whose pain becomes only a cage to pass by just to reach the actual attraction.

 is one of Kafka’s long fiction works and revolves around a character called 

 and his trial against a crime he himself is unaware of. The book shows a complex bureaucratic structure within which K. finds himself trapped. Yet again, we find common themes of alienation and isolation, combined with absurdity and irrationality. As K. explores the bureaucracy of the legal system, he finds out how surreal and irrational it is. The book allows us to question the existential anxieties and the meaning of life as one faces the oppressiveness of the modern system.

Kafka’s style of writing probably developed as a result of his life experiences- his authoritarian father, the monotonous work life and his poor health conditions. Writing worked as an escape for the author and thus, we find the reflections of his feelings in his stories. The characters mentioned in the above three all struggled through oppressive and isolating realities, just like Kafka had, until they faced their inevitable deaths.

Kafka’s contribution to the world of literature is immense. He did not just develop his own style of writing which influenced several contemporary writers, such as 

Albert Camus, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges and Jean-Paul Satre,

 but also brought about a philosophy that allowed us to look at the world from a different perspective. Kafka gave life to a nightmarish genre, a cage of absurd, strange and oppressive phenomena that one cannot escape. You can only strive through it. That is the essence of Kafkaesque, surviving through a nightmare world. That is the genius creation of Franz Kafka.

Kafkaesque: Kafka’s Nightmare Worlds

When it comes to popular social media apps such as 

, mental health illnesses are often seen to be discussed lightly, whether in the form of short videos, memes, or images. One may say that this has helped in normalizing the topic and initiating the discourse around it, which was indeed the primary intention of this trend. But over time, we have noticed an increase in the portrayal of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, OCD, or self-harm as “trendy”, “cool” or “romantic.” This has led to the misrepresentation of mental illnesses, which has often resulted in mitigating their severity. Depression is not just having a sad mood, anxiety is not the same as 

. They are much more than these fleeting moments and require professional help.

What is even more disturbing is that there are channels and pages on social media that promote eating disorders and self-harm. People use hashtags such as 

, which are abbreviations of Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and eating disorders, to upload posts that promote dangerous behaviors. A simple search on Tumblr with #ana will lead you to several posts talking about eating disorders, often in a very unhealthy manner. “Thinspo”, which means 

, is a recent trend on social media to promote unhealthy eating habits to be skinnier. The goal is to lose weight and have a “

 type. The craze for a thigh gap, protruding collar bones, sharp jaw lines, and thin waist as promoted on social media often leads to severe eating disorders, especially among young girls, by setting unrealistically high standards of beauty. These social media posts not only show a romantic version of eating disorders but also provide steps to develop such disorders as if having them would help one become what is considered conventionally beautiful.

Images circulated in social media about mental health are often very aesthetically pleasing. One might look at these images and say they are artistic or poetic, but the truth is they only serve as distorters to the actual face of the illness. The use of filters, mood boards, poetic lines, and memes reduces the shock effect and almost makes the illness look elegant or attractive. Very often, on social media, self-harm is portrayed as something that is 

 or shown in a very romantic light, when the truth is that self-injury is a result of strong emotional pain. It is as damaging to call self-harm beautiful and artistic, as it is to call it crazy or lunatic. It is a matter of serious concern that requires professional treatment. 

Politics and JMI

“health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these).”

 Mental illnesses cause distress and often interrupt the social, family, and work lives of people. Mental illnesses are like any other physical illness that we might suffer from and can be treated with the help of professional psychiatrists and psychologists. 

Mental health, for a very long time, was considered taboo, and conversation on the topic was silenced. With social media connecting more and more people, discussions on mental health and related illnesses have gained a new surge. However, more often than not, the description of mental illness and disorders over social media has failed to provide a realistic image of what they are. This is where the concern about the glamorization of mental illness over social media and how it might affect the youth, comes into play.When it comes to popular social media apps such as 

With more and more people reducing mental disorders to just an aesthetic, the real conversation gets buried under several mood boards and grayscale images. Though people are now more aware of the existence of mental illness, there has been a reversed effect of these platforms, where people have started considering psychological problems as appealing, easy to tackle, and even desirable to a certain extent. These negligent discussions surrounding serious topics misguide people into unhealthy habits and lifestyles. Along with that, there is a tendency to self-diagnose yourself with a disorder because of misinformation taken from the internet. People start desiring to have a disorder since having a disorder is considered attractive or 

It would, however, be wrong to say that glamorization of mental illness is found only in social media. As we are speaking of social media, it should only be right if we mention movies, television media, music, clothing, and literature have, for years, been culprits of romanticizing and glamorizing psychological disorders. It has become high time that we address these issues. There is a need to break these walls of aesthetic representation of mental illnesses and educate people about the fact that mental illness is painful, and pain is not pretty. The focus should shift to the importance of seeking help and providing the needed support, rather than gaining more followers or attention from the general public.

Articles by Zakia Tasnim Ahmed

Examining Violations of Women’s Safety in India

Kafkaesque: Kafka’s Nightmare Worlds

Politics and JMI

Glorification of Mental Illness on Social Media

Examining Violations of Women’s Safety in India

Kafkaesque: Kafka’s Nightmare Worlds

Politics and JMI

Glorification of Mental Illness on Social Media