(INDIA)
Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News) [Hong Kong]
July 8, 2026
By Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ
India’s violence against women reflects a deeper moral and cultural failure that demands lasting change
A nation does not fail women only when a crime is committed. It fails them much earlier. It fails them when girls are taught to shrink their dreams. It fails them when boys are not taught reverence. It fails them when public spaces become unsafe, homes become prisons, institutions become indifferent, and society learns to move on after each outrage.
India has heard too many stories of women who vanish, women who are assaulted, women who are trafficked, women who are silenced, women whose pain becomes a headline for one day and a statistic the next.
The phrase “missing women” is chilling because it hides so much. A missing woman may be a daughter, a student, a migrant worker, a mother, a domestic worker, a tribal girl, a woman fleeing violence, or someone trapped in networks of exploitation. She is never merely “missing.” She has been failed.
The crisis is not only criminal. It is cultural. Every society creates the conditions under which women are either honored or endangered. When masculinity is trained in dominance, women pay the price. When families protect reputation more than truth, women pay the price. When police stations become places of fear rather than help, women pay the price. When economic desperation pushes women into unsafe work and migration, women pay the price. When digital culture turns bodies into objects of consumption, women pay the price.
We must be honest. India worships goddesses, but often wounds and enslaves women, especially rural women. It celebrates motherhood but often ignores real mothers. It praises women’s achievement but still asks women to live in fear. A woman calculates routes, timings, clothing, transport, phone battery, street lighting, and male behavior in ways many men never have to imagine. This daily mental burden is itself a form of injustice for the so-called “better half.”
The issue is deeper than law and order. Laws are necessary. Fast investigation is necessary. Punishment is necessary. But fear will not disappear only through punishment after violence. A humane society must prevent violence before it becomes a police case. Prevention begins in the family, the school, the street, the workplace, the parish, the hostel, the panchayat, the police station, the political party, and the media room.
Religious communities cannot remain silent. The Church must ask itself whether women, particularly religious women, feel heard, trusted, and protected in its spaces. Does the girl child experience the Church as a place of freedom? Do women in distress know where to go? Do parish communities notice domestic violence, trafficking, abandonment, and unsafe migration? Do sermons speak clearly against male entitlement? Do Church institutions form boys into caring men and girls into confident persons?
A Catholic response cannot stop with charity after tragedy. It must include moral formation. Boys must learn that strength is not domination. Men must learn that desire is not entitlement. Families must learn that honor lies in truth, not silence. Schools must teach consent, dignity, equality, and emotional maturity. Workplaces must protect women not through token policies, but through real accountability. Public authorities must make safety visible through lighting, transport, shelters, helplines, rapid response, and survivor-sensitive policing.
The media too must recover responsibility. Women’s suffering should not be turned into spectacle. The victim’s dignity must matter more than the drama of the crime. Society must resist both voyeurism and forgetfulness. Each case should deepen public conscience, not merely feed public anger.
There is also a spiritual question. What does it mean to believe in human dignity if women cannot walk without fear? What does it mean to speak of development if girls disappear? What does it mean to celebrate economic growth if women’s bodies remain unsafe in homes, buses, factories, farms, hostels, and streets?
The measure of civilization is not how loudly it praises women on special days. It is whether women can survive and flourish without fear on ordinary days.
India does not need another ritual of outrage. It needs conversion. Men must change. Families must change. Institutions must change. Religious communities must change. The state and society too. And the change must begin before the next woman disappears.
A missing woman is not only a police file. She is a wound in the nation’s soul.
*Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ is a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and professor of business ethics. He writes on ethics, faith, gender justice, technology, sustainability, and human dignity. Website: www.kuru.in Email: kuru@jdv.edu.in. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.