Here’s Why The Biggest Slum In India Is Honoring A Fictional Rape Victim
by The Daily Eye Team June 3 2015, 5:26 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 42 secsRam Devineni has been thinking a lot lately about shakti — a word that translates loosely from the Sanskrit to “female power.” It’s a transformative concept in a country like India, where the highest profile criminal cases tend to revolve around sexual abuse. The brutal gang rape in 2012 of a student in Delhi led Devineni to create Priya’s Shakti, a ground breaking comic book that aims to inspire empathy for rape survivors in readers. His moment of inspiration came during a conversation with a Delhi police officer, who seemed to blame the victim for her fate. Disturbed by the cop’s view — essentially, that good girls don’t walk alone at night — Devineni set about trying to write a new cultural narrative.