How can we ensure the safety and well-being of our women?

The people of Bangladesh are now searching for a Hercules. It is difficult to determine whether the entire country has become another Troy. Many believe that only a Hercules-like figure can rescue them from the monstrous acts being inflicted upon women—just as the legendary hero was glorified in the Trojan War for saving a maiden. As children, we used to see similar heroes in Bengali cinema—those who would arrive just in time to protect women from harassment or take revenge by punishing the perpetrators.

But can a Hercules truly bring about a complete transformation in the country’s overall situation?

On August 7, 2024, my spouse and I were returning to Dhaka from Khagrachari. Due to ongoing unrest, there were fewer vehicles on the road. With no direct buses available, we decided to travel in segments. We reached Mohipal in Feni and waited for another bus to continue our journey.

After some time, a bus arrived. Just as we were about to board, the conductor noticed the bangles on my wife's wrists and the sindoor on her forehead. He abruptly declared, "I will not let any Awami League supporters board this bus today."

We stood frozen at Mohipal for a long time. Tears welled up in my wife’s eyes. The eyes of passersby and protesters were fixed on us—filled with vengeance, as if ready to crush us. For the first time in my life, I felt unsafe in my own country. And yet, neither of us had ever supported either the Awami League or BNP. At that moment, I longed for someone like Hercules—a revolutionary, or even a law enforcement officer—to intervene, to hold the bus conductor accountable, or to protect us from the hateful gazes of the crowd.

But then I wondered: even if Hercules did come, what about the next bus stop? What if another conductor behaved the same way? What if another mob looked at us with the same vicious intent somewhere else? Could Hercules possibly be everywhere, every time?

In recent days, multiple incidents of rape have occurred across the country. From a four-year-old girl who had gone to collect flowers for a floral tribute on February 21 to elderly women—no one has been spared. Even a moving bus was stopped so that gang rape could be carried out.

In an act reminiscent of Hercules, a man killed the person who had raped his wife. People applauded. Many believe that taking justice into one’s own hands is justified, or that the death penalty for rapists should be swiftly ensured by the criminal justice system.

Strict laws, active law enforcement, or even the emergence of a Hercules-like vigilante can create a form of vertical surveillance, which might temporarily deter individual rapists. Classical criminology suggests that humans are rational beings who act based on the pleasure-pain principle—if committing a crime brings more pain than pleasure, they will refrain from doing it.

But the real problem lies in the environment that continuously produces rapists. A child grows up in a household where women are treated as commodities, watches movies and advertisements that objectify women, listens to religious teachings that imply a woman’s role is to serve men, learns from friends, and sees teachers engaging in inappropriate behavior with female students. This environment gradually shapes the belief that women are objects of consumption. The issue is not just the emergence of individual rapists—it is the creation of a rape culture and the normalization of ideologies that support sexual violence.

This means that while strict laws, active law enforcement, and capital punishment may create temporary deterrence through vertical surveillance, they cannot eliminate the environment that fosters such attitudes.

This is why modern criminal justice systems advocate for horizontal change. While vertical surveillance may be necessary in some cases, true transformation must come through reforms in education, changes in religious institutional teachings, shifts in drama, cinema, and advertisements to eliminate the portrayal of women as mere objects, and a fundamental shift in societal attitudes towards women—at the levels of state, community, and family.

Great thinkers have said that to make barren land fertile again, one must remove seven layers of soil—a fundamental transformation.

Likewise, to change a nation, all its stakeholders and institutions require a radical transformation—one as deep as removing seven layers of soil.