Indian sisters to be raped as 'punishment' for brother eloping

[struggle4progress]

19. I'm not excusing it at all; nor am I ridiculing India. Lynch law in the US persisted

into my lifetime, despite the widespread horror such events produced in much of this country; and there are many people, older than I, still alive, who have graphic personal memories of local refusals to acknowledge the legitimacy of Federal authority here, as opposed to prevailing "custom"

The United States is a very large country, which has had enormous social differences, and the Federal authority here, limited from the beginning and further challenged by the violence of the civil war and the reconstruction era, was not really consolidated until WWII. Some of this broad history and social structure resembles that of India; and so understanding political conditions in one case might shed light on political conditions in another