Cultural Relativism Tolerates Barbarity

I'm sure there is a more daft, morally bankrupt analysis of the rape epidemic in India than this take, but right now I can't think of it.

Toilet Shortage in India Fuels Rape as Women Are Easy Prey; Walking to the Wheat Fields

Yes, I get it.  If modern plumbing were more pervasive in India, girls wouldn't have to poop in fields.  But what in tar-nation would lead a Western writer to conclude that this lack of plumbing fuels the underlying depravity of rape?  I'm a big fan of plumbing and I think everybody should have it, but this assessment is indicative of moral retardation.  The depravity behind these rapes pre-exists and is independent of modern conveniences like plumbing.  The lack of indoor plumbing only creates a better opportunity for the depravity to manifest itself in a committed crime.

“When women go to the fields they are easy prey for men,” said Shaibal Gupta, an economist at the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna in the eastern state of Bihar. “I struggle to describe it. It’s one of the most dastardly acts imaginable.”

This is logic in the complete absence of morality.  I could just as easily say that the lack of armed guards escorting little girls out into the fields to poop is fueling the rape epidemic.  The root of the problem is that women are seen as prey for assault in the first place, not that open-air defecation creates an opportunity for depraved men.  Lefties are always harping on root causes except, of course, if the root cause is a lack of morality, especially western Judeo-Christian morality - that would be judgmental and disrespectful of their culture.  OK then, don't be disrespectful or judgmental and watch more little girls get raped and murdered.
The whole gross affair (and the weenie lefty view of it) puts me in mind of British General Charles Napier...

A story for which Napier is famous involves a delegation of Hindu locals approaching him and complaining about prohibition of Sati, often referred to at the time as suttee, by British authorities. This was the custom of burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. The exact wording of his response varies somewhat in different reports, but the following version captures its essence: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”[2]