WUNRN
Radical social interventions are needed urgently before things reach a point where the state simply cannot do
anything about it and it becomes a “reality” to be accepted.
By
Two years ago, on New
Year’s Eve, a girl was molested on the streets of Delhi in front of a crowd. The
video went viral—as did the spectacle of a mob of men falling upon the woman
and the police thrashing the rabid mob with lathis (batons) like a pack of
dogs.
While anger against the
molesters was rampant, what struck me was the idea that a group of men can act
on a whim to sexually assault a woman on a busy road with no one, apparently,
having a problem with it. The police fished the trembling girl out of the mass
of bodies, sheltering her with their own bodies and swinging their batons to
drive away the men circling around, still intent on her.
A December night in
Schoolboys in Mumbai pose for a picture in
the aftermath of the
A few months later, a
similar incident played out in the northeastern city of
Another incident in Mangalore saw a birthday party
in a private farmhouse encroached on by members of a right-wing group called
the Hindu Jagaran Vedike, accompanied by local media (who alerted the police).
The owners of the farmhouse had allegedly stopped paying money to the
right-wing group and the attack was seen as retaliation. The assailants
thrashed the boys, slapped a girl, and tried to force them to perform sexual
acts on camera. A girl jumped from the first floor to escape the mob but was
caught and stripped by the thugs.
To me, these group
actions are more alarming than your garden-variety rapes and molestations
because there seems to be no hesitation to be witnessed by peers while
performing such crimes. The idea that a crime can be proposed—and that a group
of people will take up the idea and act on it—signifies deep fractures in
gender relations in Indian society. There is a certain contempt for women, a
certain dehumanization that allows for this to become an acceptable action.
Inflicting harm on
another person is not easy. Each of us sees ourselves as ideal. No person wants
to be a criminal, an inflictor of injustice. No person is comfortable seeing
himself or herself as the cause of another's pain. For these actions to be
possible, the victim must be somehow rendered “fair game”—deserving of the
punishment meted out to “teach her a lesson.” Or the victim must be an object
so completely dehumanized that the question of her having feelings does not
matter.
Somehow, we are turning
into a society in which there is a growing consensus among men that sexual
assault is acceptable—those who “normally” respect women sometimes start to
find reasons to make exceptions for some of them, e.g., those who are out late
at night, those who seemed to be “asking for it.”
There is a collective
inability to sustain an unambiguous message that a woman who refuses sexual
contact must be inviolable.
Also, the feminists are
right and wrong. This may not be desire, but it is fun.
Somehow, we have people
who see rape as fun—a team bonding game for the “sexually potent male club.”
This is why you have police talking about rape victims
overreacting to “a little fun” that resulted from them provoking their rapists.
They do not seem unfamiliar with the idea of a group of men having “fun” with a
woman they pick up. This is how women get accused of provoking men by
“flaunting their sexuality,” and men simply “misunderstanding.” “Wares
advertised,” but deal reneged on. How common is this?
***
The Delhi gang rape caught the nation’s
imagination, but the horror for me was the Mumbai gang rape of a photojournalist, in which she was one of a
series of women who had been gang raped in that location. Women who hadn't filed complaints. Gang rapes
that were discovered from the confessions of the rapists. Rag-pickers and other
street women who “don’t matter”—one imagines they did not expect much from the
law. There was an utter casualness—a kind of loose gang rape group with no
particular closeness, level of trust, or sense of loyalty between the men.
Police searched for the
rapists, so the young man helped them find them. People he had raped with on
other occasions. One has to wonder how the police knew who to ask as well. Were
these “boys having fun” that the police were aware of and knew to ask if
someone complained? On top of all this, the mother of one of the rapists helped
her son evade the police.
But these acts still
consist of strangers as perpetrators. Another gang rape in
So coming now to the
“hot news” these days…
On December 23, a 16-year-old girl in
eastern Kolkata died of burn injuries that the police initially tried to pass
off as a suicide attempt. In October, a young man she knew vaguely told her
that her father had asked her to come from her home to a nearby shop. Instead,
she was abducted, blindfolded, taken to a home, gang raped, and dumped in a
field. The next day, when her father took her to the police station to file a
complaint, the same rapists assaulted her father,
kidnapped her again, and gang-raped her again, this time dumping her near the
railway tracks.
After facing intimidation to withdraw the case,
scant police protection, and finally being assaulted and set on fire, she lost
her battle to live. She was pregnant when she died.
The response of the
state is something we have come to expect from West Bengal Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee's government. In a state where any bad news is called a
Maoist/Communist conspiracy, this girl had the misfortune of having a father
who actually belonged to a union dominated by Communist Party of India
(Marxist). When the CPI(M) declared that they would carry the body in a
procession for cremation as a mark of protest, the state-controlled police
abducted the body and tried to cremate it themselves to prevent the protest.
But they were unable to cremate it without a death certificate, which the
father refused to surrender to the police. This resulted in a huge political
row. Finally, seemingly on the order of “higher ups,” the police
returned the body to the family.
While this rape didn't
make too many waves at that time (taxi driver’s daughter—who cares?), another
double gang rape in the southeastern city of
When she escaped and
made it back to her friend and boyfriend that evening, she was attacked again by another,
supposedly unrelated group of seven men and raped by six of them. The boyfriend
is himself under suspicion in the case, though he did not rape her. The victim
has said she did not know any of her rapists. Two policemen were suspended for
refusing to file a case for such a complaint.
A.M.H. Nazeem, a
politician for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, which claims to fight for
social justice for Dravidian people, characterized this horror story as
“prostitution.” Not surprising, considering that the main man accused in the
case is a close aide of Nazeem—and that most of those arrested are DMK cadre.
***
Women’s rights have no
inherent value of their own in
“Sex” still sells.
On the other hand, the country’s women are living under a
permanent shadow of potential violence against them, where the first person to
be blamed for their devastation is likely to be them. A girl cannot speak of
simple street harassment at home because the first advice she gets will likely
be to stay home and play it safe. Support, too, may not succeed. Many men get
attacked—knives seem to be a favorite—for protecting women.
Endless stories of
police disinterest and politicians’ misogyny perpetuate a certain perception of
okayness about a little “men will be men” behavior with women who “provoke” by
existing. Impunity may be decreasing but the social stigma continues to belong
to women. There continues to be little deterrent to men who may start some “man
talk” about how a woman is asking for it that draws likeminded participants and
snowballs till a group consensus forms for a crime. We continue to see
self-confessed serial rapist God-men as victims of a political conspiracy to
malign them.
Evaluating women as
objects continues to be hip, as witnessed by the
ongoing bewilderment of singer Palash Sen over feminist anger when he asked a
college crowd if there were beautiful girls in their college. The crowd roared
back “No!” Sen genuinely does not see what the issue is in recommending that
parents of beautiful girls send them to an engineering college so that the
intelligent men there have some visual relief. He may have the misfortune of
being crass in the spotlight, but he’s hardly alone in the complete inability
to see women beyond their utility to men.
It is a pervasive dehumanization that is
spreading. At a casual level, it patronizes women. At another intensity, it
savages them.
The inability to see
women as actual humans is increasing—it no longer remains something that can be
explained as orthodox misogyny. Much of the dehumanization is modern. It will
also grow as women break through barriers previously imprisoning them,
triggering a reflex backlash in an attempt to bring them under control as well
as prevent them from sharing credibility as equals.
Our collective focus
tends to be on police or security features or political insensitivity or judicial
lapses, but the fact is that this issue has already grown beyond the ability of
any of these institutions to prevent—the idea that a woman can be
entertainment, can be further exploited to punish, and once violated is soiled,
whether she likes it or not. In other words, “do what you will as long as no
one objects” is already here, couched with excuses, preying on the fringes
where no one pays attention to the plight of women “who don't matter” for
class, caste, or religion. Any punishments that take place happen out of the
sightlines of society and serve no deterrent.
This is a tinderbox
waiting to explode. Radical social interventions are needed urgently before things reach a
point where the state simply cannot do anything about it and it becomes a
“reality” to be accepted.