The rape and murder of the young 23- year- old in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, has unleashed the suppressed angst of millions of men and women in India and has led to endless debates and discussions across all media, which are not going to finish too soon, but will die down nonetheless, over time.Meanwhile, rapes, molestations, sexual harassment and abuse continue to happen at the same rate as they did before and morning papers carry reports about them on a daily basis, like they always did.
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I am a bit foxed because the least that the outrage should have achieved, was a reduction in the rate of rapes of women and children which happen by the hour, minute and seconds everyday in our nation, but not so. So, as usual, those who should be listening and responding to the revolution, are not. There is something that is missing in this discourse and after seeing Barkha Dutt’s show ‘We The People‘ which raised questions about the enemy within, I realized what it is.
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The discussion was about what measures we should take to prevent rape, what laws should be amended, which new laws should be established, how the police force should react, what filmmakers should do, and what role television must play. Here was why I realized, where we lose the battle every time that the monster raises its head and why issues always remain unresolved after the dust settles. Every time there is angst and rage on the streets, we begin to accuse everything around us, but talk only to each other, amongst ourselves, even if through segmented media.
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This could have happened to us, so let’s treat it as a moment to experience catharsis, deal with our fears and then go on with life, and pray that neither we nor our near and dear ones have to ever face it. We still, after so much crime, bloodshed and so much inequality and pain, have not understood that the enemy within, is us, ‘ourselves’. And what is to blame for our apathy, is our politics, which we allow to continue as it is, which we submit to. A politics which thrives on appeasement, a politics which defines leadership in the most warped idioms, a politics where leadership means inaction rather than change.
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Today the most silent section of our country is the political class, and we need to understand why. Today the shock over what has happened can be witnessed everywhere else but in the corridors of power. Let’s not forget, that the outraged maybe in millions, but the votes that count come from a majority that does not think that anything wrong has happened. They cannot understand why such a hue and cry is being made over a woman who should not have been out with a man on the streets at night.
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The piece of the pie which matters to politicians is that piece of the pie which actually believes that the 23- year- old was wrong in having defended herself, and that instead she should have either surrendered herself to the rapists or else joined her hands and asked for forgiveness by calling the men who were threatening to brutalize her.. ‘bhaiyya‘ and begged them for mercy. They believe that this kind of thing happens in India, not in Bharat. They think that all those women who are expressing angst are dented and painted, and no more time should be wasted upon the issue.
Why?
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Because in the India where numbers are unimportant, women and men express their angst and in Bharat in which numbers count, women suffer in silence and men do as they please. Is that the real difference between India and Bharat? Is it that women in India are dented and painted, and men in Bharat take vicarious pleasure to hear the son of the president of India say it to them with such shameless bravado?
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How outrageous are Asaram, Mohan Bhagat and Abhijeet Mukherjee? However unacceptable what they say may be, we have to realize that their words are the harsh truths about our larger society and let us make no mistake that the people whom these ridiculous men speak to, in the language that they understand, are not us, but certainly the majority, the greater numbers of our populace.
Those people who matter to the Asarams, the RSS Chiefs and politicians like Abhijeet Mukherjees are ones who will vote to bring their parties, their chosen leaders to power and are the ones who will elect sick men like them as Members of our Parliament.
Let’s get it straight.
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These men, Asaram, the RSS Chief and Abhijeet Mukherjee, are appeasing their voters and saying what their voters would like to hear them say. Because the larger section of our society believes that a woman should stay indoors, should be protected by her father and brothers, and maybe also get abused by them, and if she goes astray, which means if she asserts her independence, she should be taught a lesson, which means that she should be brutalized and raped, and her protectors, her father and brothers should kill her to save their own honour, which means, that is how women will continue to stay in the place allotted to them and will not dare to ever defy the rules imposed upon them.
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That is the very constituency our Government and its oppositions and allies are addressing in the wake of this horrific crime and fear losing if they so much as speak against their culture and for us, however perverted, convoluted and however pathetically archaic it may sound in modern times. So we should know why they remain silent when it comes to us, why they are guarded when they react to our anger and why they are terrified of saying anything in our favour which can threaten to tilt the faith that the majority has entrusted upon them. How can the men and women whose votes that matter be put off by our leaders? How can the khaps be told that they are medieval, bordering on insane, and that they should be punished for opening their mouths in present times?
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I have among my circles of friends, people who believe that had Nirbhaya not got into the bus, and even if she did, had she submitted to those horrible men instead of fighting them, she would have been alive today. I know people who believe that every woman in India goes through this at some time of her life or another, that all of them bear it and remain silent so that neither the family nor the community is insulted. So what’s the big deal?
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When I was in my teens, I had gone cycling to Pinjore from Chandigarh one day with one girlfriend and two boyfriends whom we used to play lawn tennis with at the YMCA. I had no clue that my girlfriend had not told her parents that we were with two of our boyfriends. We got delayed and it got a bit dark by the time we returned. My girlfriend’s mother called up my mother and told her that she was worried and my mother told her to relax because we were accompanied by two very nice guys who would see to it that we got home safe.
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My girlfriend’s mother was aghast to hear that we were with boys and that my mother was aware of it, and a bigger horror than that to her was that my mother was also cool about it. She actually told my mother off and my mother had to shut her up by telling her that she should be aware that YMCA stood for the Young Men’s Christian Association and by permitting her daughter to play lawn tennis there, she should know that she would be interacting with people of the opposite sex.
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When we got home a little later, my girlfriend got it really bad from her folks, was never seen at the courts again and could also never be my friend openly. These were very well educated parents. They had lived in the US for over 15 years before coming and settling down in India. They had seen the world but believed that their daughters could not, should not and must not be seen openly with boys. Our lies and hypocrisy starts from our homes. We make our children lie to us. Once when my friend’s mother caught us together, exchanging notes from school, after she had banned us from meeting each other, she warned me to keep away from her daughter. Then she felt sorry for me and turned around and told me that nothing is wrong with me but it is my parents who were at fault for not stopping me from playing tennis with the boys, for not stopping me from interacting with them, for having them over and also for going over to their homes.
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I was hurt and threw a tantrum when I got back home. I was angry with my parents for not being conservative like other parents were, for not being strict, for being liberal and allowing me to be independent. My father smiled and told me that he was very proud to be the way he was and that one thing he never wanted that we should ever do, is to lie, and that by leaving things open to our discretion, he had seen to it that he had given four honest kids to this world. I know that most such Indian parents, and there are many of them, know everything that their girls are up to. They are fine with their boys going out with girls, and even gloat about it, but not fine with their own girls experiencing the same liberation as their brothers.
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I know that in their youth, such parents were the same as their kids are now. I know that they too lied to their elders and now find more comfort in having their children tell them lies, rather than being unafraid and guilt free. In this they are able to retain their authority and keep fear instilled in their children, but what they don’t realize is that they are creating a generation that justifies hypocrisy as a status quo. When this veil of lies exists almost in every Indian home, then everything that cannot be talked about openly is forgiven, forgotten and swept beneath the carpet, and the constituency of society that suffers the most in that darkness and silence is women and children. Our hypocrisy, our consistency in justifying double standards as an acceptable social norm is the root cause of why we are in a confused state like this.
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The attitude cuts across all classes and stratas of our society and men get away with murder in every walk of life and the women who dare to break the silence, suffer alone, are deserted and ostracized. Is this what we can call a country for women?
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