Talking of unparliamentary remarks, I thought the last word was said when Sanjay Nirupam made the 'thumka' remark about Smriti Irani's TV days and questioned her 'charitr'. How wrong I was! Even after that there was a steady flow of statements on same misogynist lines.
But it was Abhijith Mukherjee's remark that really took the cake. To begin with somehow I had hardly heard about him, though he is the son of President Pranab Mukherjee. His comment that only the painted and 'dented' (can't figure out what he mean't) women go for protests against the Delhi gangrape, showed Dilli Durbar's total disconnect with reality. His remarks even managed to divert the brickbats his father was getting for government's ineptitude in dealing with crimes against women.
Even after the woman's death, we had some BJP leader saying girls should not wear skirts. Once again the onus of upholding morality has fallen on the shoulders of girls. What to do boys will be boys - with libidos akin to water cannons, pumped up on a sumptuous diet of Honey Singh lyrics, Sunny Leone videos and a 'haseena maan jayegi' mindset!
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It is also a protest against a crony capitalism where not only wealth but even policing is cornered by a bunch of oligarchs, who have laid siege on Lutyen's Delhi.
Almost 30 per cent of the police force, probably the smarter and fitter among the lot, is tied up for the well being of these VIPs. Most of these policemen may be doing precious little other than buy vegetables for memsahibs and drop their children to school. This is not just the case with Delhi, but with most state capitals.
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Apart from the brutality of the incident, what probably evoked such a groundswell of protest is a feeling of empathy among the common public. The woman had gone for a movie and then taken a bus along with her male friend (thankfully, having a boyfriend no longer raises eyebrows or has been overlooked for now). The time was around 9:30 pm, not an ungodly hour. Somehow unlike earlier instances of such assaults this time there was no she-asked-for-it ring around it.
This particular case did manage to pierce through the iron curtain of public apathy. And the Delhi-centric national media was more than eager to roll in its OB vans and cameras and milk the issue dry for TRPs.
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It was indeed a heart warming sight to see the agitators withstand the water cannon in a chilly Delhi winter, when people even loath to take hot water baths. It is indeed ironic that the government came out with so much alacrity to quell the agitation, but did not even utilise half of that zeal in making streets safer for women.
But the agitation was not free from its share of controversies. It took a violent turn when some political goons joined the agitators and provoked the police. A more unfortunate fallout was that some of the women agitators themselves were eve-teased by men, who were drunk, and had come to have some 'fun'. What better place than a crowded protest meet where women have turned up in large numbers!
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Hang them, castrate them ... these nostrums were not just mouthed during angry private conversations, but in Parliament, TV debates and message boards of various websites. We had Mohandas Pai, former Infosys HR chief and revered figure of India Inc, come on TV and say that rapists should be castrated. The message board warriors wanted rapists even stoned to death, bobbitised; and in Facebook we had pictures of men hanged in public for rape in Saudi Arabia with numerous 'likes' and 'shares'. All this must have been sweet music to the Saud dynasty, Mullah Omar, Ayman al-Zawahiri and late Osama bin Laden!
But seriously, it shows the disgust the general public has towards the way our police and legal system functions and the pathetic conviction rates, which makes them advocate such drastic measures. And not because they have now fallen in love with such medieval practices.
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Now the Indian media, be it TV or newspaper seems to be on an overdrive to report sexual assault cases. Suddenly incidents happening even in remote parts, which usually used to get buried in inside pages as 'fillers' or 'killed' for more important stories, are getting prime-time slots.
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Came across a really hard hitting video of Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, which actually covers the whole gamut of the issue. Wish there were English subtitles, so that those who do not understand Hindi could also follow it.
Also Read: Bangalore Beat
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