Rape, Protests and Whataboutery

Rape has once again ceased to be a statistic. In our country it happens once in a few years and in its wake brings in a widespread convulsive outrage, which spills on to the streets.

Keyboard warriors call for eye for an eye retribution and as a template cite methods used in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, whom they otherwise look down upon. Some end up betraying their latent patriarchy, while others, especially the political class, end up with their foot well entrenched in their mouths.

Last time it was the infamous December, 2012 Delhi gang-rape, often referred to as Nirbhaya case. As the incident happened in the national capital, it instantly caught the eye of national television. Egged on by saturation TV coverage and continuous buzz on social media, the outrage was instantaneous.

Delhi's wintry smog laden streets got filled with protesters and the government of the day had a tough time dealing with them. Footage of policemen using water cannons and canes to control the restive mob became a staple fare of almost all TV channels.

In Delhi even those who had never taken part in a protest in their lives got busy preparing placards and heading to protest venues. All this put the government of the day on back foot.

Newspapers were forced to report every rape case that came their way and that too provide a good display instead of relegating them to 'in brief' sections.

Dinner table conversations started veering over the topic and parents of teenage children had tough time answering queries like 'what is rape?' or how different it was from molestation!

The pontificating anchors pointed out the victim was just like us, called her 'India's daughter' and cautioned us that it could happen to any of us and they whipped up a sentiment of blood lust among the masses. The culprits happened to be from the fringes of society with no political or social clout, the very riff-raff detested by the middle class.

They were put immediately behind bars and going by the standards of Indian judiciary the trials were speedy enough. The government also formed the Justice Verma commission, which recommended many changes in laws related to sexual assaults.

Gradually the outrage died down and the daily rapes retreated to its realm of statistics and police record books.

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The current outrage, in contrast, is a slow-burn one caused by gruesome rapes in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir and Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, which acquired limelight months after the actual incident. In the interim period they remained on life support on social media through the posts filed by activists fighting the cases.

Both cases were different from the Delhi rape in one aspect - the alleged perpetrators were influential people with political and social clout.

Moreover since both places were located far away from the myopic TV cameras of our news channels they got little attention and the cases dragged on for months with the perpetrators almost succeeding in burying them.

In fact the clout enjoyed by the perpetrators at Kathua was so strong that there were street demonstrations in the district to defend them. They even unfurled the Tricolour and invoked religious symbols to defend the perpetrators. The accused included a temple priest and few police officers.

Even more appalling was the conduct of the lawyers who actively protested the filing of the chargesheet by the crime branch against the accused.

In Unnao rape case the accused happened to be a BJP MLA and hence the matter was in deep freeze from day one. The tipping point was reached when the Unnao rape victim's father died after being in police custody. Around the same time the contents of Kathua case chargesheet was published in a Delhi newspaper.

For national media this was its Rip Van Winkle awakening. TV channels could no longer remain in their cosy self-censored bubbles and ignore the protests breaking out in every corner of the country, mostly orchestrated through social media.

But having been embedded with the establishment for the past four years, they were not exactly comfortable in attacking it. Soon whataboutery crept in, where were these protesters when rapes happened in Assam, where is the money collected through social media campaign going.

One channel began an innuendo campaign against Deepika Singh, the valiant lawyer who has taken up the Kathua case against heavy odds, alleging that she was pocketing the money.

Moreover, the moment Prime Minister broke his silence expressing displeasure over such 'incidents', TV channel displayed the same kind of euphoria that a child shows after he gets back his favourite toy, which he had thought was lost forever.

For them it was a early ghar wapsi after a brief flirtation with anti-establishment hashtags.

Image courtesy: Facebook

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Leaf Out of a Pepper Spray's Diary

February 13: It was like any other suffocating 'bottled up' day (do we have a choice!!). Though I have been in news from time to time, in public consciousness I am more of a wall flower like say fire extinguishers. We are thought of only during distress and soon forgotten. In fact many who buy us don't get a chance to use it even once in real life situations. Either such situations don't arise or they lose their nerve. In the west the police use me to 'pacify' unruly protestors thanks to my ability to evoke tears and even cause temporary blindness, but in India policemen use good old lathis to accomplish that.

Though I share my first name with that of a well known bitter tasting spice, it is quite a misnomer. I am more a creature made in laboratories than farms.

In India only time I trended was when the brutal gangrape of Nirbhaya in Delhi caught the country's imagination. Soon I began rubbing shoulders with lipsticks and i-Phones in the handbags of some well heeled Delhi women, especially those working in BPOs and jobs which require them to be out at not so civilized timings. Even some companies did some bulk purchase for their women employees.

All that warmed the cockles of my heart as I was instilling confidence among women and other vulnerable sections against vicious attacks by perverts and criminals.

Sigh all that today got pricked, thanks to the much maligned political class. I don't want to recall the incident, as it has all been in newspapers and TV with screaming headlines. Though the act per se hardly raises any eyebrows as the people of this country are quite inured to their lawmakers indulging in such hideously unlawful acts, nor do I have any sympathy for those affected by my discharge as they are no better. What pains me is getting caught in the cesspool, a taint which I may find it difficult to live down.

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Delhi Rape: Random Thoughts II

India's Tahirir Square moment seems to have opened a can of worms - the issue of sexual harassmsent, patriarchal values, sex ratio and many other gender centric issues have now become part of public discourse and also caught many political leaders with foot right inside their mouths.

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.

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