A few months ago, a young girl left a Bar
in Guwahati. A gang of 18 men set on her, dragged her onto the road by her
hair, ripped off her clothes, yanked up her vest and tugged at her bra, and
molested her. She was crying for help from the passing cars all the while. They
were laughing and smiling, staring into the several cameras that filmed them.
One of those cameras belonged to a News Channel’s reporter and camera man.
Welcome to India: the country where a woman can be a president, but must fear
for her safety; the country where women are beatified in its mythological lore
but abhorred and abused in society; the country where no lofty panegyric is
spared in proposing causes for empowering women but where women fight for a
place in society; the country where news channels have women as reporters and
shows devoted to women’s rights, but – devoid of any compunction – film the
molestation of a woman just to add to the sensational value of the case; the
country where men may frequent pubs, but the moment a woman does, she becomes a
prostitute. Welcome to India: the fourth worst country in the world, to be a
woman.
Forty five long minutes of abuse
transpired, while the hapless girl cried for help, begged for passing cars to
stop and suffered disrespect. When the police did come, the girl was whisked
away. She couldn’t be more than twenty. She was questioned, and then medically
examined. There wasn’t any attempt made to arrest the men - despite their faces
being as clear as day in the footage.
And all this, right in a place that boasts
of an exhibit in a museum that etches Mahatma Gandhi’s words (circa 1921),
stating thus: Of all the evils for which
man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so
brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex. All
this, right in the heart of the State of Assam, which by far is considered
female-friendly, with a largely matrilineal social setting.
All night long, the news channel, NewsLive,
continued playing the video of the girl’s molestation. In a bit, he got on
twitter to say that “prostitutes form a major chunk of girls who visit bars and
night clubs”. He has since resigned, but the damage was done. But public action
did not let the girl’s cause go unheard. The police were shamed into action by
residents of Guwahati – who printed and strung up an enormous banner alongside
one of the city's major roads, featuring mug-shots of the main suspects. A week
later, the chief minister of the State of Assam ordered the police to arrest a
dozen key suspects. The victim has been promised compensation.
Abuse of women in India is an everyday
affair, literally. And this is not a reflection of the mere extent depravity,
but a transgression of the standards of decency and an exposition of the
failure of governance in keeping violence against women in check. That a law
outlawing sexual harassment and molestation is still evading India is a
terrible amplification of this sordid reality. All the country has, is a
Neanderthal penal code that goes back to 1860, where save for rape, only the
“outraging the modesty of a woman” is punishable – with either seven, or two
years, as the case maybe. There’s nothing to punish the crimes “in between” –
and the latter is a terribly archaic and ambiguous term. Needless to say, the
hotbed of impunity that India is when it comes to women’s rights abuses and
violence against women, is facilitated by the climate of legal, governmental
and policy-based apathy.
A man in Rajasthan bit his wife so brutally
that she lost her face, literally, for her refusal to get more money from her
parents for dowry. In Udaipur, a woman’s head was shaved, and she was stripped
and beaten for having had an extramarital affair. A man in Indore, I read to my
horror today, kept his wife's genitals “locked”. He drilled holes on her body
and before going to work each day, would insert a small lock, tucking the keys
under his socks. A woman was sexually abused for years, and then had acid
thrown on her face and absolutely no one seems to be listening to her case. A
few children near Bhopal were found playing with a female foetus they had
mistaken for a doll in a bin. A dentist in Karnataka made his wife to drink his
urine because she refused to meet dowry demands. A father beheaded his daughter
in Rajasthan and paraded her bloody head as a caveat to other young women lest
they fall in love with a boy from a lower caste. As all of this transpires
without respite, the Parliament is still wondering if there is any reason for
them to pass the Bill on Sexual Harassment of Women.
It’s easy to blame ‘westernization’ for all
of this. It is easy to blame ‘women and their ways of dressing’ for all of
this. But does what a woman wears, says, or does, is no reason for her to be
ill-treated. Did the girl in Rajasthan dress skimpily? Or was the woman under
“lock” down too empowered for her husband to tolerate? Does a girl’s visit to a
pub automatically men she is a prostitute? What about a man’s visit, then?
After days of denouncing the Taliban and
its derogatory treatment of women, I’m ashamed to admit that the scenario in
India is as terrible as the Taliban’s ideals of women.
Why the hatred, really?
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