Source: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/doublespeak-on-womens-rights/article5444773.ece
apy intern.
apy intern.
She struggled to fight the odds, but succumbed in the end. The young
woman died against her own desperate wish to recover and live life fully
and normally, without in any way feeling diminished for having been
through the ordeal. With her exemplary courage and matter-of-fact
defiance of the rape-victim stereotype, she became a metaphor for the
new urban woman — independent, brave and determined to be her own
person.
Tragically, the political class was unable to absorb this message. Two
days after the rape, Parliament debated the issue in painfully illiberal
language, with several MPs holding that the young woman had been
scarred for life. Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok
Sabha, lamented that rape victims could be counted “neither among the
dead nor the living.” Further, she said, even if the young woman
survived, she would live as a jeevit lash (living dead). Ironically, she was saying this of a woman who was still fighting to live.
Two recent developments have returned the focus to women’s safety, their
freedoms and the moral-social rules by which they still appear to be
judged despite their own monumental struggles to break free. The debate
that has followed has not just exposed the doublespeak of political
parties on women’s rights, it has brought out the stark gap between
elite talk and practice when it comes to feminine rights and liberties.
The first of the two incidents concerns a young woman who was allegedly
placed under surveillance for over a month in 2009 by the Gujarat
government. The claim about the alleged surveillance was made by two web
portals, Gulail and Cobrapost. They released audio
recordings of alleged conversations between then Gujarat Minister of
State for Home Amit Shah and then Superintendent of Police with the
State’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, G.L. Singhal. The conversations suggested
that a range of state investigative agencies had been deployed to
closely monitor the girl’s movements and tap her phones.
The second incident relates to a complaint of sexual assault, since classified as rape, filed by a woman staff member of Tehelka against Tarun Tejpal, Editor-in-Chief and founder of the magazine.
Admittedly, in both cases the full details are still to be known. In the
alleged rape case, the legal process has started. In the other case,
the Gujarat government has set up a Commission of Inquiry, the
legitimacy of which has been questioned by legal experts. Nonetheless,
some things are prima facie evident in both cases. Also, disturbingly,
both cases reveal that at a fundamental level attitudes towards women
have not changed. A woman complaining of sexual assault must have ‘easy
morals.’ On the other hand, it is fair game to treat a woman as family
property and do with her as the family pleases.
Curiously, the news of the Gujarat inquiry commission came even as
Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons were stampeding to dismiss the need
for a probe into the alleged surveillance. The BJP said it was a case
of protection and not surveillance because the 2009 monitoring was
preceded by an “oral” request made by the woman’s father to Chief
Minister Narendra Modi.
The father had since made a “heart-rending” plea to be left alone,
saying his daughter too was aware of the protection offered, the party
said. It added: “Is it too much to ask that we respect the family?” The
two cases are at once dissimilar and similar. In one instance, the
alleged invasion was direct and physical. In the other, state actors
allegedly monitored the private moments of a woman, who, notwithstanding
the father’s letters, appears not to have known about it.
The physical intrusion, constituting rape, is manifestly more grave. But
the absence of physical hurt surely cannot lessen the sense of
revulsion any woman placed under intrusive surveillance must feel. A
woman is as much body as she is mind and soul. Monitoring her private
moments is an affront to her dignity and self-respect, and as much is
evident from the recent inclusion of stalking among sexual crimes.
The reactions of the Congress and the BJP have been typically partisan
in the two cases. The Congress fielded a powerful group of women
functionaries to tear down the BJP’s defence of the ‘snooping’ case.
They said the taped conversations produced by the web portals showed the
woman had been ‘snooped upon’ and not protected. Yet, just a few days
later, when the Tehelka case burst into the open, the same
spokespersons held back their punches. Mr. Tejpal, who has been
celebrated for his crusading journalism and advocacy of liberal
feminism, went back on his own stated beliefs and values to defame the
journalist who accused him of rape. His statement that she had “partied
with elan” after the alleged rape constituted crude character
assassination, not very different from the patriarchal judgments handed
out in such cases. Indefensibly, Mr. Tejpal also tied the police case
against him to his being a sharp critic of right-wing majoritarianism.
The Congress should have confronted this frontally. Not only was Mr.
Tejpal playing by outmoded rules on how women ought to behave, he was
also claiming to be witch-hunted for his liberal-secular beliefs. This
is spurious logic and should discomfit all those with genuine
secular-pluralist convictions, including the Congress. Bringing ideology
into the case also carries the preposterous suggestion that the Tehelka staffer acted with political motives.
The BJP has been even more hypocritical. The party energetically batted for the Tehelka
journalist, interpreting her complaint against Mr. Tejpal as a powerful
blow for women’s rights. Party person Vijay Jolly, who defaced the
walls of Tehelka managing-editor Shoma Chowdhury’s home, said he
was protesting her failure to support the complainant. “I want women to
find the courage to come out and complain,” he told a TV channel. In the
surveillance case, the BJP has taken the opposite position, arguing
that a woman’s family could decide what was good for her.
The BJP has tied itself in knots in the surveillance case — changing its
stand from the tapes not being reliable to admitting that the woman was
indeed monitored, even if only for her own good. It produced letters
from the woman’s father to make the case that no probe was necessary
since he and his daughter did not want one. Yet, the overwhelming
concern for the father who had made a “heart-rending” appeal to be left
alone disappeared once the Gujarat government set up a Commission of
Inquiry. The position changed from respecting the family’s wishes to
applauding the State government for having set up a probe.
Writing in the context of attempts made to monitor his call records,
Arun Jaitley said on April 17, 2013: “His [the citizen’s] right to
privacy is an inherent aspect of his personal liberty. Interference in
the right to privacy is an interference in his personal liberty by a
process which is not fair, just or reasonable… In the case of an average
citizen it [monitoring] can reflect on his relationships…” (source: BJP
website). Taking a conflicting position in the surveillance case, Mr.
Jaitley said no case could be made for breach of privacy because the
woman and her father had not complained.
Till today, the BJP has no answers as to why the entire state machinery
was needed to protect the woman; why she needed to be protected even
while in her own home; and why those protecting her were worried about
her escaping their watch.
The BJP’s Nirmala Sitharaman took an even more regressive line on a TV
programme. She said India was not a “progressive, left-wing country”
where a “woman after [the age of] 18 will speak for herself.” Further,
questioning the family’s right to intervene on a woman’s behalf amounted
to “hitting at the very value system which we in India hold dear.” It
probably did not occur to Ms. Sitharaman that her logic was fully in
consonance with the justice system followed by the khap panchayats.
In yet another notable example, last week Union Minister Farooq Abdullah
scored a 10 on 10 for insensitivity with his comment that he is scared
to hire women as staff members lest he land up in jail.
The December 2012 Delhi gang rape released the collective emotions of
India’s women. The legion of women who took courage from that brave girl
deserve better than the hypocrisies on offer today.
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