Hathras - Yet another tragedy

This piece is inspired by a friend I call The Little One. She is little to me but a giant slayer. A co alumnus many years junior I had never heard of her till one day I found her on a alumni group defending and fighting fiercely as she defended me like a mother tigress. That started a lovely friendship and when she told me to share my thoughts on the Hathras incident in a blog I decided I would. I do hope I live up to her expectations.

I have always believed that the moment any debate, discussion, opinion mixes politics with an issue, the issue will always remain buried – just the way politicians want it. The following will show my consistent stand on this approach. When those who profess to be fighting for a cause decide their response based on which politics they prefer, the cause will never get addressed but fester like a cancer. 

As a child I loved to enjoy the bajra roti the labourers would bring as their lunch much to my mom’s exasperation – not because she had an issue with it, but I was depriving a labourer of his meagre lunch.  Honestly I have little understanding of caste equations that even today I am almost clueless. Bring anybody to me and unless he has a placard around his neck I wouldn’t know his caste. But I do understand the realities of India.

As a student on a project in Lucknow I used to go to the “kitchen” where they prepared stuff and would take the lunch items back to my table. One day the cook and office peon came to me and in a round about way expressed their criticism about my visits to the kitchen. Imagination running wild I floundered around till finally they said that as a so called upper caste I had no business to visit their place. I was supposed to order my lunch and the peon would do the needful.  Further the peon had objections to my drinking water from a container that was 3 feet away from me. I had to ring a bell and he would serve the water in a glass. I spoke about this with the senior officer I was working with and was told – keep your rural management in the college and behave as they tell you. I spent an uncomfortable 3 months like this with many more uncomfortable situations.

Today it brings back memories of many Hindi films in which invariably the upper caste thakur or whoever would rape the hero’s sister or mother and then the revenge drama began. As I now realise, not one film tried to educate the viewers that rape was wrong, that women needed to be respected, that revenge was not the answer but social attitudes needed to change.  While viewers maybe felt “satisfied” at the villain being beaten up in the end – it was never because they felt that rape was a revolting action or that looking down upon the lower caste as a commodity was wrong.

After 30+ years little has changed and if anything it has got institutionalised, normalised and systemic. Our education system over the last 7 decades has never tried to inculcate a sense of respect, equality and high morals when it comes to women. It has always objectified women and depicted them in specific roles that only reinforce the stereotype.

Even today every other film or TV serial shows how a male stalks a woman, forces himself on her and since the story demands that the girl fall in love with him, this is accepted as perfectly normal. When people imitate that in real life as being normal, we do not get love but rape, eve teasing, harassment etc.

Just see the advertisements on how they depict women - fairness, beauty, roles, gender bias - and we still think regressive opinions are from poor uneducated classes. No, they prevail across the whole spectrum, it is just about who gets away with their attitudes and actions.

Many a political leader, however tall in perception justify such acts with a boy’s will be boy’s attitude. Let us recall few comments on how Indian leaders view women and incidentally many of these relate to Uttar Pradesh.

• Nitish Kumar said that women should not feed their husbands if they did not vote as per the woman’s choice.
• Azam Khan talked about Jayaprada’s underwear.
• Surendra Singh said that Mayawati gets a facial and dyes her hair.
• Dayashankar Singh compared Mayawati to a prostitute.
• Mulayam of the boys will be boys fame objected to the womens reservation saying that rural women are not good looking and so can’t benefit
• Digvijay Singh referred to a party worker as a gold object which in Hindi was derogatory.
• Abhijit Mukherjee referred to women as dented and painted.
• Tapal Pal spoke about sending his boys to rape women.
• Jaydeep Kawade commented that size of woman’s bindi increases as she changes husbands
• Anybody recall how in the assembly elected members tried to strip Jayalalitha?

When the MeToo campaign started, even assuming some were motivated and unfair, there were still so many involving the high and mighty.

A former supreme court judge even as he valiantly tried to protest actually rationalised the rape to sexual urges which don’t have a outlet but are natural.

Just read op-eds and listen to the nationally acclaimed social activists during election campaigning and they wax eloquent about how parties must move away from caste based campaigns, how caste is wrong when it comes to development, how politicians are dividing society and so on. Hours later when the election results come in the very same activists will wax eloquent on which party/ candidate won/lost because they got the caste arithmetic right/wrong.

I keep arguing with friends that politicians, the whole administration, courts, etc come from the very society we live in.  They are an image of who we are at a larger picture. Recently a very senior police officer justified beating his wife and we expect the same officer to protect women against abuse. You think such an officer or the judge above can deliver justice?

Between a caste minded attitude even in so called social engineering experts and a general apathy towards woman, what has happened is that the whole system is biased against the woman. The difference between the victim and the perpetrator when it comes to justice is who is more powerful. The publicity for an incident depends on who thinks they benefit the most from the incident.

In Hathras, just like many more this was yet another where the script followed a predictable copy book pattern.

• A women gets raped and killed – that she was a dalit doesn’t make the crime any more or any less gruesome but the narrative shifts to the caste thus diluting the crime right in the beginning.
• Sensing political mileage, you have a whole team of media, politicians making a beeline for the victim. Everybody wants a “breaking news”.
• The victim in the midst of tragedy and mourning is ill equipped to deal with such national exposure and so you will get diverse comments from them.
• Based on the seniority of the political leaders who get involved, the entire focus then shifts to the politics and the victim is almost forgotten except for being used as a whipping horse by each who seek some mileage.

 Lets step back for a minute.

• Successive political leaders, parties so as to make an administrative base for themselves encourage and promote who they think as their own and here invariably caste becomes the default choice to obtain and give loyalty. The system is packed with people who profess loyalty to someone or other either openly or silently.
• Based on who is getting affected the system swings into action. They start covering up for their own often without even being told to do so. Since everybody indulges in such cover up acts the resistance is muted from within the system.

 And then what happens?

• For dozens of such crimes that go unreported one crime is made into a story but the crime, the victim is forgotten. They instead focus on the caste or such other aspect that can cause excitement, inflame passions, cause emotional responses. This means that they throw mud in a wide arc to see what sticks.
• Crime forgotten this is now a dalit versus upper caste issue, the debate has changed.
• Political parties in the meantime got involved when they smell the blood literally in the crime and change the discourse to what suits them, what brings them attention and mind space. By now the subject itself has changed.
• With political leaders stepping in its now a fight between parties, leaders. The victim & their family is just the football in this game. The victim who was raped, murdered is now cremated post haste because remember – if there is no body, there are no “tourists”.
• Based on who all are being blamed  – caste groups, political parties, administration, the law – the voices of those who were horrified at the crime gets drowned. The result is cover up. Nobody cares for the victim or the crime anymore.
• The entire system is now against the victim family because this is no longer the failure of a person, it is the failure of the system as a whole and no system can ever be seen to be wrong or weak.
• If the ruling government and its loyal system are being apathetic and incompetent, the opposition helps them by diverting the issue with their own agenda. After all it needs two to play the game. Remember, tomorrow the roles may get reversed.
• In this situation the victim family is scared because they will continue to live in the same society long after the politicians, journalists have gone home. They need to live with the same neighbours, friends, enemies, and the system.
• The same cops, they will still remain physically around them every single day and to who the victim may have to go for something else. So, the victim will stay silent, listen to what they are told to do.
• Some cops will be suspended, and forgotten so the opposition is happy. Once public memory fades they are back maybe even in the same position as before.

What about the justice system? Remember the media and journos, other political workers who crowded the victim family and bewildered them beyond anything they had ever seen?. They now have multiple stories from the same victim recorded because they confused them, bulldozed them and when it comes to seeking justice – the perpetrators have a treasure trove of independent evidence from different channels, media, others to show that the victim was the guilty party.

It will move to - a rape never happened, there was no murder, there was no crime at all. Any half intelligent lawyer can get away with this like a breeze. The victim will never get justice.

A zombie administration cremated and disposed of the body in a hurry to not attract the vultures. Vultures themselves they also need to go feed off another body without having to share it with a pack of hyenas. 

In the meantime there is another equally horrifying rape, but then everybody is exhausted in covering a rape just now so they look for something else to chase. The politicians, media, journalists go away to feed upon another victim, another crime and life moves on.

This was the Hathras story. This is the story of many everyday crimes against women, the poor, the lower castes which go on every day and most of the times they get no justice.    

In our country a terrorist caught red handed was hanged after 4 years of hospitality, the rapists and horrifying murderers of a Nirbhaya were hanged after 7 years, the killers of a former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi were never hanged and the murderer of Jessica Lal in which there were so many more additional crimes involved got released for good behaviour.

A quick dip stick study of every high profile crime or act of injustice where politicians rushed in and hogged the attention over the last 20 years will show that today nobody remembers the victims, least of all whether they got justice.

Is there a way to solve this? Yes. The ONLY way change can come is when we complain, report, debate, discuss, protest on the ISSUE and never mix up our political or other biases. The moment we dont do this, we stay silent when its inconvenient thus propagating what we protest about. Knowing us the political and administration encourages this while women continue to get raped, killed and activists remain fattened, media gets its TRP, politicians retain power scratching each others back and we fatigued citizens wait for the next crime to protest.

For justice to be served, the country must undertake wide ranging police and judicial reforms that have been recommended way back in 1983 and not one government, not one political party in 37 years has felt the need to even accept it let alone implement it. If those who profess to grieve for women, Dalits, injustice etc are serious about changing the situation in India, they need to fight for and force the political system to implement these reforms on priority. Only then will things change. If not, we will go back to our normal lives till something excites us and we jump up to scream.