Melange of Emotions

Switching on the TV confirmed my apprehension about the fate of the rape victim, particularly after the discouraging news about her health which were rife a day before. A melange of emotions was what I experienced – sad for her and all other victims like her, hopeless with our system, angry with our demented political class, contempt towards the despicable mind-set...

Our intellectual class thronged the news channels and kept on rotating from one studio to another. They indulged in giving platitudes over women empowerment and rape prevention while shedding their tears on this tragedy. Our inconsequential faces of government appeared one by one with their solidarity speeches – sick of those banalities! Bunch of hypocrites they are, and I will tell you why…

Look a few days down the line…

AP Congress leader’s callous remark faulting the victim for being outside in night, president’s brat’s “dent and paint” comment, left leader’s obscene comment on lady chief of TMC – each of these invited country wide censure.  Later, they were all seen “withdrawing” their comments.  Their clans came out with uglier response of “forgive and forget” while Nation expected concrete actions.

Frenzied drama we saw in parliament over the matter of FDI and Quota bill driven by ruling party and a Dalit Messiah, respectively. Where were these people when it came to calling a special session of parliament to discuss a new approach tackle the rape issue? All want to wallow in the comfort of year's end.

369 MPs and MLAs have cases of crime against women in their resume. And there is no law to debar these freaks from forming a safe-haven of law making bodies. Disgusting of a democracy called India where such criminals represent constituencies.

A small Taliban like existence called Khap is yet another question mark on political class. They thrive in a few states of the country passing their undemocratic dictate on a girl’s freedom – No-mobile-phone and no-mobile-womanhood kind of farmaans ridiculing the freedom of equality.  And chief ministers of the states shun the topic because they do not want to alienate a big chunk of their vote bank.

And the examples are many and even more frustrating. But what frustrates me more is dearth of remedy. No, we can have, and in fact must have, strong deterrence of hard punishments and fast trail courts along with solid law enforcement, but what should we do about the mind-set problem?

Many of us would be tempted to suggest – spread education. But the problem in hand crosses the boundary of literacy as well as that of urban-rural distinction. It is ubiquitous. Male chauvinism is ingrained in the social and psychological framework. A boss in power harasses a woman employee, a teacher molests a girl student, four hooligans violate a lone girl – all of these cases suggest misuse of position/power, which has definitely something to do with the cause.

We also have an effective time-tested style of abusing others in order to hurt most, by referring to their mothers and sisters. Even our epic confirms the power-misuse and hurt-most logic – remember Draupadi cheer haran by Duryodhan in front of powerless Pandavas. This existence of the skewed psyche is also corroborated from the fact that a number of porn websites have categories like rape as well as abuse; and they are even high in popularity too.

Even psychology has a dismal fact to share with us. A study conducted on sexual harassment in workplace shows that males are very unlikely to attribute the crime to the perpetrators, in a sense probably because they lack the ability to empathize with the victims who are females in most of the cases.

Also let’s not forget a blunder many people keep on making – a girl who wears an attractive dress is actually asking for being approached by the wrongdoers. This sick mentality exists even among educated youths of today as per my observation. What a glaring fallacy in mind-set! A girl wears an attractive dress because it augments her personality as a girl; it makes her presence felt among people and leaves a lasting impression on others; a common psychological strategy everybody follows, a guy by wearing nice pair of jeans and shirt.

So how to change the mind-set is where the root of the malaise lies. May be a right nurture in family, constant priming the individual with the facts against such crimes or may be something else…but as of now at least a strong deterrence should find its place in our judicial system.  Hope the victim’s martyrdom which represents the agony of all such cases brings a change in correct direction.