Humra Quraishi
Just read Brinda Karat’s latest book– Hindutva And Violence Against Women (Speaking Tiger Books). Recently launched, it focuses on the existing dark realities facing the women of this country under the Hindutva regime.
Brinda Karat details the injustices heaped on our women in these recent years – be it Bilkis Bano whose convicted rapists were freed and also the Kuki women raped and murdered in Manipur and also the Hindutva campaigns in favour of the rapists and murderers of the Kathua-based 8-year old Asifa Bano, and also the cover-ups to the Hathras rape victim, who was cremated in the dead of night by the State machinery!
The list of the blatant abuse and cover-ups and double speak of the rulers of the day is not just long but much too dubious and disgusting. To quote Karat from the introduction to this book: “When governments grant impunity to perpetrators of sexual crimes when such criminals belong to the majority community, no woman can be safe. But this is the process underway in India today.”
And if one were to question and query along the strain that crimes against women have been on, for decades or centuries, so why this sudden focus on them, there is this detailed explanation. To quote her: “In India, we have, through the experience of our own history and through the freedom struggle, understood women’s status including the multiple forms and methods of violence against women within the context of the political, socio-economic, cultural realities, including the caste system. Looking at the issue of violence against women in this broader framework shows us the changing dimensions of violence against women in India today. By change I do not necessarily mean something ‘new’ – the intensification of existing, negative, and sometimes toxic trends which due to a host of factors become the dominant trend, also adds up to change. These changes are occurring because of the dominance gained by the right-wing communal and sectarian forces in India’s political and social life, leading to the formation of a government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and influenced, if not run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Let us call it a joint venture of the RSS and its political wing, the BJP.” She furthers, “…But in the decade of the rule of the present dispensation, we can see a fundamentally altered situation in India, because of the nature of the agenda and the programme set by the RSS from its inception in 1925 – the agenda of building what they term a ‘Hindu Rashtra.’”
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FILM – Hamare Baarah – OUGHT TO BE HALTED! NOW AND IMMEDIATELY!
The ten-year rule of the BJP-led government at the Centre stands out with not just biases and slants and communal unleashes but also with the making (production!) of highly provocative films. Films which seem to lack substance or facts but are made with the intention of spreading a certain propaganda against the Muslim community. The latest in this category is the film titled – Hamare Baarah. The original title is said to be ‘Hum Do, Hamare Baarah’, which later, for some reason stands slashed to half.
Last evening, as I saw its trailer I sat shocked viewing the uncouth crude and communal propaganda unleashed through this so-called film. I am finding it difficult to describe the third-class portrayals and scenarios and the supposed intentions for making this slanted film! Just too shocking!
As a concerned citizen of this country, I am of the opinion this film ought to be halted before it is screened – said to be screened on 7 June 2024. The trailer itself seems so very disturbing and provocative that screening the film may lead to civil strife, affecting the lives of hundreds, and poisoning minds of an entire generation.
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SUNIL DUTT’s formula … to bring about peace and to see to it that civil strife is not allowed to spread out
As Sunil Dutt sahib’s birth anniversary nears (he was born on 6 June, 1929, in Khurd village, in Jhelum district, now in Pakistan), I am reminded of his formula to contain civil strife. During an interview, I recall asking him this vital: Any possible solution for civil strife and communal violence?
And within a couple of seconds, he had said: “There can be one solution. Only last night, I was going through the latest Time magazine and the horror photographs of the war-ridden Somalia shocked me so much that I could not eat. It was dinner time but just could not touch a morsel. Just could not… Those horrifying pictures of human beings dying, sitting injured and ill, crawling about, rendered so frail and weak that could not even walk. These human disasters are because of the ongoing civil strife in Somalia. And now I am going to suggest that all those photographs/pictures be displayed all over our towns and cities and villages. Displayed at all public places, libraries and school and colleges and universities and shopping centres. And displaced with this caption: See, just see what internal war or strife or unrest can do to you, to your country, to your fellow countrymen.”
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