Humra Quraishi*
The 31-year old lady doctor’s murder and rape at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College seems so brutal that no amount of words or phrases can be adequate to describe that level of barbaric brutality… I was just reading details of the sheer emotional and mental agony her family has been through. At first, they were told by the hospital authorities that she’d died by suicide but after three hours of wait when they saw her battered-bruised-broken body, it got more than writ large the sheer torture she was subjected to by the maniac rapist or rapists.
The safety and survival of a woman or even of a child is very tough …tougher it gets. Let’s not forget 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 at the dead of the night by the State machinery!
News just coming in this evening is this tragic one – a 14-year-old Dalit girl raped and hacked to death by a sickle, in a village in Bihar. All done in the public domain. Yet she couldn’t be protected and saved. There could be hundreds of such victims, where parents are helpless or too weak to protect their offspring. Needless to add the police machinery is just not effective. The administrators and politicians are just too busy distracting the masses, with provocative tactics along the Hindu-Muslim strain!
Even if arrests are made of killers-murderers-rapists, don’t overlook the fact that today even convicted rapists are given paroles …out on furloughs. All those Who’s Who rapists can be out for long or short breaks. Just to mention a couple of names – Asaram Bapu is out of the jail confines on a seven-day parole. Dera Sacha Sauda’s Gurmeet Ram Rahim has been granted twenty-one days of furlough… Not to overlook the fact that last year all those 11 men convicted in the rape of Bilkis Bano were prematurely freed, till of course, on Supreme Court’s order they were re-imprisoned.
If one were to question the strain why this acceleration in crimes against women, it’s best to quote Brinda Karat from her latest book– Hindutva And Violence Against Women (Speaking Tiger Books) – “In India, we have, through the experience of our history and the freedom struggle, understanding 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 chance, I don’t 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 as a result 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 further says, “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.’”
Yes, today we can’t dare call ourselves developed when just last evening those disturbing shots stood out, of a man in Rajasthan tying his wife to his bike and dragging her all around, in full public glare. Why? Because she dared to insist on visiting her sister’s home! This is the level of brutality we have reached! And amid these barbaric onslaughts, we are told we are going ahead… progressing… Where to! Only towards disasters hitting the fragile human being, being fed on the stale diet of communal hatred and friction and frenzied onslaughts!
Little point in repeating that infrastructures are failing and falling apart, and to compound the gravity, the much-hyped assurances by the sarkar of the day too seem failing. And this holds out in almost every sector. One just has to walk around and see how the masses are surviving, amidst severe disadvantages and violence.
DIM RAYS OF HOPE …
Before I end this column must focus on the dim rays of hope for the humans! Foremost, the statements of the two Olympic stars, India’s Neeraj Chopra and Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, and also of their mothers were greatly impressed. Their statements dripped with maturity and grace, relaying sentiments along the strain that winning gold or silver medals wouldn’t ever come in the way of their bonding. The two Javelin throwers worked very hard and so it’s okay if one won silver and the other gold… both are like brothers. Nationalities or regions or religions shouldn’t come in the way of human bonding and not in the lives of true sportsmen!
Saroj Devi, Neeraj Chopra’s mother, of course made headlines when she expressed her admiration and affection for Arshad Nadeem. She referred to him as “hamara ladka,” or “our boy,” highlighting the mutual respect that exists between the two athletes. In fact, she ought to be honoured at every possible forum. Her words and sentiments ought to be admired and respected.
Then, the interim prime minister of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, also held out some hope for humans, when in his address he dwelt on the protection of the Hindu minority population in Bangladesh and his urgent call to immediately halt violence… refrain from all kinds of violence. The manner he focused and emphasized this relayed the much-required urgency. Minority populations and properties ought to be protected in every civilized country. That should be the top priority of every government. Vulnerable, they find it difficult to protect themselves from mob attacks coupled with destruction and loot. It’s the establishment’s foremost duty to save the lives and livelihoods of the minority communities otherwise there’s little point in having a government!
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