Women's Day or India's Daughter....!!?

WOMEN'S DAY.... OR ... 'INDIA'S DAUGHTER'...?!!

 

Sunday, March 8 is International Women’s Day. Once more will pour in at Facebook and Twitter sites, great holy quotes, words, and chants  on women; Mails and messages will go flying between men and women, women and women on the  ‘greatness of woman / the virtues of woman’ and so on and so on…

At the same time, a man- a lawyer- sits in a Discussion Forum on national television and shouts, “Yes ! Yes ! If my sister or daughter is found with a man, I’ll burn her..!” And Indians that include lawmakers, constitution experts, pious men, teachers, writers, scientists, social workers and so many others sit there listening to him, instead of handing over the man to the police with an FIR as a possible murderer.

In Kolkata, and West Bengal the Supreme Reigning Power is Durga- devotees going to impossible  lengths to pay obeisance to Her. Yet has one person from Bengal- even the fiery Mamata Bannerjee- raised a storm over what one of the defending lawyers for the Dec 16, 2012 rape-accused said about women-

“If you keep sweets on the street then dogs will come and eat them. Why did her parents send her with anyone that late at night?”

The Government have put a ban on Ms Leslee Udwin’s documentary ‘India’s Daughter’. And some regressive men- even one like the self-appointed ‘defender of all right things of India’- Mr Loudmouth Arnab Goswami of Times Now Channel-  shouting out loud how Ms Leslie has brought down the deceased Nirbhaya’s (Ms Jyoti Singh Pandey) unfortunate name with “the ultimate insult” of highlighting one of the rapists’ mind-sets.

 Alas ! Alas! All this, even as the documentary showed no single objectionable  action or intent- even as it highlighted the ugly and blatantly self-applauding, remorseless bent of a brutal rapist, despite the Supreme Court’s ‘death penalty’ dangling upon his head.  The documentary has brought out the unspeakably ugly mind-set, and nauseating  words of a criminal, commenting boorishly upon the horrifically brutalized woman’s dress, her time of going out, her companion, her fight and resistance to the criminals…

More, the documentary has brought out what countless men think of women(and girls - in today’s India- with all the big talk about women-empowerment, women-reservation, women-protection bills and all such- that women with the kind of dresses they wear these days, the kind of freedom they assume these days, the kind of irreverence they show to their assigned traditional-female roles these days, they are bound to be targets of sexual assault, rape and such..! Ministers, political big-wigs, academicians, media-presenters, God-men, law-makers, policemen, lawyers, even judges have been exposed in the debates following  the documentary, “India’s Daughter”, of their narrow, regressive, centuries-old Manu-diktat-mindsets  as they blame women for the terrible sexual assaults upon them…for did not Manu say of woman, “It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the company of females”, “Wise people should avoid sitting alone with one’s mother, daughter or sister. Since carnal desire is always strong..”, “Men may be lacking virtue, be sexual perverts, immoral and devoid of any good qualities, and yet women must constantly worship and serve their husbands” ?

Today, Friday, March 6, 2015, in India, men will not even want their time and attention disrupted, for today is a World Cup cricket match in Perth, Australia. Today their main concern will be how many runs will Virat Kohli make ? Rapes and such will always be going on as long as ‘boys will be boys…and will be upto mischief now and then….’ Match over, there is the zooming sensex- so share-and-stock-trading needs working at…come evening, there is the club to go to, relax at, have a drink… Or stay home, get glued to the computer or television, watch Discovery or News or BBC Channels, and…with the usual everyday must-dos, retire for the day. All that fuss over a rape …?! Of course laws need to be brought against such crimes, but what can anyone do ? They have to take their own time…only Governments can deal with such issues…

 Ms Leslie’s documentary has suddenly laid bare the everyday-thinking of many men in India today..

Do people really understand- can they actually conceive- how a woman after rape gets shattered…almost never ever really free of the horror of it…never really allowing herself the luxury of happily, freely bringing up her children or partnering her husband, or even running a home, managing her career with verve and pride ? Even if every case is not as unimaginably horrifying as Ms Nirbhaya’s, ending in death, every affected woman becomes a tortured island unto herself in the society she lives in…

What  are the administrators, the great policy-makers, the sociologists, the journalistic experts- what are they really doing about the menace of rape and the precarious status of women the moment they step out of their  homes ? The nation said nothing, even when they came to know that an admired leader himself had walked out on his wife…to chase his career. They even compared him to Siddhartha walking out of his home on his Buddha-journey… Just like the men in the Ramayana times applauded Rama for being a people-abiding king, who unflinchingly let his pregnant wife be left in the jungle…for it was unacceptable for the people of Ayodhya to have a king whose queen had beenliving for some time in another man’s precincts…

For all her big talk, what is the Union Human Resources Minister, Ms Smriti Irani doing about the entire ugly rape-and-women’s insecurity issue ? What is stopping her from taking strong steps against those who destroy their women under the guise of ‘honour’ ? Has Ms Irani made martial-art teaching for girls in schools compulsory ? Has she taught girls and women to keep with them pepper-sprayers, taught them how to use them ? Are schools teaching in clear, but clean language all about human bodies, of taking healthy care of the bodies, of sex, of procreation, and of the great dangers of not understanding the body-functions , of the great evils of wrong pursuance of arbitrary or forced sex ?

So many- so very many – issues have come into limelight thanks to the sharp documentary, “India’s Daughter”. Like Shobha De says, it must be compulsory viewing for everybody in India (if necessary with some further editing ). Why don’t more men show their anger on the disgusting mindset of men even in high places ? Is there only one Javed Akhtar to rouse people against the blatant  blinker-eyed attitudes  in society ? Why are all our gentlemen-friends not even mentioning the subject (among the entire mailing groups that I know of, only one Col Menon has highlighted articles), and the social ire (chiefly women) at the entire Dec 16^th incident and its follow-up ? Why, as Nirbhaya’s mother says, is punishment still lagging for the gruesome guilty, even as their own daughter perished two and a half years ago ? What is the use of all talk of women’s laws and girls’ safety, if, as Nirbhaya’s father says, there are no girls alive in the homes ? A stark question showing how much this crime - rape- has continued, even increased, in utmost devious forms too, where the imprisoned criminal warns society that henceforth rapists will kill the girls, so that they don't talk anymore of the crime-perpetrators…

Today, everyone in India worth his and her salt needs to take a position- use his/her voice, use his/her pen to make the Government and authorites arrest ‘respectable’ men who speak more unbearably than the criminals, debar authorites who speak of their womenfolk as if they were cattle in their homes, and put the fear of every God and Man- nationwide- into perverts, raise a huge concerted voice in the country that films and documentaries that talk of the different angles of crime are not  to be banned, butencouraged-  that the terrible retro-mindset of many in the country- against women-  has to be by law, overhauled and cleansed…

Then yes, as Nirbhaya’s father said, his daughter Jyoti would have, “In death lit such a torch … whatever darkness there is in this world should be dispelled by this light.”