Digital Future · @digitalfutur
24th Dec 2012 from Twitlonger
India is enraged! Brutalizing of one woman has finally shaken it up. Disgust gave way to anger to protest to chaos. Some patchwork responses are in. And the talking India is still boiling. Metropolitan women are not buying it. Educated men are shocked a bit. And the institutions are responding with their characteristic inertia.
But in India, it's not just about women! Its never been! India does not respect its weaker, whether women or men; young or old. Its elites are happy with page 3 and the rest of the "educated" continue to play with the toys the rest of the world throws at them. Amidst all this, the biggest pass-time of the powerful, no matter how powerless they may be, is to subjugate the weaker and toss around their ranks where they can.
The rest of the 90% who are subjugated are considered "idiots", who live centuries behind, in the times before democracy was invented! Its leaders have sold themselves in search for power, their soul, their progeny, their future in search of a little extra power or money or joy they may probably be tossed!
Just the way a young adult, 23 year old woman, with ambition to stand on her own and support her family "like a son", confident enough to take a public transport one late evening, with a male friend to keep company and protect, just in case she had to come face to face with the realities of Delhi, was made to face the unspeakable brutality of half a dozen men who ganged up to ravish her, thrashed her male friend unconscious, and, when denied their right to subjugate any woman they could, brutalised her in unspeakable ways.
Then dumped like garbage, she was left in a condition that shocked the doctors attending on her. She was brutalized badly enough for her intestines to be taken out for ever, a week of being on a ventilator and a few surgeries later, her health bulletin given to the nation periodically, she is still not out of danger.
This was brutal enough to shock a nation that has been so busy playing with its new found toys from cars to cell phones that were handed down to it by the rest of the humanity that thinks ahead, imagines the future and tries to extend the frontiers of knowledge and human comfort by the day.
What has transpired since has exposed virtually every aspect of India's social order. The way its police, judiciary, polity, administration, media, common folks think about India has all come unravelling.
The trinity of power, sex and money (PSM) drive every aspect of India's social organization. Each of its organs responds only to incentives of PSM. It was not until the story of the unfortunate woman somehow caught attention of some media folks that the police showed some movement. Media also helped judiciary wake up to monitor the case as the police investigated and rounded up the culprits. But as the stories of the woman's suffering reached more and more people, initial disgust turned into anger and finally boiled down to spill over across the streets and a few cities and culminated in the capital of capital, the Vijay Chowk, within yards of the hills from where India governs itself.
Social networks were busy twittering. Knee-jerk reactions wanted to hang the culprits, have a summary trial, make it an exception and show how ready to lynch we can be.
The key political parties stayed out of the melee. When they did they did not cover themselves with glory. If one party stage-managed a meeting of fake protesters it was afraid to name, the others had little to say, not even any thoughtful comment seemed necessary.
Media has its fair share of moles from all parties. those siding with the Government spread rumours that will quell the protest or make it disappear. The Govt is believed to have played the Sachin Tendulkar card to distract the attention by announcing his partial resignation from one day cricket. Some of the members of media were busy declaring a cop dead and scuffled with the police and some others took an activist role and were preaching rather than reporting. Consider a judge educating the accused before the trial sets in!
And what have we achieved? Anger, a promise to fast track the trial, some fun at India Gate under water cannons, tear gas and batons being swung, some 150 people injured and probably a court for speedy trials of woman victims!
Will that change the way India looks at its women? Any more than capital punishment stops murder? Or any more than the laws stop crime?
Reminds me of a long conversation I had with Shankaracharya, one of the five that India has traditionally deferred to. What he said was revealing. He preferred not to expose a woman with even father, brother or son in a private space just as he did not recommend a man share privacy with his sister, daughter or mother. Because the primal instincts are way too powerful for humans to control and in the situations its all about power play.
I do not know how many men will come forward to acknowledge their harassment by their physical superior friends or foes in the school days and subjugate them in ways that will qualify to be called rape. India takes that almost naturally as a part of the evolution and it does not get reported. The behaviour is rampant and yet invisible just as the groping of women by friends and strangers alike has been an integral part of their growing up.
Good news is that values help us create that boundary that keeps us from falling prey to our primal instincts. Education, of the right kind and not the rote that India offers its 90%, greatly helps. Education that allows minds to get engaged with interesting ideas takes us away from the temptations of the hormones. The western society has been fine tuning what is aggression against women for now and Julian Assange's case is something most Indians may not be able to appreciate and though I side with Assange, I still see the merit of the law where a No in the middle is as much as a No as in the beginning.
From brutalising, if denied, to stopping at a No in the middle is a very long journey in gender relations. And that is the gap Indian society faces vis a vis its more productive and imaginative counterparts across the oceans. Gender relations also follow the path of human progress. More imaginative and creative and intellectually engaged we get, fewer are the possibilities of rage. They do not get eliminated, however. But good governance with sensitivity to respect every individual fine times the way we deal with each other.
Crimes do not go away. They become rare. Women are advised to be ready to deal with exceptional situations just as much in societies that are affluent and have laws with kind of transparent governance. That seldom eliminates crimes. America's CSI show is a reminder that nature is not easy to tame. And if our expectations are as idealistic as they must be, we have to do a lot more to change our values from very early on. Not having patience will hardly change the results. The evolution over thousands of years will not be concluded to our satisfaction over night. But if we educate our young to be creative and sensitive from childhood, from primary schooling, we may have a far more tolerant society by the time they grow up. 15 years of thoughtful patience can help accomplish a lot more than any knee-jerk, patch-work response may!