(Article changed on December 30, 2012 at 14:33)
(Article changed on December 30, 2012 at 14:27)
The
twenty-three year old victim of brutal gang-rape on a New Delhi bus finally
succumbed in a Singapore hospital following a period of physical and mental
devastation -- a devastation that needs a different kind of imagination for it
to be properly understood. The
first thing that comes to mind is: where is God in all of this brutalization?
Where are the temples where money is being poured into by irrational, scared
believers and the corrupt Indian rich who seek to bribe the gods in order to
let them continue to loot an impoverished nation and let the poor die for lack
of choice? Where are those priests in the temples, mosques, churches and the
gurdwaras and their so-called believers -- immoral and conscienceless characters
-- because they need to be blamed for all the violence in this communalized
society? The legitimization of violence in a country like India is an
altogether different thing.
I don't understand this narrow understanding of a social problem by
journalists, well-meaning individuals and the public in general. They want the
rapists to be punished merely to be absolved of their own guilt because they
know in their subconscious minds that they made the brutality possible through
their unforgivable indifference to what happens to their neighbor fallen on the
streets of the world. A sweet and sensitive friend of mine told me that he
lived for five years in the city of Delhi and did not make a single friend.
These are cruel and inhuman cities dedicated to external appearance and devoid
of compassion and the cruelty and inhumanity is magnified because the context
is a third world one. The urban collective conscience is shamed and wants quick
results. It does not want to deal with the guilt more than what is necessary.
Anyone who has read Kafka knows that the law exists in order to induce
fear and not to do justice. Punishing the rapists for their brutality is not
the issue as much as I would like to see them punished. In fact I would think
that they should be let free in order for the men on the street to actually
suffer guilt and make serious efforts to bring about real change in the social
order. The appeal to conscience is however futile where the majority of men are
without one.
What we are seeing is the violence of a consumerist society. It's a
deeply brutalized society and the brutalization shows more so when it comes to
the women. This is a patriarchal, woman-hating society. Look at the movies that
are made in this country where women are treated like animals. What did you
expect from those poor illiterate men who raped this woman? Having experienced
violence on a day to day basis in the slums the only language they understood
is the language of meaningless brutality. They were dramatizing the brutality
that their bodies have experienced through life in the villages and the slums. The
punishment will not make any difference to a conscience that is numbed by
violence of another kind -- the violence of poverty. Let's not forget that the
man who was with the woman was beaten up but not raped and brutalized like the
woman was. It simply means that the perceived vulnerability of the woman is the
issue.
The sad bottom line is: we have made the poor in this country violent
and inhuman and left them to the mercy of manipulators from Bollywood and the
television industry, the politicians and the urban middle class and rich
Indians in general. Apparently the well-known actress Juhi Chawla wants the
rapists to be given the eye for an eye kind of punishment -- and that "death
sentence" is too easy on the rapists. Let me tell you what is wrong with Indian
mainstream films. The 1991 movie Benaam
Badshah (An emperor without a title) has Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla in the
main roles. Anil Kapoor plays the role of a goon from the slums and Juhi is a
well-to-do middle class woman who is about to marry a doctor. The woman
character is raped by the goon in the movie and the next thing she does is not
go to the police to make a complaint as normal anyone would do. In fact what she
does is to grovel in the dust for the goon to marry her now that he raped her
and is the rightful "owner" of her body. I think she even sings a couple of
songs to convince the rapist to fall in love with her. To add to the charade,
the doctor too wants her to marry the rapist or at least he is happy with the
idea since she lost her virginity to him. I'm sure that Juhi Chawla, if she really
cared for the plight of women, would know better than accepting roles like this
one that demean women.
I don't think actors like Ms. Juhi Chawla or Mr. Amitabh Bachchan have
any moral authority to condemn anything. I blame them individually and as an
industry for this bad education given to the working classes and for
perpetuating the victim syndrome among women, which means that most women --
including the educated ones - tend to believe that being victim is part of the
horrible destiny of being born woman. Today everyone wants the men to be
punished. What about our role in creating these men and this atmosphere of
violence in the first place!
Two things need to be addressed here: one is the dehumanization of the
poor and its virulent consequences. Another is the warped virginity-obsessed
Indian male sexuality. The former needs structural changes: give the poor and
the working classes palatable food, education and basic healthcare. The latter
is a more serious one. The kind of attention that the "sex act" is given as an
end in itself is indeed morbid. We cannot have an entire culture dedicated
directly or indirectly to be talking and thinking about sex on a daily basis.
The men across this country -- doesn't matter whether they are brilliant
engineers, software professionals or professors in universities -- when it comes
to women they believe what the rapists do -- that the bodies of women are
objects designed for male pleasure. A woman friend of mine said that a woman in
this country does not exist who has not experienced violence in one form or the
other. Likewise it is hard for me to believe that there are actually men who
have not committed violence against women in one form or the other.
Humanization is a cultural process. I don't believe that people are
naturally "human." We're naturally beasts more than anything else. It took me
twenty years to arrive at a radically simple conclusion that human nature is
more or less the same everywhere: social and political conditions will
determine to a large extent what people will or will not do. Male domination is
a cultural problem. We need to humanize people in a situation where religion
and economic exploitation play the diabolic role of dehumanization. India -- for
all its hypocrisy of being a deeply religious society -- is the most godless
country I've ever seen. In fact, living in India will convince you that God and
the government are an excuse for you to do whatever you like if you have the
power to do so. Women and the poor need God and the government because of their
utter helplessness in the face of systemic violence. The men need the same God and
the same government to justify male domination. We need to seriously change
that.
In one of his most moving plays The
Trojan Women on the plight of women in a patriarchal society especially in
the aftermath of war , the Greek
dramatist Euripides has the female protagonist Hecuba say:
O god, O god, whose slave shall I be?
Where in this wide world shall I live
My life out, doing drudgework,
Stooped, mechanical, a less-than-
Feeble token of the dead?
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